Kael
Malcris brought three pages.
I distrusted the first one before he put it down.
That was not the same as finding something wrong with it.
He sat at the permitted side of the observation-room table. The local clinician took the chair beside him. Maelis stood near my record while the technical lead checked the instruments listed on the final page.
Nyx's finding had changed the arrangements.
No private session. No unrecorded substitution because a specialist preferred another piece of equipment.
Malcris had supplied the procedure in advance.
It was irritatingly reasonable.
The first page described the question. The second described the order of the comparison. The last named the apparatus and the conditions which would stop it.
I had expected to find the dangerous promise among them immediately. Instead, I found a distinction the clinical team had already been trying to make.
That didn't require me to relax.
