Nyra crouched in the shadow of a cracked pillar, her suit's active camouflage blending her into the fractured stone. The Eternal Anchor ahead pulsed with steady blue light, but her network feed showed the problem:
a 0.3-second delay in the stabilization pulse. It repeated every seventeen minutes. Not random. Deliberate.
"Echo, confirm," she whispered.
The small Harvester drone hovered beside her. Its original kill protocols were wiped months ago. Now it answered in a flat, clipped voice.
"Anomaly matches pattern seventeen. External interference confirmed."
Thalira knelt on the other side, fingers dancing over a portable Archive Nexus slate. "It's not damage. Something is piggybacking the signal."
Aiden's voice came through the encrypted channel. "Proceed. No destruction yet. Observe and report."
