Jellisa drifted near the reef's edge, watching three strangers hover over something flat and pale. A map. Her translucent form went still. The lines on their chart were rough, incomplete, but she recognized the markers — depth readings, current patterns, the kind of detail someone draws when they're hunting for something specific. She needed to see how close they were. Jellisa moved lower, keeping the orange coral between herself and their yellow vessel. The craft sat anchored just beyond the reef — banana-shaped, wheels locked to the seafloor, its curved body packed with gear. She angled closer to the strangers. One held the map flat while another traced a finger along what looked like a cavern entrance. The location was off by maybe two hundred meters, but not by much. Jellisa turned back toward her workshop. Shelldon needed to see this. Their timeline had just collapsed. The strangers had laid their tools across a tarp near the reef wall — extraction blades, measurement rods, anchoring spikes. Professional equipment. Not explorers hoping to get lucky. Jellisa counted the gear spread, cataloging what they had versus what she and Shelldon were still testing. Her pressure sensors weren't ready. Her anchors failed every third deployment. But the strangers didn't have a route yet, just coordinates. She pushed through the water toward her tent, already running calculations. If she could get two anchors working by tomorrow, Shelldon could map the next threshold. The cavern was still theirs to claim, but only if she stopped treating prototypes like experiments and started treating them like deadlines. Back at her workspace, Jellisa swept past the pressure reader mounted on its platform and went straight for her prototype anchors. She pulled the failed third unit from its testing cradle and flipped it over. The seal had cracked again where the housing met the base. She set it down and reached for her tools. No more iterations. No more waiting for perfect data. She would fix the seal tonight, test it at dawn, and give Shelldon something he could anchor to by midday. The strangers had a map, but maps meant nothing without a stable route. That was still hers to build.