The two instruments stood on a bench outside the anchor room, where the operators could see them without leaving their posts. An engineer had stretched a pale sheet against the wall to take the enlarged readings. The accepted range appeared beneath them in thick dark lines. The cutoff point had its own mark, far enough apart that a tired worker could distinguish it without asking.
The technician whose credentials had appeared on the disputed handoff stood beside the switch. Her blue ledger lay closed on a dry crate. The independent observer asked whether she wanted someone else to operate for the demonstration.
“No,” she said. “I want you to say what this test can show.”
The engineer explained the repaired orientation, the isolated branch checks and the stages they would now run with both instruments visible. The demonstration would measure the behavior under those conditions. It would not establish who had altered the assembly, or guarantee every later load.
The technician nodded. Her fingers rested on the switch guard rather than the switch itself while the observer finished. She could hear the faction leader near the yard entrance. He had returned from arranging the care-station transport with dust still in the torn seam of his coat.
