The alarm sounded at hour forty-one, fourteen minutes into the dwell on the thirty-second marker.
Every band on the field lit simultaneously. Lancelot read the message in one second. He looked at the forest around them—the deep old growth section, the canopy solid above, visibility thirty meters in every direction—and ran the calculation the alarm implied.
Island-level perimeter breach. Not a sector alarm. Not an evaluation suspension for weather or administrative error. The specific alarm from the orientation briefing that existed because the charter required it. The one they'd been told about once and assured they would never actually hear. The one that meant the island's defenses had failed.
The calculation took three seconds.
