The armory goes up at three in the morning.
I'm awake when it happens — the bond has been restless all evening, a low persistent hum that made sleep impossible. I'm sitting at the window in the dark, watching the compound lights and thinking about access logs, when the east wall lights up orange.
The sound comes a half-second after the light. A concussive boom that rattles the glass and sends something small off my windowsill to shatter on the floor.
I'm dressed and out the door before the echo clears.
***
The armory is a stone building in the compound's east quadrant, supposedly fire-rated, supposedly secure. The fire hasn't made it past the exterior walls yet, but the interior is already lost — visible through the high windows as a rolling orange-white glow that means accelerant, no
