The silence in the swamp was a heavy blanket, broken only by the ragged breathing of Squad 7. The ozone scent of the collapsed Rift hung in the humid air. They were alive. They shouldn't be.
"Everyone… sound off," the squad leader, a senior student named Marcus, managed to gasp, his face pale with shock.
The other members responded, their voices shaky with adrenaline and disbelief. They looked at the spot where the Bog-Lurker had vanished, then at the sealed earth where the Rift had been, as if trying to convince themselves it had been real.
Ren pushed himself up slowly, putting on a convincing performance of a man at the end of his rope. His Aether reserves were indeed low from the effort of manipulating the emitter, so the exhaustion was not entirely a lie.
He saw Anya watching him from across the clearing. Her face was a mask of intense, analytical concentration. The rest of the squad was looking at the sky, thanking the heavens for the GAMA cannon. Anya was looking at him.
She walked over, her steps sure despite her own fatigue. She didn't address the squad leader. She spoke directly to Ren, her voice low enough that only he could hear.
"The harmonious frequency that drove it back," she said, not as a question, but as a statement of fact. "Its purity was off the scale. It was not a GAMA frequency. It was not a natural phenomenon. What was it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ren replied, his voice raspy. He leaned heavily against a mangrove tree, playing his part. "All I felt was that monster. We're lucky we're alive."
Anya's eyes narrowed. She knew he was lying, but his performance was flawless. There was no flicker of pride, no hint of deception. There was only the weary relief of a survivor. To press him here would reveal her suspicions to the group with no proof to back them up.
She changed tactics. "The emitter," she said, gesturing with her head towards the mud where the Pagoda device lay, its crystal core now dark and fractured. "It must have malfunctioned. The feedback probably agitated the Lurker and then shorted out. We should retrieve it. GAMA and the Pagoda will want to study the malfunction."
Ren's mind went on high alert. He had destroyed the device to eliminate the evidence. Now, she was trying to preserve it.
Before he could object, Marcus, the squad leader, overheard them. "She's right. That thing nearly got us all killed. Standard procedure is to collect any anomalous artifacts. Fen, go get it."
One of the squad members trudged into the mud and carefully retrieved the dead emitter, placing it in a shielded evidence bag. The one piece of physical proof of the conspiracy was now officially part of their mission report. Ren had been outmaneuvered.
The trek back to the GAMA outpost was a tense, quiet affair. Marcus led them, his mind clearly struggling to formulate a report that made any sense.
They stood at attention in the outpost's debriefing room, facing the same grizzled officer who had sent them out.
"Report, Squad Leader," the officer grunted.
Marcus gave a commendably clear account of the mission. He reported the Swamp-Crawlers, the battle, and the unexpected appearance of the Aether Master-level Bog-Lurker.
"The beast showed tactical intelligence, sir," Marcus said, his voice strained. "It ignored us and went directly for the Resonance Beacon. We were about to be overwhelmed when… it simply retreated. At the same moment, the beacon activated and the Rift was collapsed."
The officer's eyebrow raised. "It just… ran away?"
"Yes, sir. We don't know why."
The officer looked over the squad, his eyes lingering on Ren for a moment before moving on. "Unusual. Very well. And this?" he asked, gesturing to the evidence bag on the table.
"We recovered this device near the Rift zone, sir," Marcus reported. "We believe its activation may have agitated the local fauna and drawn the Lurker."
"It appears to be a Spirit Lumina Pagoda stealth-emitter," Anya spoke up, her voice clear and precise. "Its core crystal is fractured. I recommend it be sent back to the academy's own advanced labs for a full diagnostic analysis. Understanding the nature of its malfunction could be critical for future GAMA operations in Pagoda-monitored territories."
She had done it. She had framed the entire investigation around the one piece of evidence that could expose Ren. She had wrapped her personal hunt in the unassailable logic of GAMA procedure.
The officer grunted, tagging the bag with a high-priority evidence marker. "A sound recommendation, Initiate Volkov. Your report is logged. Dismissed."
As the squad turned to leave, Ren and Anya's eyes met for a fraction of a second. There was no animosity in her gaze. There was only the clear, cold promise of a master chess player who had just successfully defended her king and put his own into check.
The game was afoot, and the board had just been delivered to her laboratory.