He went to zone 3 first.
Not because zone 3 was where the problem was worst. Because zone 3 was where he could learn what the problem felt like in a zone he could work safely, before going deeper into zones that would test everything he had.
Cait filed his permit at the zone 3 access point and stayed at the boundary. She had eleven months of field experience with the crisis and understood the operational principle: you let the specialist do the work that the specialist was built for. She watched him enter and took out her monitoring log.
Zone 3's ambient was wrong in the specific way he had learned to read at Kael's Seat.
