The Project V fragment lay between Luna's lamp and Vell's spring knife, still folded where Jia had placed it in his hand. Yenna stood by the workshop door with one chain wrapped around her wrist, watching him study paper instead of people.
Rynn had taught Vell how to hide a record when they were fifteen and stealing transit schedules for scavenger runs. He wrote the useful fact first, then used bad handwriting beside it so a clerk would think the page had been handled by an idiot.
The fragment began with six lines of calibration figures, followed by Vell's childhood medical number near the bottom. Its handwriting was tidy, its columns were straight, and the ink never crossed a line.
His habits would have made him hate every part of the neat page before reading the medical number. Rynn had called clean margins an invitation for somebody important to lie inside them.
