Renn moved between Eli and the case.
Not with a drawn weapon. He put his body in the narrow working space and held the instruction card where his own team could read it.
“We reached the objective first,” he said. “Your route doesn’t change that.”
Eli stopped short of the marked base. A few days earlier he would have read the movement as proof that Renn meant to take everything. Now he could see a team defending the thing it had raced to find, against a man who had already accused it of sabotage in public.
“I haven’t said we arrived first.”
“You’ve arrived while we’re deciding how to move it.”
Kellan held the tape against the passage width on Sera’s board. “Then decide with the dimensions.”
The measurement Kellan had already shown them remained on the board. Renn had not disputed it; he disputed what it entitled the later arrivals to ask. The frame stayed too wide regardless of who had touched the marker first.
