It had been a quiet evening in the workshop. Maria “Jägerin” Streicher had the casing of her ADS spread open across the bench, wires exposed and carefully labeled, her gloves smudged with grease. The sharp hum of her soldering iron blended with the faint voice of an audiobook playing through her headset, the narrator passionately explaining the evolution of bacteria in thermal vents on the ocean floor.

"See, that’s fascinating," she muttered, twisting a wire into place. "Extremophiles adapt where nothing should live—same principle for countermeasures: survive where you’re not supposed to."

She tightened a screw, leaned back, and tapped the side of the casing with her wrench as if the machine might answer her. "If they can thrive in boiling sulfur water, you can intercept a grenade midair, ja?"

The ADS gave a low beep as its power cell engaged. Maria smiled to herself, nodding in rhythm with the narrator’s description of microbial DNA. "Gut. That’s resilience."