The intelligence gave the tired observer a child.
Eli did not see a birth or a life. He saw a woman at the repair-shop window thinking of someone elsewhere who needed her home. Her eyes left the gate for the length of a breath. A shape crossed the reduced defense arc, and the imagined yard filled with people who had believed the wall would hold.
It was possible. That was the cruelty of it.
He told Tessa before the image could settle into a memory.
“Not happening now,” he said. “It’s showing me a later failure.”
“Can you see the line?” she asked.
“Yes. Red sleeve. Mira’s still holding.”
“What else?”
