Everyone has been very professional, even when things got a bit tense here and there, so it's a bit of an abrupt tonal shift when the DRT officer who just went through the portal to check that there was room for an orderly exit on the other side comes back through mid-bellow of "—TYFUCKING CHRIST, GET BACK GET BACK" and just about tackles the nearest human body out of the way of a small flood of panicked rescuees.

" - CLEAR THE PORTAL" Sitko bellows, and she and the rest of the squad suit action to words.

Someone's crying. Someone trips on their way in and someone else picks them up and pulls them forward, out of the way of the next person, who is yelling incoherently in a panic. Someone keeps running deeper into the dungeon and has to be snagged by a DRT officer before they get out of sight. It is just about as disorderly an exit as you could ask for, and it is, inexplicably, rescuees running back into the dungeon they just left with a handful of support workers in tow and one more DRT officer bringing up the rear.

And then the flow cuts off.

"—giant worm," says the officer who was so unprofessional as to cuss at the top of his lungs in the middle of a rescue operation, once he has a moment to at least begin to catch his breath. "Uh, giant worm tearing up the street. I think it ate the tents." A heaving, stuttering gasp. "Fuck, shit."

Sitko glances around briefly for Field Officer Fitzpatrick, and, finding no such person in the dungeon antechamber, says, "All right, everybody keep back from the portal.  Rescues and support staff to the left with Clancy and Lopez.  Du, Connelly, truck the core out of here, two rooms back.  Peregrine, with them, in case one of those things decides to crawl out of it.  Davis, get me a selfie stick.  Burns," this being the bearer of bad news, "Shadowcat, with me."

"Fuck," wheezes Burns, but he heaves himself to his feet and acknowleges, "Sir."

She claps him on the back.  "No worms in here, soldier," she says bracingly.  That sounds like Arrakis to her, and no Arrakis worm is getting through that dinky dungeon portal.  "You're okay.  Tell me what you saw."

He straightens up and takes a deep breath. "Something big came out of the ground, right under the tents. It had a..." he forms his hands into a crude approximation of radial jaws opening and closing. "A face like that. Swallowed half the camp on its way up, big ugly towering round wormy thing, then started falling toward the portal. I hadn't been out more than ten seconds so I was closest, and I could see Leblanc and Fitzpatrick rushing everybody toward me, so I turned around and went back through, to, uh, clear the way." He's a bit sheepish about how exactly he approached that.

"It was about like that," Leblanc corroborates. "Fitzpatrick was... right behind me, getting everyone through that we could." She eyes the portal. "A little too far behind, it looks like."

Sitko eyes the portal too.

"Well," she says.  " 'S where we're at.  Good work, both of you."

Davis arrives.  "Selfie stick, sir."

"Good man," Sitko says.  She whistles, piercingly, for attention.  "All right listen up.  We're gonna check things out as best we can, but it sounds to me like Arrakis just hit Toronto.  We're safe in here, the portal won't pull something that big through.  Anybody here served against Arrakis before?"

Shaking heads.

"All right.  Best of my knowledge, if this worm showed up without warning, it means the dungeon just hit, 'cuz otherwise we would have heard the screaming first, and it means the entry portal is underneath us.  If that holds, then backup SWAT teams and espers are on their way or will be soon.  But right now all we know for sure is that a worm hit base camp.  This dungeon is cleared, and we got guns on the core in case it tries something, so in here is the safest place we could be, but everybody's gonna stay together."

"Way I see it, we got a portal, we don't know what's on the other side, standard procedure.  Davis is gonna take a few first look shots, just like we were going in instead of out, while I talk to Shadowcat."

"Sir?" he says, levelly.

"You rated for Arrakis worms?"

"Never fought Arrakis, sir, but I've never met a dungeon monster that was any harder to block out than an ordinary human and that wasn't psychic."

"Alright, good to hear.  Depending on what Davis shows me I may want you taking point on investigating the condition of the base camp.  They tell me you've got a sensor rating but I'm not sure I understand it."

"If I tell my power to block something from noticing me, I can make an educated guess as to how many of that something are trying to notice me, and sometimes how easy it is for them, and whether they're coming closer or moving away."

"How hard is this compared to just using your power normally?"

"Takes some attention, but it doesn't cost me any extra backlash.  All I'm really doing is estimating based on my backlash accumulation how hard my power is working."

"All right.  Well, I'll want your best guess as to what that worm's up to, and I'll trust you to give it to me."

Nod.  "Understood, sir.  Thank you."

"Thank you," she says.

She considers him.

"Brown, on support," she says.  "You two are involved."

Breath.

"I love her," he says simply.  "And I hope very dearly she's alive."  Another breath.  "And I've got a job to do, and I'm gonna try to save as many people as I can."

"Good man," Sitko says.  "I hope she's alive too, if you don't mind me saying.  Worked with her before, she's damn good at what she does."

"She is."