Mira unwrapped the fragment on the bakery table where they had assigned the last truck to evacuation.
Eli recognized the crease in the wood beneath it. Someone had scrubbed the table since the argument, but a narrow line of charcoal remained in the grain. He thought of the truck pulling away, the two trained crews carrying the ramp, Mira crossing out a descent she no longer had people to secure.
Now a broken piece of record lay where her complete map had been.
“The smaller team found it beyond the outer maintenance turn,” she said. “Not in the machinery chamber. In a displaced record housing.”
Juno did not touch it. “Who handled it?”
Mira gave the sequence. One scout had lifted the housing after they saw it had already broken away from its mount. The fragment had been wrapped on site and carried back. Water had entered before they found it. The missing edge was not among the pieces they could recover without going farther into the unstable approach.
“No one reached the machine,” she said.
Eli looked up. “And the report said no usable record.”
