She gave the slate back to Sera after the second line, because her hand was shaking, and dictated the rest.
“Write it as I say it,” she said. “One thing at a time.”
Sera took the pencil.
“The cold rail,” Mara said. “That’s done. Second.” She closed her eyes. “The hum of the cooling pump. Under the bench in the interface chamber. The one that runs the jacket’s return.” She listened for it in her memory. Not through the graft; through the floor, through her feet, through her hands on the bench’s edge. “I can feel it in the iron. Through my hands.”
Sera wrote.
“How do I write it?” Sera said. “Strong? Clear?”
Mara thought.
“Write faint for the pump,” she said. “Don’t write gone.”
