Mira could no longer raise her injured arm without the rest of her body moving with it.
She had arranged the sling so the hand remained near the signal line. Every message cost a small adjustment of the shoulder. By the time Tessa finished describing the new winch angle, Mira had begun waiting between pulls for the nausea to pass.
She did not report the nausea as a reason she could not continue. She reported it because the team needed to know how slowly she might answer.
Tessa acknowledged it without telling her she was brave.
The old gate stood around Mira like a door halfway through falling. Two supports held the separation at angles the original frame had never been meant to sustain. Beyond the barrier, the intelligence pressed in shifting waves. She could hear it through the metal: a thin, patient sound that sometimes resembled a person drawing breath before speaking.
Her return mark was not an escape she could trust here. Its conditions had been strained, the route changed, the charge and boundary uncertain. Wanting it to work did not establish that it would carry her through the closing frame. She had committed to the physical retrieval with those limits known, and the line at her harness remained the tested way out.
