From the upper tier of the Hill it did not look like an attack.
It looked like the floodlights had come down.
Sixty metres of ruined arena, white from edge to edge, with the broken stumps of ice towers standing up out of it and two holes torn through the reinforced floor — and above all of it, hanging motionless in the cold air, tens of thousands of pieces of shattered ice, every edge holding the stadium light.
Then all of it moved at once.
It did not fall. It went *sideways*, in different directions, at different speeds, and the sound that reached the stands through three layers of containment field was not a crash. It was a long dry rushing hiss, like a wave going out over shingle, and it did not stop.
Inside the barrier, it was not like that at all.
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The first thing James registered was the noise going past his ears.
