The building changed before the alarm admitted that it had changed.
Something moved through the walls, a vibration carried by concrete, low and unmistakably separate from the facility's normal nighttime hum. The kind of sound that doesn't introduce itself so much as occupy your ears until the sleeping part of your brain files a complaint.
Proxy woke before he had completely agreed to be awake.
Nyx was already upright. She'd shifted off him and sat on the upper bunk in darkness, facing the barred window, listening with the calm vigilance of someone who'd been conscious for several seconds longer and had already spent those seconds forming conclusions.
Then the alarm.
Different pitch. Different intent.
The schedule alarms believed in brevity, one flat note, one second, done. This one climbed and stayed there, a looping tone that refused to end after one second, or three, or ten.
