The map had been folded so often that the retreat point lay across a split.
Juno weighted its corners instead of flattening the damaged crease with her hand. Bram’s colleague had supplied the last route she could verify. Its age mattered. A map that had once brought hunters home could still send them toward a wall if the gate had changed around it.
Eli read the identification signals first.
A question and a response. A mark carried by the leader. A way to distinguish the trapped team from an echo that might have learned a name. None was perfect. They would use them together, and they would not turn an incorrect reply from an exhausted person into permission to attack.
Bram watched him reach that line.
“She insisted on that,” he said.
“She knows them.”
“She knows what fear does to a rehearsed answer.”
