Taboo Online

A short distance from the command post, Rhea sat with her injured shoulder immobilized more heavily than before.

Sensors ran along her arm and across the damaged awakened-energy channel associated with her remaining panel. No shield floated beside her.

Dr. Shaw studied the readings without saying anything.

Rhea eventually broke the silence.

"Can you tell whether it’ll still answer?"

"The channel is still present."

"That wasn’t really what I asked."

"It’s the answer you’re getting tonight."

Her gaze moved toward the empty space where the scarred panel would normally appear.

Shaw noticed.

"You are not manifesting it again for a test after what happened at the depot."

"I wasn’t planning to."

He looked up.

Rhea held the expression for two seconds before giving up.

"Fine. I was thinking about it."

"That I believe."

Several feet away, a technician continued examining the neurological readings from Luke’s wrist.

Rhea glanced toward him. "So it’s still there?"

"The fragment?" Luke looked down at his hand. "Yeah."

"Still reacting?"

"Not since the gate closed."

Shaw answered before Luke could turn the change into something more hopeful than the evidence allowed.

"That suggests the known Ruinborn current may have been provoking it. It does not tell us what will happen if we attempt extraction."

Luke nodded.

Rhea studied him.

"No argument?"

Lauren answered from the chair beside him. "He’s saving them."

Luke frowned. "Why does everyone keep saying that?"

"Because not long ago you would already be asking when you could hold a spear again."

"I still want to know."

Shaw looked up from the scanner. "Not soon."

Luke sighed.

It was the answer Luke had expected, and for one night, he could live with it.

Rhea flexed the fingers of her uninjured hand.

"I used to have enough shields to cover everyone around me."

Luke remembered the first time he had seen her fight, surrounded by panels that could become a wall whenever she needed one.

"You covered the workers."

"With one."

"That was all you needed there."

Rhea did not respond right away.

A few weeks earlier, she probably would have hated hearing that. Some part of her might still have hated it now.

Eventually, she rested her head against the back of the medical chair.

"One was enough there."

Luke nodded.

He did not tell her that one shield would always be enough.

Neither of them knew that.

The final gate telemetry reached North Basin shortly before dawn.

Red Hound had expected another engineering report.

Instead, the analysts asked for Aelira.

Lauren sat beside the silver trunk with one palm against the Heartroot while the Queen connected through the transplanted network. Luke remained in his field chair on Lauren’s left, his damaged arm resting in the sling.

The analyst opened the recording.

"The steel-depot aperture collapsed completely. We found no foreign material on Earth’s side, and the receiving frame has produced no residual opening."

Luke leaned his head back against the chair. "That sounds like the good part."

"It is."

A waveform appeared on the screen.

Most of it showed violent fluctuations from the branded leader’s failing anchor and the collapse of the receiving chamber.

Near the end, however, another pattern repeated beneath the noise.

Three narrow pulses.

A pause.

Two more.

Then the sequence repeated.

Lauren tilted her covered face toward the speaker. "That happened while the figure was touching the passage?"

"Immediately before the collapse."

"Could it be feedback from the frame?"

"That was our first assumption."

The analyst opened another surviving telemetry file.

The same pattern appeared.

Three pulses.

Two.

Then again.

Red Hound folded his arms. "How often?"

"It appears in several of the surviving recordings."

"And only after the presence approaches the opening?"

"Yes."

Luke stared at the waveform.

"So it wasn’t just standing there."

"We can’t prove that."

The analyst changed the display to show the frame’s own output.

"What we can prove is that the timing does not match any known component on the Earth side."

Lauren carried the explanation through the Heartroot.

Aelira remained motionless.

Do you recognize the pattern?

The Queen listened while Lauren described it.

After several seconds, her answer came back.

No.

Red Hound looked toward her. "Any elven signaling system?"

Lauren sent the question.

The next response took longer.

None that I know.

The shelter grew noticeably quieter.

Luke watched the five pulses repeat.

The Ruinborn had spent months preparing a door.

They had lost the Ashline stabilizers, every known relay site uncovered during the hunt, all four elites, and the living anchor required to maintain that particular gate.

Every Ruinborn site connected to this operation had been shut down.

Whatever stood on the other side was still out there.

Lauren found Luke’s left hand.

Their weakened bond stirred beneath the contact.

"It answered them," Luke said.

Red Hound kept his attention on the waveform.

"Maybe."

Luke waited, knowing that was not the end of the answer.

Red Hound closed the telemetry file.

"We are not building a story around five pulses we don’t understand. Preserve every recording, compare the pattern against everything recovered from the Ruinborn, and nobody opens another passage just to ask what it meant."

Lauren translated.

Aelira’s agreement passed through the Heartroot.

For once, your caution does not offend me.

Red Hound gave the silver tree a tired look. "I’ll take the victory."

Lauren almost smiled.

Outside the shelter, the sky beyond North Basin had begun turning gray with morning.

Luke rested his head against the back of the field chair.

The four Ruinborn elites were alive and imprisoned.

The known Earth relay network uncovered during the hunt had been dismantled.

The gate beneath Route Nine was gone.

Hundreds of elves were alive because the Heartroot had crossed before Lethariel died around them.

For the first time since that night, nobody in the task group had another Ruinborn site waiting for them.

Lauren squeezed his hand.

"You need sleep."

Luke glanced toward her. "So do you."

"I know."

He waited for her to suggest one more scan, one more report, or one more problem they needed to solve first.

She did not.

That alone made the end of the hunt feel real.

Across the shelter, one analyst reopened the waveform on a smaller monitor.

The five pulses appeared again.

Three.

Two.

Then the pattern repeated.

Nobody knew what it meant.

They only knew that something on the other side had sent it before the door closed.

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