Liliana didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her team knew how she worked.
When she was deep in thought, running the numbers in her head, pulling apart the patterns and putting them back together, they kept quiet.
There were no unnecessary guesses, no filler talk, just silence and focus.
She crouched again, gloved fingers tracing a path in the dirt near the edge of the tunnel. She was calculating the distances, the growth, and the estimated expansion rate.
She wasn't even using tools—just memory, instinct, and the kind of experience that didn't rely on machines.
The numbers didn't make sense. Not at all. Nothing in nature spread this fast unless it had help.
"Bring me the device," she said without turning her head. "The one we pulled from the cultist team last week."
Her second-in-command was already moving. She knew which one.
A few moments later, the device powered up, flickering once as it cut through the fake surface layer of garbage data.
