Three days passed without incident.
For most of Atlas Base, that would have sounded like good news.
For Marcus, it was frustrating.
The drones continued their endless circles above the Forest of No Return. The Predator remained assigned to Black Fang while the Reaper alternated between the capital and the expanding list of settlements scattered beneath the canopy. Every day produced more information. More routes. More patrol patterns. More routines. Yet the one thing Marcus needed most remained stubbornly out of reach.
Certainty.
The quarry detail had become increasingly regular.
Every two to three days, shortly after sunrise, groups of prisoners would leave the eastern pens under armed escort and march northeast toward the stone quarry hidden among the hills. They would spend nearly six hours extracting stone before returning shortly before sunset.
The route never changed.
The terrain never changed.
The guard composition changed slightly.
Sometimes six guards.
