"Plus," Vanessa said, her voice steady but heavy, "the incursion is growing."
Adam frowned.
"Growing?"
Vanessa nodded once.
With a gesture, she drew everyone's attention back to the holographic projection of Siren Swamp. The image shifted, zooming outward. What it revealed made several people inhale sharply.
The edges of the incursion were no longer stable.
Its influence was already slipping past the wired fence, bleeding into the surrounding land. The spread was slow, almost subtle, but unmistakable. Areas outside the incursion boundary were discoloring, the terrain sagging and darkening as shallow waters pooled and vegetation twisted. Dry ground was becoming marsh.
Worse still, the expansion curve on the projection was rising.
Gradually, it was steadily accelerating.
"This," Vanessa said, "is another deviation from normal mutating rifts."
She let the image rotate, showing time-lapse projections of the spread.
