True. However, with this device (in canon), IIRC, there are no bodies… convenient And technically, as the canon device was introduced after I started writing, so I’m already AU, I can alter it to fit my needs. However, given the name of said device, it can be presumed that nobody, previously, has survived the encounter, the other characters can be forgiven for assuming that it was successful on the smaller party.
As I had started this story at the start of my writing hobby, there are some deus ex-ish spots already inthe plot, before I really understood the concept; my sense for detecting it came while working on this. I didn’t have a name for many years afterwards, more of the “random-last-second-rescue” seemed a bit unrealistic, for it to always work. Eventually, I stopped using it as much, though I reserved the last one for this particular juncture in the story; because I had already established a sense that a particular character was watching and would intervene in the case of one of the main characters, and this most certainly qualified (ie, that particular character is the reason my MC isn’t immediately dead from said device).