Alexander's interface pinged as they stumbled through the ornate archway, squinting in the sudden brightness after hours in the byrinth's filtered light.

  "We did it!" he excimed, showing the others his dispy:

  LABYRINTH CHALLENGE COMPLETED: THE BOTANICAL PUZZLEBOX

  All rings successfully navigated. Central garden resources acquired. Completion Time: 14 hours, 22 minutes Performance Rating: Exceptional Bonus: Advanced toxin resistance +15%

  They colpsed onto the grassy area outside the byrinth entrance, dropping their bags stuffed with rare pnts from the central garden. Everyone looked like they'd been dragged backward through a toxic swamp—which wasn't far from the truth.

  "Holy crap, that was brutal," Riva groaned, peeling off her mask and wrinkling her nose at the half-melted filtration material. "I never want to smell another flower again."

  "Speak for yourself," Elijah grinned despite his exhaustion, carefully arranging their hard-won specimens. "This stuff is incredible. Look at this one—I've only seen drawings of it in the library logs!"

  Lyra was already poking at the weird crystal-pnt hybrids they'd harvested, completely ignoring her dirt-smudged face and torn sleeve. "These are amazing," she said, holding one up to the light. "The way they refract light... bet we could make some seriously upgraded filters with these."

  Alexander took a long drink from his canteen, looking around at his bedraggled team with a mix of pride and concern. They'd survived the byrinth, but their equipment was trashed, their clothes were stained with who-knows-what chemicals, and Floor 5 clearly had plenty more toxic surprises waiting for them.

  "OK team, catch your breath, but don't get too comfortable," he said, pulling up his map dispy. "We've barely covered a third of this floor. And if the byrinth was any indication, the rest of this pce is going to try really hard to poison us."

  They set up a makeshift camp in a grassy clearing not far from where they'd first met Mira the herbalist. Alexander sprawled on the ground with his map projected above him, while the others dumped out their hard-won botanical loot.

  "Guys, check this out," Elijah said, frowning at his scanner. "The northeastern section is reading toxin levels way worse than the byrinth. Like, double what we saw in the inner rings."

  Alexander groaned, sitting up to look at the readings. "Great. And guess what area supposedly has the stuff we need for the guardian fight? Yep, that one."

  "Our masks are toast," Lyra said, holding up her partly dissolved filtration device. "One more heavy dose and these things will fall apart on our faces."

  "So what do we do?" Riva asked, already cleaning her weapon out of habit.

  Lyra tossed her broken mask aside and grabbed one of the crystal pnts they'd collected. "What if we..." she started, eyes lighting up with that look they were starting to recognize. "What if we stop just reacting to the toxins and instead build up our defenses beforehand?"

  "Like how?" Alexander asked.

  "Two ways," she expined, suddenly energetic despite their exhaustion. "Better gear plus making our bodies more resistant."

  Alexander looked between Lyra and Elijah. "You two think you could work on that together? Elijah on the body stuff, Lyra on upgrading our gear?"

  They gnced at each other, and for once, seemed immediately on the same page.

  "I can totally work up some immunity boosters," Elijah said, already digging through his medical kit. "Like micro-doses to train our bodies to handle the toxins, plus some supplements to help our livers process this stuff faster."

  "And I can fix these masks," Lyra added eagerly, holding up the crystal pnt. "These things have amazing filtration properties. I could make us super-masks that actually block the nasty stuff instead of just melting."

  "Alright then," Alexander said with a nod. "Riva and I will go find whatever other materials you guys need. Valeria, you get to be the test dummy."

  "Fantastic," Valeria muttered, but didn't actually refuse.

  Their camp quickly transformed into a chaotic workshop. Elijah sat cross-legged on his sleeping mat, surrounding himself with little vials of colorful liquids as he mixed increasingly potent toxin samples. Meanwhile, Lyra had their broken masks and equipment spread out everywhere, sketching designs on a tablet and occasionally muttering to herself.

  Alexander watched them for a minute, surprised at how easily they'd fallen into a rhythm together. Just days ago, they'd barely trusted each other. Now they moved around the same space, occasionally exchanging tools or ideas without even looking up. The byrinth had forced them to cooperate, and somehow it had clicked.

  "Come on," he said to Riva. "Let's find them some better materials."

  As they hiked through the gardens, they came across an old man with a long gray beard tending to some weird blue pnts.

  "Well, well," the old gardener said without bothering to look up. "The Puzzlebox survivors. Not many make it past that second ring, you know."

  "We need better materials for protection gear," Alexander said, straight to the point.

  The gardener finally looked up, his eyes surprisingly sharp and bright in his weathered face. "Try those moonshade pnts over there for your tech-savvy friend's filter projects," he said, pointing to a patch of silvery vegetation. "And that amber tree sap would work great for your healer's immunity boosters." He nodded toward a grove of twisted trees dripping golden liquid.

  Alexander blinked in surprise. "How'd you know what we're working on?"

  The old man just smiled mysteriously. "Pnts talk. And they like you folks." Then he went right back to his gardening, clearly done with the conversation.

  They gathered the supplies the old man had suggested, plus a few other promising pnts, and headed back to camp. When they arrived, Elijah and Lyra were so deep in conversation they barely looked up.

  "—so what if we start with super tiny doses," Elijah was saying excitedly, "and gradually increase them? That way our bodies learn to make the enzymes that break down the nasty stuff before it can hurt us."

  "Totally works with my design!" Lyra replied, pointing at her sketches. "See? Three yers: outer one catches the big particles, middle crystal yer zaps the gas toxins, and the inner yer catches anything that sneaks through. Your immunity boosters would be our backup if anything gets past all that."

  They finally noticed Alexander and Riva, grabbing the new materials without even saying thanks. Valeria sat nearby, meticulously documenting everything and occasionally letting Elijah dab test substances on her skin with a look of profound resignation.

  By te afternoon, Elijah had a row of little bottles with progressively stronger immunity boosters, while Lyra had cobbled together a prototype mask that looked surprisingly professional despite being made from salvaged parts and the crystalline pnts.

  "Time to see if this actually works," Alexander announced. "Valeria, you're up."

  She rolled her eyes but stepped forward. "Fine. Let's get this over with."

  Elijah handed her a small vial with blue liquid. "Bottoms up. It'll feel warm as it kicks in—that's just your liver ramping up to process toxins better."

  "Ugh, tastes like feet," Valeria compined after swallowing it.

  "Now try this," Lyra said, fitting the new mask over Valeria's face. "The crystals create this weird electromagnetic field that basically tells toxin molecules to get lost. It might feel a little harder to breathe, but it's way better than our old ones."

  They tested it by gradually exposing Valeria to toxin samples from the byrinth. To everyone's surprise, even the nastiest samples that had eaten through their previous equipment didn't seem to affect her at all.

  "Heart rate normal, no infmmation, no stress markers," Elijah reported, checking his medical scanner. "She's totally fine!"

  "And the mask is blocking 98.7% of everything," Lyra added, pointing to the sensor readings. "That's insane!"

  "Nice work, you two," Alexander said with genuine approval. "Make enough for everyone. Tomorrow we tackle the northeastern section."

  While everyone else was packing up, Alexander pulled Elijah aside.

  "You and Lyra are getting along pretty well now, huh?" he said casually.

  Elijah shrugged, but looked pleased. "We just think differently about the same problems. She comes up with these crazy technical solutions I'd never think of, and I know the biological side she doesn't. Together we're actually making better stuff than either of us could alone." He hesitated, then added more quietly, "Though I keep wondering where an Unaligned from some salvage sector learned all this chemistry stuff. Some of what she knows... it's university-level."

  "Just keep working with her," Alexander said. "But don't forget, we still barely know anything about her besides what she's told us."

  "You don't trust her?" Elijah frowned.

  "I trust what she does," Alexander crified. "And so far, she's helping us stay alive. That's good enough for now."

  The next morning after breakfast, everyone lined up for Elijah's immunity boosters and to get fitted with Lyra's new masks. She hadn't just upgraded the masks—she'd also made special gloves for handling toxic pnts and even a spray coating for their clothes that repelled the worst of the acidic stuff.

  "The immunity boosters need a few hours to really kick in," Elijah expined as he handed out the doses. "The ones I gave you st night started the process, but these will finish the job."

  "And all this gear works right away," Lyra added, helping Riva adjust her mask. "Just remember to let the crystal parts get some sunlight every now and then to recharge. Oh, and don't dunk them underwater for too long or they'll short out."

  They headed out to the northeastern section of Floor 5, an area they'd been avoiding because the toxicity readings were even worse than the inner rings of the byrinth. As they got closer, their interfaces lit up with angry red warning notifications, but their new gear seemed to be holding up.

  "Whoa," Riva whispered as they entered the area.

  The pce was wild—pnts with leaves that looked like metal and dripped with oily goo, flowers shooting visible puffs of colorful spores into the air, and creepy vines that actually moved toward them like they could sense body heat.

  "This is amazing!" Elijah excimed, carefully picking samples with his new gloves. "Half these pnts aren't even in the database!"

  Lyra was just as excited, poking at a weird growth that looked half crystal, half pnt. "Look at how this is structured! I've never seen anything like it! The filtration capabilities alone would be—" She noticed Valeria watching her with a raised eyebrow and quickly added, "—um, pretty cool to study sometime."

  They spent the whole day exploring and mapping the area, gathering samples of the strangest pnts they could find. Their protection systems worked perfectly, with Elijah keeping an eye on everyone's health readings while Lyra tweaked their equipment as needed.

  At one point, they found a patch of particurly nasty pnts that actually sprayed toxic mist when they got too close. Even with their upgraded protection, it was intense.

  "These readings are insane," Lyra said, checking a small device she'd modified from standard equipment. "This stuff is like, specifically designed to get through normal protection."

  "Yeah, I can feel it a little," Elijah said, wrinkling his nose. "Nothing bad yet, but something's definitely getting through."

  "Here, try this," Lyra said, reaching over to adjust his mask settings. "If you twist this crystal piece like this... it tightens up the electromagnetic field to block even the tiny molecules."

  "Hey, that worked!" Elijah said, looking impressed. They quickly made the same adjustments to everyone else's masks, showing how well their combined approach was working.

  Alexander watched them work together, amazed at how naturally they'd fallen into a rhythm. Elijah would say, "Hey, I'm feeling a bit of dizziness," and Lyra would immediately tweak something on his mask. Then they'd apply the fix to everyone else's gear without even having to discuss it much. No awkward silences, no territory battles—just two people clicking on a project.

  Part of him was thrilled to see his team working so well together. But another part kept wondering how exactly someone from an Unaligned junk sector knew so much about high-level chemistry and engineering. It just didn't add up.

  By the time the sun was getting low, they'd mapped the entire northeastern section and collected a ton of weird pnts. Some of this stuff wasn't just for healing either—they'd found pnts that might boost reflexes, improve thinking, or even temporarily enhance physical strength.

  "We hit the jackpot with these," Alexander said as they sorted through their haul. "This could give us a serious edge going forward."

  "Especially if we can make them st longer," Lyra said, holding up one of the crystal pnts. "These binding agents could make the effects ten times more stable."

  "And I could use those fibrous pnts we found to create slow-release versions," Elijah added. "That way you don't get the crash when they wear off."

  Valeria had been quietly documenting everything as usual, but even she seemed impressed. "I hate to admit it, but these protection systems actually work," she said grudgingly. "My monitors show basically zero toxin accumution after seven hours in that chemical soup."

  Coming from Valeria, that was practically a standing ovation.

  As they packed up to head back to camp, Alexander took stock of how far they'd come. The team was working better than he'd ever expected. The byrinth had somehow forged them into a real unit. Elijah and Lyra had found their groove. Riva kept them safe. Even Valeria was starting to see the benefits of having Lyra around.

  But the questions about Lyra still nagged at him. The technical know-how she casually dispyed went way beyond scavenging skills from some outer sector. Whatever her real story was, Alexander was pretty sure they were only getting pieces of it.

  Still, right now her skills were keeping them alive, and that counted for a lot.

  "Tomorrow we tackle the western section," he announced as they reached camp. "With these upgraded systems, we should be able to knock out the rest of this floor in a day or two."

  While the others made dinner and sorted through their day's haul, Alexander updated his private notes. Under the section about Lyra, he added:

  Working surprisingly well with Elijah. Their skills complement each other perfectly. Still major questions about where she learned all this tech stuff, but she's definitely an asset to the team. Keep an eye on the situation.

  Those questions would need answers eventually. But right now, survival came first—and their weird little team was getting pretty good at that.