When Iven woke, the lanes were still moving.
For a moment he lay on the narrow crew cot listening to the footsteps beyond the wall. He had slept long enough for the hard edge of the afternoon to leave his muscles. The relief crew had taken his position. No one had discovered that the city could only continue if he remained awake beside every working frame.
He sat up, drank the water left on the stool and checked the time.
Twenty past eight.
The latest receiving return lay under the cup: seventeen thousand six hundred new arrivals alive, four opening technical workers, eight confirmed dead. Asa and her mother had reached their assigned shelter. The food crew had its receiving lead. The names beneath the casualty total remained visible.
He dressed, ate what the cook had left wrapped and went to the clinic.
Vessa had brought the acoustic model there because Sera needed to stay near the wards. Harl sat beside it with the pressure traces from the morning. Orla’s reply had arrived by runner: one old mark indicated a held interval, another the return of a pressure cycle. The service note still concerned an approach kept closed until an answer. The new reading gave them a better way to compare its timing with the calls they had heard.
