"It is when the answer keeps staying the same and you keep asking it to change because you hate it." She pushed the audit core into the trunk first, listening for it to settle on a lower ledge. "One rider. You know it."

He keyed another test anyway. The machine answered with a sharp whine, then a scatter of red symbols across the rail. FIELD SHEAR RISK. MASS TOLERANCE EXCEEDED. RETURN LOCK UNSTABLE.

He reset it too fast and the motion pulled at his ribs until his breath snagged. He stayed bent over, hand pressed to his side, waiting out the wave of pain.

Mara watched him for one second, then climbed into the hatch. "Get me ten minutes. Maybe less if the old lines still carry." She reached up again. "Pages. Not all in one packet."

He tore the copied pages into two bundles with shaking fingers. She took them, tucked one inside her jacket and one into a pouch at her hip.

"If the relays are dead—" Elias began.

"Then I find a live branch." She started down, then paused. "If they come through that door before I'm back, you launch. Don't do anything noble and stupid."

A third impact rang through the chamber, louder now. Metal squealed somewhere in the lock seam.

Elias almost laughed at the word noble. It died as a cough. "That's a very narrow category."

"For you? Not narrow enough." Then she was gone into the maintenance trunk, boots clanging down the ladder, the relay wire hissing after her.