Tessa placed two blank sheets on the council table and asked that no family name be added to either.
On one she wrote imprints. On the other she wrote reservoir.
The settlement observers watched her hand. Juno sat beside the independent engineer with the permitted technical findings between them. Eli took a chair near the door, where he could leave without crossing the table if another person needed the space. Ilyan had asked for this small discussion before the council reader prepared a surface account.
“We need to separate what we already know about Eli’s inherited talents from what the experiment has not yet established,” Tessa said.
An observer nodded toward the first sheet. “He carries the dead.”
“I carry imprints,” Eli said. “Memory fragments. Emotional fragments. Talents.”
“Can they answer?”
“No.”
