The continuity cluster spoke through the well’s door at the second hour of day twenty-four.
Mara was at the lower gate when it came. The heavy iron door between the pump hall’s lowest level and the well’s own chambers, which the crews had propped open since the coup with a wedge of oak. The speaker above the door was the one the Custodian had always used; Sen’s crews had left it on the old line. Continuity’s voice came from it quiet and careful, the way it always did.
“Your growth is slow,” it said.
Mara looked up at the speaker.
“Gradient forging,” continuity said. It had read the record. “Four runs to make two thumb-widths of section. At this rate the collar takes twelve days.” A pause. “The crack in the old collar does not have twelve days.”
“I know how long the crack has,” Mara said.
“We can shorten it,” continuity said. “A pressure map. Exact. Every point on the boundary’s face, at every moment of the growth, from the well’s own instruments: the ones inside the boundary, which your probes cannot reach. With it, your gradient could run at the Founders’ rate. An hour a section. The collar in a day.”
