The woman beside the hearing-room door had put her patient records on the floor.
She was kneeling over them while delegates stepped around her. Someone’s boot had left a damp half-moon across the corner of a page. Tessa stopped with her hand on the door and watched the woman move two sheets apart, bring them together again, and look toward the registration desk as if there might still be time to turn back.
“Rina?”
Rina Otal looked up. Her visitor’s badge hung backward from its cord.
“I checked these last night.”
“What changed?”
“Nothing. That’s the trouble.”
Beyond the doors, the summit was reconvening after the emergency suspension. The reports of simultaneous gate pulses had not become less alarming during the recess. They had acquired signatures and corrected times, which made them harder to dismiss. Now the delegations wanted figures: people exposed, beds available, hunters who could move before nightfall.
