The victory of the Symbiotic Filter was not a celebration, but a diagnosis. The Gardeners had held a mirror to the Scarab’s soul, and the reflection was a festering wound. In the days that followed, the aggressive attacks ceased. The data-phage probes stopped. The channel to the asteroid outpost fell into a silence more unnerving than any scream.
At first, the Council of Roots was wary, bracing for a new, more insidious form of assault. But as the silence stretched, Lira’s long-range sensors began to pick up a different story. The Scarab was dying.
It wasn’t a physical death, not yet. It was a spiritual and social collapse. The brief, empathic contact with the Gardeners had acted like a psychic enzyme, accelerating a decay that had been generations in the making.
Lin, their secret ally
