Juno made the first comparison without the driver in the room.
Not because she distrusted him. Because he had already been asked to describe the message three times, and none of her equipment needed another account of how frightened he had been to lose his passengers. He rested under Tessa’s care while Juno worked from the copied wording and the signature reading he had permitted.
The independent equipment belonged to a crafter who had not participated in the reservoir study. He agreed to the narrow comparison after seeing the conditions in writing. He did not agree that a match would prove Rook innocent or guilty of anything.
“I wasn’t going to ask that,” Eli said.
“You were going to ask some version of it. Everyone does.”
The man set his reference case on the table and opened it himself.
Juno laid out known System message readings from earlier contract activations, including examples whose instructions had proved useful and others whose result remained unclear. She kept the driver’s account of the quest’s appearance separate from its structure. The device could compare a signature. It could not decide whether the hope attached to the words was justified.
The first pass showed consistency.
