"Activate full containment," Rodriguez ordered, his voice carrying the specific gravity of someone making the decision the entire preceding weeks' careful preparation had been designed to enable, without hesitation or second-guessing.
Voss's response was immediate. "Activating now," she confirmed, her hands already moving across the containment interface with the specific, practiced precision her rigorous preparation had cultivated.
What followed unfolded across genuinely chaotic, exhausting minutes — every civilization's contributed resources converging simultaneously toward the specific, urgent task of containing something whose desperate momentum had already begun exceeding the infrastructure's original calibration.
