He looked up at her. The words came plain now, stripped of every old urge to impress. "This place isn't the final shape of history. It isn't even close. It's a phase. A cruel one. Temporary. Petty, even, by the scale of what comes. And that changes nothing about what they've done here. It only makes the lie smaller."

Her jaw worked once. "You risked the only machine for that."

"Yes." He did not hide from it. "And I was wrong to do it now."

That answer landed between them and held. Mara let out a breath through her nose, more anger than relief.

"Good," she said. "Because while you were proving the universe is large, I was making plans for the practical problem of not dying in this room."

She jerked her chin toward the wall. Elias followed her gaze. She had used polymer sheets and tape to mark a rough route plan over the chamber's maintenance map, one path toward the breach they had entered through, another toward a relay trunk. The audit core sat wrapped in cloth. Two of the copied sheets had been split off from the rest.

"If you didn't come back," Mara said, "I was taking one package through the duct lane and one through the waste spine. Different caches. Different hands if I could reach them. If you came back wrong, I was leaving you tied to the platform and doing the same thing."

Despite everything, a tired crooked breath almost became a smile. "Sensibly ruthless."

Mara shot him a hard look. "Don't make me like you at this exact moment. Can it still jump?"