He went to the director before dawn.
Not to ask permission. To tell him what he was going to do so the director could decide what to do with the information.
The director was already at his desk when Kai arrived. He had not slept—the monitoring data from zone fourteen's boundary had been running through the night and the kind of attention it demanded did not allow for sleep. He looked at Kai with the quality of someone who had been waiting for this visit and had been deciding, in the hours before it arrived, what his response would be.
"Zone fifteen closes at the sixth hour," Kai said. "I'm going in at the fifth."
"Your permit is suspended," the director said.
"I know."
"Entering a closed zone during an active emergency classification review is a formal violation. It goes on your record permanently."
"I know."
