The last ordinary workers crossed the north walking entrance before sunset.
They carried tools, lunch tins, a folded blanket, and one unfinished piece of knitting that had been left beside the night gauge. Two fitters remained for the current local turn. The household in the separate north room had chosen to stay, with the exit clear and the watch’s route copy beside the door.
Sera received the current names at the upper water stop.
She checked them against what people had actually chosen, not against a wish that the station might become empty enough for an easy fight. The three workers released on her earlier visit were already elsewhere. The woman and girl who had traveled on the seventh were safe with their cousin. The remaining household knew where the protected north path began.
She sent the current account to Jora and went back to the medical room prepared at the near yard.
It was the evening of day fifteen hundred and ten.
Tomorrow’s announced commissioning turn would engage the enclosed central hold across the connected branches. The larger natural convergence still lay months ahead, centered around day sixteen hundred and ninety. The nearer deadline belonged to human machinery and an order people had refused.
