Nora crossed out the word unanimous before anyone signed the agreement.
“If the ceiling is coming down, you don’t have time to count votes,” she said.
The four of them sat around the clinic table. The depot payment had arrived that morning. Kellan had bought the replacement buckle, and Sera had reserved the better radio set for the preliminary assessment. The remaining balance was still small. Leah had written the clinic’s separate funds on a different sheet, where no one could mistake them for team money.
Eli read the clause Nora had marked. “I wanted everyone to have a say in the route.”
“They should. This says no action can be taken without all four agreeing, including during an emergency.”
Sera tapped the page. “If I see the route close, I call a stop. I don’t wait for three signatures.”
Kellan added, “And I can refuse an unsafe lift without losing pay I’ve already earned.”
Tessa wanted accurate casualty records and protection for patient information. Eli wanted the team to move quickly enough that a rule designed for fairness would not trap them in a collapsing room. Nora gave them a fresh sheet.
“Show me the problem,” she said.
Nora put Eli’s copy of the agreement face down.
“This time you can’t answer,” she said. “You’re disoriented after using Anchor. The others need to get a patient past a failing support.”
Eli started to ask whether the patient was conscious. Nora raised her hand.
“You won’t be able to supply that question in the moment. They have to find out without you.”
Tessa placed two coins on the page, one for Eli and one for the patient. Kellan drew the support; Sera marked the exits. Nora started the timer.
“The patient needs pressure on the wound,” Tessa said. “Kellan, hold this while I check Eli.”
“I’m securing the support.” Kellan put the broken buckle across the drawn beam. “I can’t do both.”
“Then Sera.”
“I’m checking the route.” Sera pointed to a narrow passage on the page. “I can’t tell whether it’s clear.”
Eli could see a possible order: retreat behind the wall, then split the jobs. He caught himself drawing breath to give it. Nora tapped his face-down agreement, and he stayed silent.
The timer rang with both coins still beneath the support.
Tessa looked at the page. “I assigned hands that were already occupied.”
“And I treated uncertainty as a reason to wait,” Sera said. “I could have checked the visible part without calling the whole route clear.”
Kellan lifted the buckle. “I never said how long this would hold. You couldn’t choose whether to wait for me.”
They reset. This time Kellan gave them a few seconds of support, then named the side they had to clear. Sera checked only as far as the next wall. Tessa directed pressure while the patient was moved, then gave Sera the task of staying with Eli. No one asked him to approve it.
He watched his coin leave the danger area in someone else’s hand. It ought to have been a relief. Instead he felt an unreasonable urge to correct where Sera put it.
“Would you follow that instruction?” Nora asked him when the timer stopped.
“I’d want to know what was beyond the wall.”
“So would I,” Sera said. “I wouldn’t know yet. Would you come as far as I had checked?”
Eli looked at the buckle where the support had been. “Yes.”
“Even if you thought your memory gave you a better route?”
He made himself leave the coin where she had placed it. “I’d tell you if I could. If I couldn’t answer, you would have to act on what you could check.”
Nora wrote a clause: in an immediate emergency, the nearest qualified person may give an instruction within their area of responsibility; anyone may call a pause for a newly observed danger; the group reviews the decision when safe. She left space for the members to define what qualified meant for their work.
Eli read it. “What if I think the pause will cost a patient?”
“Then tell us why,” Tessa said. “Don’t quietly continue while someone is warning you.”
He remembered the red marker in the yard and the load he had held while missing it. “All right.”
Nora set the timer down and asked them to run a different scenario. This time the job had been canceled after a half day of preparation. The employer offered to pay only if the team signed a release for any equipment damage.
Kellan wanted the preparation fee immediately. Sera wanted the release examined before anyone signed. Eli argued that they could accept the money and dispute the equipment separately. Nora handed him a sample clause. It released all claims arising from the work, including the preparation fee and equipment dispute.
“I missed that,” he said.
“You were looking at the amount,” Kellan said. “I was too.”
Tessa asked what would happen if one member signed and the others refused. Nora explained that the answer would depend on the actual contracts and who had authority to bind the group. They added a rule requiring the person negotiating to show the release to the affected members before accepting it, unless a separate signed delegation gave them authority.
Sera drew a box around affected members. “If a route witness gives us information privately, they aren’t automatically giving us permission to put their name in a settlement.”
“No,” Nora said. “The agreement can require you to check what they authorized. It can’t give you rights they didn’t give you.”
Kellan looked at the clinic kit on the shelf. “And if borrowed equipment is damaged, the owner needs the report before we settle for it.”
Leah, passing with the inventory, set the kit on the table. One strap had been repaired with a different color of thread. She pointed it out so they could record its condition before borrowing it.
“That was there before you touched it,” she said. “I don’t want you paying to repair it twice.”
Eli wrote the condition on the receipt. Kellan checked the buckle and added that the strap still held when pulled. The small act changed the sample dispute from an abstract argument into something they could prevent before leaving the room.
They moved to pay. Kellan wanted the preparation payment protected if the job was canceled for safety. Sera wanted expenses approved before being deducted from a share. Tessa wanted the agreement to state that clinic donations could not be used for team equipment without the volunteers’ approval.
Nora asked each of them to identify a clause they could not accept. Kellan objected to a sentence that allowed the leader to define a refusal as abandonment. Sera objected to a clause requiring her to disclose every contact she used for route information. Tessa objected to language that would let the team keep patient records after a job without a retention plan.
Eli objected to a clause that made him personally responsible for every equipment cost. “I can contribute what I have. I can’t guarantee an unlimited amount.”
They revised the page. Expenses would be agreed before purchase where possible; emergency expenses would be reviewed afterward. A member could refuse an unsafe task without automatically forfeiting earned preparation pay. Contacts and patient information would not become team property merely because they helped a job.
The depot fee had paid for the buckle and radio reservation, not the full Tower budget. Leah came to the table when Tessa asked whether the clinic could contribute to a shared medical kit. The volunteers had already discussed the shortage after the damaged dressings.
“We can lend the basic kit for the preliminary assessment,” Leah said. “It comes back to the clinic, and anything used is replaced at cost. We can’t pay the registration fee.”
“That helps,” Tessa said.
“It helps if the kit actually comes back.”
Kellan checked the list of contents and signed a receipt for the container, not the medication inside. Tessa would inventory the medical items before the assessment. Leah kept the receipt with the clinic records.
Nora read the revised agreement aloud. It was a working arrangement, not a guarantee that they would pass selection or remain together forever. Each member had the right to leave after meeting obligations already undertaken. They signed copies and exchanged them across the table.
Sera folded hers into a waterproof sleeve. “Now we need to see what the sponsored teams are being offered.”
An Aegis recruitment event had been announced at the registry hall. The team had already decided to gather information, and the event offered contract consultations without requiring an application. Eli felt his shoulders tighten at the guild’s name.
“We don’t have to go together,” he said.
“We should,” Kellan replied. “I want to ask about insurance. Sera wants the scout terms. Tessa can check the medical obligations.”
“And you?” Sera asked.
“I want to see who is there.”
At the registry entrance a line of applicants waited while a clerk checked assessment cards. A woman ahead of them discovered that her card had the wrong expiration date. The clerk directed her to a second desk; she looked at the length of that line and began to cry quietly.
Sera held her place while she went to ask whether the correction could be made without losing it. The second clerk stamped a correction slip and told her to return. When she came back, she thanked Sera and offered to let the team go ahead.
“We have time,” Sera said. “Keep your place.”
Eli watched the woman show the corrected slip at the first desk. The clerk checked it against the card and let her through. A small correction had nearly cost her a morning, and the people behind her had helped without asking which guild she belonged to.
The hall was crowded by the time they arrived. Banners marked the tables for several guilds. A display near the entrance showed approved harnesses and protective equipment; applicants could handle the samples while a representative explained their ratings. Aegis occupied the far side of the room, its banner high enough to be seen over the crowd.
Kellan went to the equipment display. He compared his new buckle with the sample and asked whether the inspection would accept its rating. The attendant checked the tag and said it met the preliminary requirement. Kellan kept the receipt in case the inspector wanted the purchase details.
Sera collected a copy of the scout terms from a table near the wall. Tessa found the medical schedule and asked whether independent teams could use an outside clinician for the assessment. The clerk said they could, provided the clinician met the listed qualifications and remained available during the event.
At the medical desk, Tessa asked about a cooling container for supplies during the preliminary assessment. The clerk pointed her toward a communal storage area but could not guarantee a place without a reservation. Tessa wrote down the request deadline and asked Marisol by message whether the clinic could lend its cooler for that day. Marisol replied that the clinic needed it in the morning but could release it after the scheduled delivery. Tessa marked the time in her copy of the agreement.
Kellan returned from the equipment display carrying a printed list of acceptable harness components. He had circled the buckle he bought and written its purchase date in the margin. The inspection might still require a physical check, but he no longer had to guess whether the rating was eligible.
Eli stopped when he saw the man beneath the Aegis banner.
Bram Holt was speaking to an applicant, one hand resting on a stack of contracts. His hair was shorter than Eli remembered, and his coat had no dust from a dungeon on it. He turned a page for the applicant and pointed to a clause near the bottom.
Eli could see another room overlaid on the hall: a passage, a folded manifest, Bram stepping between him and Venn. He remembered the struggle over the paper and the wound that followed. The memory was his own, not an imprint. It still made his hands tighten.
Tessa found him before he moved. “What is it?”
He looked at Bram, then at the exit. He could leave. He could cross the room and demand an explanation for an event that had not happened in this life. Neither choice would tell him what Bram was doing at the recruitment table now.
“I know him,” Eli said. “Or I remember him.”
Tessa followed his gaze. “Do you want to sit?”
He nodded. They moved to an unoccupied table beside the wall. Kellan and Sera remained near the Aegis display, reading the contract without signing. Bram finished with the applicant and looked up.
Eli opened the working agreement in his pocket. The ink on his signature was dry. He had promised to share information that affected a teammate’s choice. He would have to decide what he could tell Kellan and Sera about Bram without revealing a life he had not yet asked them to carry.