Alex laid Rhea's reconstructed notes on Mira's workbench at two in the afternoon.
Not a summary. Not a verbal briefing. The actual notes — twelve pages of the cracked tablet's screen filled with Rhea's precise handwriting, numbers and coordinates and power readings and location data reconstructed from memory with the specific fluency of someone whose mind stored information the way other people stored breath. Automatically. Completely. Without effort.
Mira looked at the first page for approximately four seconds.
Then she picked up the tablet and read all twelve pages without stopping.
Nobody spoke while she read. They'd learned — all of them, over months of working together — that interrupting Mira mid-read was the specific kind of mistake you only made once. She read the way she did everything else — completely, without division of attention, the full weight of her considerable mind brought to bear on a single task until the task was finished.
She put the tablet down.
Looked at Alex.
"A Void-adjacent frequency receiver," she said. "In the Niger Delta. Collecting and storing broadcasts from a university reactor that was running illegal temporal experiments three years ago." She paused. "And Kronos told you about it."
"Yes," Alex said.
She looked at the tablet again. Then at Alex. Then at the team assembled around the sub-level — Jace on his crate, Soren in the center of the training space, Lyra by the wall with her wind-song barely audible, K'rath in his corner with his amber eyes moving between the tablet and Alex with the slow deliberate attention of stone considering something significant.
"He told you about it," she said again. Not repeating herself — processing. Turning the fact over and examining it from a different angle. "Kronos Maw. Who has been systematically building infrastructure around this city for weeks. Who sent three Wraiths through our perimeter at three in the morning. Who burned three words into stone while you were fighting inside." She paused. "That Kronos told you about a hidden receiver station in the Niger Delta."
"Yes," Alex said.
"Why," she said.
"That's what we need to figure out," Alex said.
Soren spoke first.
He'd been standing in the center of the training space with his ancient eyes reading the room — not the notes, the room, the people in it — and when he spoke it was with the specific weight of someone who had been turning a problem over for the full duration of Mira's reading and had arrived somewhere he didn't entirely like.
"The parley," he said. "Four hundred years ago — before the Sanctum fell — Kronos offered a parley then too. The Sanctum's council met and debated for two days." He paused. "They decided the parley was genuine. That Kronos was offering real information as a gesture of good faith." He looked at Alex. "The information was real. The gesture was not."
"What did he tell them," Jace said.
"He told them the location of a Rift concentration in the eastern territories," Soren said. "Said it was destabilizing and needed to be sealed before it caused significant damage." He paused. "The Sanctum sent their three strongest Anchors to seal it."
"And," Jace said.
"There was no Rift concentration," Soren said. "There was a trap. The three Anchors were eliminated within minutes of arrival." He held Alex's gaze. "The Sanctum fell six days later. Without its three strongest Anchors it had no defense against what came next."
The sub-level absorbed this.
"He's done this before," Jace said flatly. "The exact same move. Information that's real enough to be credible. Location that sends people somewhere specific. Whatever is waiting there does the rest."
"Yes," Soren said.
"Then we don't go," Jace said. Simple. Certain. The specific certainty of someone who has processed the relevant information and arrived at the only logical conclusion.
"The Delta Node is real," Mira said quietly.
Everyone looked at her.
She was looking at Rhea's notes — specifically at the power consumption data, the coordinates, the reactor readings. "I can cross-reference these coordinates against the environmental monitoring satellite data I have access to through the mesh network." She was already typing. "If there's a structure at this location generating the kind of power signature Rhea's notes describe it will show up." She paused. "Give me ten minutes."
Nobody spoke for ten minutes.
Lyra's wind-song filled the silence — not the tense harmonic of active alert, something more contemplative. The specific melody she produced when she was thinking deeply about something that had no clean answer.
K'rath looked at the coordinates on the tablet.
"The Niger Delta," he said. His geological voice carrying the specific weight of someone who had read terrain on multiple worlds and was reading this one now. "Wetlands. River channels. Saturated ground." He paused. "Difficult terrain for a conventional approach. Easy terrain for someone who knows it well to defend."
"Or for something that was built specifically for that environment," Alex said.
K'rath looked at him. "Yes."
Mira looked up from her screens.
"It's there," she said.
Everyone looked at her.
She turned her primary screen to face the room — a satellite composite image, false color, the Niger Delta's river channels spreading across the lower portion of the display like fingers. And at one specific confluence point — where three channels met and the ground between them was a dense tangle of mangrove and saturated earth — a power signature. Faint. Consistent. Generating at a frequency that sat just below the standard temporal detection threshold.
Void-adjacent.
"It's been there for at least eighteen months based on the satellite archive data," Mira said. "Possibly longer — the earlier archive resolution isn't fine enough to detect a signature this subtle." She looked at Alex. "It's real. Rhea's notes are accurate." She paused. "And it's active. Whatever it's been collecting and storing — it's still running."
The sub-level was very quiet.
Alex looked at the satellite image. At the power signature sitting in the Delta's saturated ground like a splinter. At the three river channels surrounding it — natural barriers, difficult terrain, exactly as K'rath had described.
He thought about the Sanctum. About three Anchors sent to a location that turned out to be a trap. About six days and then nothing.
He thought about Rhea's notes. About Kola studying for his quantum mechanics examination in a library that shouldn't have had a temporal shockwave move through it. About the reactor that wasn't what the university said it was. About the people who had decided their careers were worth more than the truth.
He thought about what Kronos had said at the lagoon.
What I'm building — when it completes, no Anchor and no team of allies can stop it.
He thought about the hexagon around Adeniyi Close. About the frequency shift. About the Resonance Engine sitting in his own Rift seal using the scar he'd made in the lattice as its foundation.
Patient. Ancient. Always several moves ahead.
He pressed his palm to his sternum.
The Heartstone beat back — warm, clean, fully resonant since the Engine's destruction.
"He wants us to go," Alex said quietly.
Everyone looked at him.
"Whatever is at the Delta Node — he wants us there. That's why he told me." He looked at the satellite image. "But here's the thing about a trap." He held the room's attention. "A trap only works if you walk into it the way it was designed to be walked into." He paused. "He expects me to go to the Delta Node the way I went to the lagoon. The way I went to the Rift. Directly. Personally. With the Heartstone blazing and the full team behind me."
"And if we don't go that way," Jace said slowly.
"Then it's not the trap he planned for," Alex said. He looked at Mira. "Can you access the Node's power signature remotely? Interact with it through the satellite connection without anyone physically going there?"
Mira looked at her screens. Calculating. The expression she had when she was running multiple variables simultaneously and hadn't arrived at the answer yet but could see it approaching.
"Not directly," she said. "The signature is too subtle for remote interaction — I'd need to boost the connection significantly." She paused. "But if someone were on site with the right equipment broadcasting a relay signal back to me — I could potentially read the Node's internal data remotely from here." She looked at Alex. "Meaning someone would need to get close enough to establish the relay. But not close enough to trigger whatever protection the Node has."
"How close," Alex said.
"Within two hundred meters," she said. "No closer."
"Two hundred meters in wetland terrain," K'rath said. "Manageable. With the right approach."
"Rex," Jace said.
Everyone looked at him.
"Rex," he said again. "Phase-jump. In and out. Two hundred meters from the Node, plant Mira's relay equipment, phase-jump back before anything registers his presence." He paused. "He doesn't have Anchor frequency. He doesn't have a Heartstone signature. If whatever is protecting the Node is keyed to Anchor energy the way the lagoon guardian was—"
"It won't register Rex at all," Lyra said quietly.
"It's designed for me," Alex said. "The trap is designed specifically for Anchor frequency." He looked at the room. "So we don't send the Anchor."
The sub-level was quiet for a moment.
Then Mira was already moving — pulling up equipment schematics, designing the relay device in real time, her hands moving across two keyboards simultaneously with the focused energy of someone who had been given a problem with clear parameters and was solving it immediately.
"I need four hours to build the relay," she said. "Rex needs a precise jump coordinate — I'll calculate those from the satellite data." She paused. "And we need Rex."
"I'll call him," Jace said. Already reaching for his phone.
Alex looked at the satellite image one more time.
The Delta Node sitting in its wetland confluence. Active. Patient. Collecting whatever it had been collecting for eighteen months or more.
He thought about Rhea in the detention cell. About the stylus moving across the cracked screen. About twelve pages of reconstructed memory that had led them here.
He thought about what she'd said.
Be ready for it to change everything you think you understand about how this started.
"One more thing," Alex said.
Everyone looked at him.
"When Rex gets us the data from that Node," he said. "Whatever we find — whatever it tells us about the reactor, about who built it, about what it's been doing for eighteen months." He held the room's attention. "We take it to Rhea first. Before the Council. Before anyone else." He paused. "She lost Kola because of what's connected to that Node. She deserves to know what's there before it becomes political."
The room was quiet.
Soren looked at him with those ancient eyes.
Something moving in them that was the four century equivalent of what Leah's face did when Alex did something that reminded her of the person she'd raised him to be.
"Agreed," Soren said quietly.
Jace looked up from his phone. "Rex can be here in two hours."
"Tell him to come straight to the sub-level," Alex said.
He looked at the satellite image one final time.
The Delta Node. Kronos's gift. The trap designed for an Anchor who walks in directly with his Heartstone blazing.
They weren't going to give him that.
They were going to do something patient instead.
Something Kronos hadn't planned for.
Something that didn't announce itself with silver-blue light and temporal resonance.
Something quiet.