The crew chief activated the parallel path with almost no ceremony. He pulled Soren into a lattice-side room that had no secondary cameras and handed him a stripped remit: lattice-to-district residual flags only.
No secondary station. No public label. Dual-logging only when a flag demonstrably moved a public stability window.
Soren was told that Ryn existed, that her consultancy was the visible half of the bridge, and that his job was to keep residual insight flowing without becoming a second political target.
Soren had carried drag during an earlier absorption cycle on a different node. He had never reached the public consultancy track. For years he had done internal lattice edge-monitoring and quiet residual logging.
His residual profile was similar to Ryn's but not identical. Onset of lag was slower. Sensitivity to low-amplitude coupling between residual fields and medical-transit timing was stronger. He had never worked under secondary-architecture eyes.
