The howl faded slowly, its echoes dying in the corridors beyond the chamber like the last note of a funeral dirge, leaving behind a silence that felt worse than the sound had. A silence that breathed. A silence that waited.
"We need to move," Tank said, his voice carrying that particular flatness that meant he was afraid and managing it through sheer discipline, through the military habit of converting fear into action before it could convert into paralysis. "Standing still in a known location after something announces it knows we're here is tactically suicidal. We've essentially handed it a map with a big red X marked 'prey is here.'"
