Juno drew the missing section of the distributed bridge as a gap. She could have joined the lines and written an estimated completion beside them. Eli had seen enough plans turn an unfinished task into an available resource that the open space mattered more than the figures surrounding it.
“Two points ready,” she said. “The third has an untested connection. Fourth crew is moving from the evacuation route. They have agreed to hear the changed risk. They haven’t agreed to stand in it yet.”
“And the bridge here?”
“Losing reserve. The inner gate is moving before the old sequence. If we assemble the other route, we hold the remaining channels here longer.”
Eli looked toward the reservoir. He could not see the captives from the mounting platform. He heard a release operator repeating an offered choice through a damaged contact, leaving a silence afterward long enough for an answer. The people trapped there were not a number on the other side of his decision, though he had no way to hold every one of them in his mind.
Juno put the stored-imprint route beside the gap. A conductor at the narrow transition could give the bridge enough bearing to detach another channel. The trace would be used up. It would not wait inside him afterward for rest, a new mounting, or a more generous interpretation of the word spent.
