Syra (Krenyi)

The human was competent. More than that: he had noticed the gap in the record and held it rather than explaining it away. That was a rarer quality than it should have been.

Syra was building a model of the situation as she read. Not analysis — more like listening to a room fill with sound, waiting for the point where the harmonics revealed the shape of the walls.

What the reports described, taken together, was a coherence leak. A point where the boundary between two Concordants had thinned, and the expressions of each were bleeding through into the other. The instruments could not agree on the time because the time was slightly different on each side of the boundary, and Threshold Station occupied both sides simultaneously.

This was not a malfunction. It was a condition.

She did not say this yet. The human was still in the part of the briefing where he presented facts and watched for reactions. She had learned to let people finish before offering interpretations they had not yet requested. More efficient. Considerably more respectful.

Rook-7 interested her more than the reports did. Its sensor arrays were aimed at the wall with a specificity that meant it had already identified something. The status light had been active since they arrived.

She made a note: ask Rook-7 what it has found. Not here. Later.

The human's name was Thorne. She had not asked him to use a different form of address, and he had not offered one. In her experience, this was a good beginning.