Amara had learned to measure time by sound alone, and today the sounds were wrong.
The guard rotation had run like clockwork for as long as she’d been tracking it, two shifts, four hours apart, the same heavy boots passing her door at the same intervals. This morning, the pattern had broken. More footsteps than usual. Voices pitched low with an urgency that hadn’t been there before.
“Sable,” she whispered through the wall. “Something’s changed.”
“I noticed.” Sable’s voice carried a thread of tension Amara hadn’t heard from her before. “They’re moving people. I heard them further down the corridor an hour ago. New arrivals, I think.”
“More of us?”
“Maybe. Or maybe Voss is finally coming to see his collection in person.” A pause. “Either way, they wouldn’t be disrupting the schedule for
