Round 102

The water was rising fast now, lapping at their waists as they struggled to maintain the air pocket spell between them. The makeshift bubble of breathable atmosphere flickered ominously with every surge of the rising floodwaters outside—Silra's concentration wavering as she had to redirect processing power from her hacking operations to keep the magic stable.

"Five minutes," Jeane said, voice tight as she shifted her weight on the precarious catwalk above them. The structure groaned in protest, water pressure increasing with every passing moment. "Maybe eight minutes total if we're lucky."

Silra's teal eyes narrowed, fingers flying across her interface as she worked frantically to plant the digital countermeasures along Jeane's proposed escape route through Echelon-4 security. The air around them shimmered dangerously as both women pushed their magical and technical limits simultaneously.

"Exactly thirteen seconds," Silra corrected grimly, not looking up from her screen. "And you'll need me to create a very specific digital opening—exactly three minutes and twelve seconds long in precisely thirteen seconds' time."

Jeane paused mid-crawl through the narrowing maintenance tunnel, turning back to face Silra with genuine surprise mixed with grudging respect visible in her crimson eyes. "That's... remarkably precise," she admitted, impressed despite herself.

Silra's expression flickered—satisfaction? amusement?—before she schooled it back into professional neutrality. "I told you I was good at what I do," she replied coolly, edging forward through the tight space.

"Fair enough," Jeane conceded as she continued her careful descent into the rising waters below them both. The makeshift air pocket flickered again ominously as Silra struggled to stabilize it with reduced resources while maintaining some complex hacking operation on her interface simultaneously.