The third commander had written continued beside names nobody had asked again.
Juno saw the entries before she spoke to the contributors. Fixed intervals had ended at different times across the shift. Instead of affirmative renewals, the public ledger showed a line drawn through the column, carrying every person into the next band. The equipment supplied no evidence of forced extraction. The local stop remained available. The records nevertheless described choices the people at the station had not actually made.
The commander read her expression.
“They knew they could leave.”
“Who asked whether they were renewing?”
“I told them the next interval needed coverage.”
“That isn’t the same question.”
The audit had begun with three sites maintained by different coalitions. A technical pass with a missing shift-change record at the first. Accurate contribution records and an access refusal at the second. Here, the local commander had taken a silent room as an answer.
