Blackforge came off the ridge at dawn with seven rescued hunters, four transmitters, plus a verification key nobody wanted to discuss. The cut behind them had stopped burning some hours earlier, leaving seven vehicle frames and a mast Luna had recorded from three angles.
Vell spent the walk down reading the chain architecture rather than the evidence. A keyed condition is not a weapon, since it does nothing at all until the person it names walks toward it.
That is the part that had kept him awake through the descent. The Directorate had built a device that only mattered if he behaved exactly as he had behaved every time so far.
"Stop reading it," Yenna said, three hours into the walk, "you have read it eleven times and it says the same thing."
"It says the next one will be cheaper to build," he answered.
