Ren raised his head and answered,
"Cilian said he was going to see if there was a response. To help you."
"Help me?" Harris let out a short, bitter laugh that sounded more like a cough.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, mangled piece of circuitry—the frequency modulator.
"Ren, look at this."
Ren leaned in, his medical training allowing him to see the precision of the damage. The wires hadn't been snapped by a crash; they had been clipped. The casing hadn't been crushed by impact; it had been pried open, and the internal crystal shattered with a blunt object.
"I found this when I checked the carrier wave," Harris whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of rage and realization. "The auxiliary power was fine. The hardware was fine. But this... this was damaged, and not done by the crash, but done by hand. Ren, Someone broke it."
Ren's breath hitched. He looked at the jagged tool marks on the metal.
"You're saying... it was sabotaged? On this island?"
