Hajin stared between Helen and the Captain while the dying campfire cracked inside the quiet recovery camp. Both officers watched him calmly, having finished arguing among themselves long before he woke.
"You believe I caused both Gates to vanish," he asked as one hand braced against the supply crate. "Is there truly no other explanation that covers two impossible disappearances without involving me?"
The Captain dragged his cleaning rag along the claymore, then released one tired breath into the cold night air.
"I wish a better answer had survived the pattern," he said while Helen stood at his shoulder with her working arm crossed. "We have dove Gates for more than a decade, from ordinary one-shard grounds through near-catastrophic six-shard anomalies."
Helen kept her eyes fixed on Hajin while the embers painted her face in shifting orange.
