Draven put the core marker on the wrong side of the table.
I moved it back.
He moved it again.
"That's the problem," he said.
The planning model showed the inner route, the staging junction and the physical return passage. My proposed group occupied the lower side. Draven's support group waited above it. Two small wooden frames represented the shared extraction equipment we hoped the council would release.
The core marker now sat beside his team.
"If a second group reaches the object first," he said, "your faction arrangement doesn't decide who withdraws. Their claim does. If your team is injured while they carry it out, why do they give you the frame?"
"Because people take priority."
"Where does it say that?"
I looked at the provisional procedure. It said a great deal about safe retrieval. The words rescue assistance appeared in a paragraph which did not identify who owed it, what they had to provide or which objective they were allowed to abandon.
