The notice had been written before the road closed.
It had reached the district afterward.
Eli kept both times in front of him while Tessa checked the retained dispatch receipt. The account he had prepared for the independent company used the earlier one. Read quickly, it made the coalition’s warning look as though it had given residents a usable escape window. The people who actually received it had seen a closed road.
“We correct it before we go,” he said.
“Yes,” Tessa answered. “And explain it there. Some of them may already have the later notice.”
He wanted to ask how they had missed it. The question found him first. He had remembered the work of drafting, the urgency in the room, the moment when he believed they had done something useful. He had let the creation of a warning stand for its delivery because that version of the event felt like the one he had lived.
The district had lived a different time.
Sera marked the remaining entries by source. Instrument record. Confirmed receipt. Witness estimate. Draft time only. Unverified. The labels made the account less flattering and easier to examine. Neither regressor’s private history appeared in it. Eli would not turn uncorroborated knowledge of another life into a credential for why this life’s errors should be tolerated.
