The voice used Eli’s name as if they had already agreed to speak privately.
He kept the independent line open. Bram stood where he could see the field and the interface together. Beyond the barrier, the missing technician remained beside the low console, her next step still blocked. Nobody answered the voice by touching its surface.
“I can reopen the evacuation doors,” it said.
Eli looked toward Bram. The older man gave no sign that this was anything but another claim requiring a check.
“Which doors?” Eli asked.
The voice named the southern approach, then a second branch whose closure Tessa had only recently confirmed. It described a group waiting with a handcar at the first and named the direction from which another group was arriving. The details were close enough that Sera asked Tessa to verify them through the local contact rather than answer the interface’s claim with her own certainty.
The first group matched.
The voice could observe part of the network. That was a bounded fact. It did not establish that it knew every person, every route, or what would happen if Eli refused. The group it had named was real enough to make those limits feel painfully academic.
