Location:Growth Zone — Zone 2, Southeastern Perimeter
Date/Time:TC1856.02.05 (01:00 – 03:30)
Taron chose the southeastern insertion point because nobody who lived had ever used it.
The growth zone's perimeter was two hundred and six square kilometers of living wall — breathing tissue, eight-second rhythm, cilia reaching toward warmth. The reconnaissance team had entered from the northeast through a drainage tunnel. The creature knew that approach. She'd let them crawl through it. She'd watched them leave.
The southeast was different. Naida's surveillance had mapped thirteen potential entry points along the perimeter where the wall tissue thinned — not tunnels, not designed apertures, but biological irregularities. Places where the organic architecture hadn't fully sealed. Cracks in the skin.
Three people. Taron. Thorne. A Splinter veteran named Pei Shan who had spent three hundred years hiding from the Sanctum and could move through hostile terrain without disturbing the air.
