Jin took his twenty minutes and used every one.
He borrowed two Redeemer lanterns and a scholar's chalk and built a false rescue under a false collapse: dust that slumped at the right speed, a lantern that flickered like a hurt man signalling, a voice-shaped echo on the channel calling for help in a cadence timed to a heartbeat. It looked real. It sounded real. Two young guards at the white line took a step toward it before their sergeant caught their collars.
The lattice tagged it in under two seconds.
One tooth woke, drew a line the length of a blink, and slept. Reika's Enough flashed once above Jin's trick and faded.
Jin laughed. "All right. You built this to make me work."
"That's the job," I said.
We were walking back along the rim when the belt's hum went rough.
Not grit. Pressure. A wide, slow sweep coming over the far side—long and patient and hungry. No filaments, no beads. A dish. Big.
Every head on the rim turned to the same dark edge.
"Scan," Skadi said.
