The envoy recognized the name before the captive finished repeating it.
Ilyan saw her fingers close around the table’s edge and knew she had heard the same thing he had. On the settlement’s old lists, the worker’s name appeared beside a maintenance function and a later accusation. In family accounts it appeared with greater certainty: he had guided the machinery toward people who believed he was helping them shelter. Some said he had been promised protection. Others said he had received it and vanished into work for the old system.
Now the name came out of a captive channel, followed by a question Ilyan had to hear twice.
“Are the doors still guarded?”
The operator looked at him for the translation. Ilyan gave the words without the interpretation that crowded behind them.
“Which doors?” she asked.
The response broke in the middle. A maintenance passage, perhaps. A holding room. The connection clipped the nouns more badly than the smaller words between them.
The envoy leaned toward the second listening instrument. “Ask him where he worked.”
