"I don't have him."
His words landed on the cold morning air without ceremony. Eloy kept his weight on the good ankle, one hand still positioned to grab Isolde if the stone beneath them decided to crumble. "Nobody knows where Caldwell is. His Inquisition purge cycle completed yesterday. Whatever records existed are sealed. That's all I've got right now."
Three seconds of silence.
Hunter's head tilted the other way. Same gesture, mirrored. Isolde's weight shifted beside him, boots scraping rock.
Hunter spoke. Three new syllables. Pre-kingdom language, older than anything the dictionary had ever indexed. The HUD translation engine sputtered, flickered, and clawed its way back from its hard crash to deliver a single fractured line.
[ PURSUERS — NOT OURS — CONSTRUCTS ]
Chat fragmented into static as the engine stabilized, letters glitching across the blue window.
[speedGoblin_]: constructs??? actual pre-war constructs??? the ones from the network nodes???
