Chapter 350: The Account
The writing took four days.
Kai had not expected that. He had carried the breakthrough six days on foot, sure that the hard part was the carrying. He was wrong. The hard part was the telling, told slowly, in a hand the next person could read.
The Director ran it like a survey. One question at a time, in order, never skipping ahead. He asked what the ground was like at the gorge. He asked how the membrane had felt before it went thin. He asked the cost of a descent before the breakthrough and the cost after, and he wrote both numbers down and drew a line between them.
Kai answered the way he read ground. Plain. Level. No word spent on weight.
