The technician disconnected the failed reference supply and put a red tag on its lead. The reader itself still powered on. Its screen showed numbers that looked as precise as the numbers from the previous session.
“I can’t verify those now,” she said.
Juno asked her to identify what had failed before anyone called the reader destroyed. The reference supply had tripped during the fourth-gate pressure wave. A protective component showed heat damage. Replacing the component alone would not establish that the reference was stable again; the source needed checking and the reader needed a fresh calibration interval.
The Aegis instruments continued running. Their supply had held through the interruption. That was a real capability, plainly visible on the adjacent screens. It did not let the neutral laboratory certify those instruments’ baseline by looking harder at its own unverified reader.
The senior Aegis specialist agreed the signed test could not continue. He recorded that the protected input pages had remained unopened. The session had been interrupted before any matched or mismatched condition was tested.
Beyond the bay, two patients occupied treatment spaces supplied by the affected circuit. The circuit could no longer be trusted for continuing support while technicians investigated the surge. Tessa went to the clinical team rather than waiting for the equipment debate to finish.
