"Data is armor we can wear later."
She stared at the moving icons, something curious slipping into her gaze despite everything. "Armor," she repeated, tasting the word as if it belonged to her work and not his.
Rodion projected a tidy list that slid down the stones: cobalt horn profiles with peaks and valleys; crystal spectra from sap veins, lines bright as music; resonance maps of rune fragments showing how they wanted to talk to each other; chemical notes on necrotic resin compositions; protein balance in sweet-sap, with a little star where it matched soldier ration gaps.
"What can it become?" Thalatha asked, practical now that the bleeding had slowed and the world had shrunk back from a scream to a room.
Mikhailis pointed as he spoke, finger tapping items like a conductor. "Fungal antibiotic candidate from the horns," he said, tapping the teal pulse. "We test it in small. No promises, but it looks promising."
