The pulse reached the junction with twelve minutes left before Sera’s cutoff.
The supplied playback unit flickered. Its live display went dark, and the small light beside its power input went out. Sera’s separately powered sensor showed a brief movement across the raw trace.
A contestant turning around the cones caught a shoe on the raised edge of the cable cover. He stumbled toward the equipment. Sera caught his arm and guided him clear while Kellan moved the loose case away from his feet.
“Are you hurt?” Tessa asked.
The contestant tested his ankle and said he was not. The safety attendant checked the cover and stopped other pedestrians from crossing it until the edge could be secured. Kellan did not move the site cable or open the cabinet.
Juno saved the sensor trace immediately. The playback unit’s live buffer had lost power before it could be saved. The earlier copied-file comparison and controlled references were stored separately; she reopened them to confirm they remained intact.
“The new trace is short,” she said. “It may not include the whole event.”
Sera wrote the time from her independent watch and the margin she had recorded against the site clock. The sensor’s timestamp needed to be compared with that note before anyone called the pulse simultaneous with another event.
