Somebody alive had touched the door.
Ty kept that sentence where he could see it. Alive mattered. A desk could borrow authority. A pool could hide a route. A label could turn a child-sized thing into an item.
A door still needed a hand.
His own hand stayed open on the table. Four fingers. One absence. Cold in the wrist where the record had tried to use pain as agreement.
Yun-Jin watched the open palm.
"His wrist reaction eased when the hand was separated from the desk."
Omina wrote it down, then drew a line between staff proxy and temporary desk.
"Keep the proxy human without opening the human."
Zunoder looked toward the line as if it had disappointed him by staying useful to someone else.
"A staff proxy can preserve continuity without personal liability during evacuation routing."
JJ set the broken pencil down.
"Continuity sounds cleaner when it leaves the hand out."
Heissman rubbed his thumb along the edge of his page.
