"You have been reading forty years' worth of compiled, high-level underlayer intelligence in secret."
"I have been reading it very carefully," Rex corrected, his gaze unwavering.
"And the specific operational details?" she pressed, her voice gaining a sharp, interrogative edge. "Lord Xerollion's governance transition?"
"The massive military redistribution across the sectors? The nuances of the second stratum contact situation? These aren't just 'patterns,' Rex."
"These are specific, volatile, current events... Are these also in the forty-year archive?"
Rex felt the pressure of her mind, a relentless force trying to find the fracture in his foundation. He leaned into the truth, twisting it just enough to remain functional.
"The historical patterns are in the archive," Rex said, his tone authoritative. "The exact condition of the underlayer was just a guess, based on those long-term patterns and the information Ignivara shared during our talk at the tree line."
