Aria's POV
The abandoned ranger station had exactly one working piece of technology: an old emergency communication device that Hayes discovered tucked behind a stack of supply crates. It looked like it hadn't been used in years, but when he managed to get it functioning, we suddenly had access to Academy emergency frequencies.
"This is incredibly risky," he warned as he adjusted the antenna. "If they're monitoring for unauthorized transmissions—"
"They'll find us anyway if we stay blind to their movements," I interrupted. "We need to know what they're planning."
The device crackled to life, filling the small room with static and fragmented conversations. Most of it was routine Academy business—patrol schedules, maintenance requests, the kind of mundane chatter that kept an institution
