Eli waited until he could name the room without borrowing anyone else’s answer.
The protected workroom. The map table. The chair Bram had moved against a sound support. Tessa beside the water, Juno on the checked independent contact, the local examiner asked to attend rather than merely receive a report afterward. The monitored transmission continued in a separate record, muted here at his request.
None of those facts made the borrowed movement impulse disappear. It still arrived in brief surges, a conviction that the distance to the doorway had changed and that he ought to cross it before something shut. Nara’s imprint did not contain a conscious Nara calling him anywhere. It was a pattern carried with the talent, pressing into his present sense of purpose while the network’s imitation exploited a different wound.
He had agreed to reduce the load. Now the agreement needed to become an actual change.
Tessa asked him to state what he intended to remove.
“Nara’s movement.”
“What stays?”
“Anchor and Load Share. Equipped, unused.”
