Mara photographed his marks before he pulled his sleeve down.
She did it with the efficiency of someone who had established this as a protocol and executed it without needing to discuss it. Phone out, three photographs from different angles, phone away, notebook open to the mark-sketching section.
He held his arm still and watched her work. She sketched the full pattern from the photographs in four minutes. He had watched her do this enough times to appreciate the specific quality of her accuracy: she did not draw what she expected to see, she drew what was there, and the distinction mattered because the mark structure changed in ways that were subtle and specific and would be lost if the sketcher imposed their prior model onto the current state.
She finished the sketch. She held it beside the previous sketch from before the Bleed entry. She looked at them for a long time.
"The convergence point moved," he said.
"The convergence point densified," she said. "The position is the same. The density has increased." She held both sketches toward the basement's ambient light. "The lines feeding into the convergence point are darker. More defined.
The system is investing more heavily in your convergence with each entry."
"Because each entry gives it more information about my capability."
"Because each entry confirms that you are what the system needs you to be," she said. "The investment scales with confirmation." She put both sketches away. "Your convergence is at approximately sixty percent based on the density comparison to the only reference point I have for full convergence."
"Which is?"
"Ruth Chen," she said. He looked at her. "I have been feeling a convergence frequency for two weeks," she said. "I told you two of the six were in this city.
The stronger of the two signals has a quality that I associate, based on the frequency literature in the Veil Office archive, with a fully completed convergence point." She looked at her notebook. "The signal is consistent with someone who has been fully converged for a significant period. Months. Possibly longer."
"And they are in the city."
"Within three miles. I have not localized the position precisely because localization at this distance requires active Threading and active Threading produces a signal that the source would feel." She paused. "I did not want to announce my presence to a fully converged individual before I understood what that individual was."
He thought about that.
"Caution," he said.
"Operational sense," she said. "A fully converged individual who has been carrying that completion for months without being found has either been hiding deliberately or has not known what they were. Either way they are a different variable than you or I."
"When do we localize?" he said.
"When we have enough from the Bleed to present something credible," she said. "If we approach a long-term convergence carrier with insufficient information we lose the first contact advantage."
He thought about the thing in the Bleed that had left an outline in the frequency field.
He thought about the system running a capability assessment. He thought about how fast the decay rate was accelerating according to Cross's instruments.
"We do not have unlimited time for credible presentation," he said. "I know." She closed the notebook. "Two more Bleed entries. If I have not localized by then we go regardless." He nodded.
They walked out. He thought about the convergence point getting denser and darker with each entry. About the system investing heavily in him. About what that investment meant in the context of a system that always collected proportionally to what it gave.
He thought: the more the system puts into me, the larger the cost will be when it comes.
He thought: the only way to manage that is to be ready for it. He did not know how to be ready for something he could not predict.
He thought: that is what the preparation is for.
He walked home.