POV: Ryker

The insertion team is small on purpose.

I take six: myself, two of the cleanest senior leads from our own rotations, one northern tracker Vossan seconded under the new shared protocol, and two coastal operators who know the exchange-route country better than any of our maps. Zane runs the live intercept overlay from a mobile relay one territory back. Caius holds the command link and the ceremony continuity on the compound. Ayla remains in the decision structure as agreed. She does not cross the outer marker with us. That boundary holds for this phase.

We leave before first light.

The staging facility we broke is already cold. The...