At the midday break Tavin sat on the crate by the bench with his bread.
The crews had gone up the cold stair to eat, all but the crew chief, who ate on his bucket in the passage with his blanket on the next fastener. The valve crew had opened the reserve’s return for a pulse and closed it again, and Sen had gone up with them to the pump hall. The chamber was quiet except for the pumps under the floor and the lattice’s low tone through the walls. Somewhere behind the cold stair a drip fell, slow and regular, into a puddle nobody had mopped.
Tavin had a heel of bread from the hauler’s galley, hard, and a piece of cheese wrapped in paper. He ate slowly, his eyes on the bread. Crumbs gathered on the oilcloth at his knee, and he brushed them into his palm and ate those too.
“The minutes,” he said. “At Hearth. After the pulse. I read the log. You know I did. Three minutes gone.”
Mara went still.
“You counted to twenty-six,” Tavin said. “After the cutoff. And you don’t remember it.” He broke the bread. “The doctor barred you from the cradle. And then let you back. At sixty.” His eyes stayed down. “I’ve read all of that. I want to know about it from you. Your account. Not the log’s, in somebody else’s hand.”
