Drin Solv arrived at the facility on a Wednesday, at second hour, without advance notice.
He was thirty-one. Former Ironmark installation coordinator, northern sector, fourteen months at Korroth before walking out through the eastern perimeter check window with a folder of hand-drawn diagrams and a specific number burning a hole in everything he knew. He was lean in the way people went lean when they'd been eating on a budget for a while. He had the kind of stillness that came not from composure but from having spent a lot of time in places where drawing attention was costly.
He'd gotten Kervath's message through the informal network and had been traveling since.
Darin put him at the table. Elsa brought water. Aion sat across from him and waited.
"Fourteen months," Drin said. He opened a battered folder, pushed a page across the table. "Maybe sixteen. Individual variance accounts for two months either direction. But the pattern in the quarterly stress indicators, heart-type bearers, Stage 1, under sustained northern deployment is consistent. Fourteen months to threshold."
Darin was already writing. Not looking up.
"Sixteen months," he said. Placing the number, not arguing it.
"Yeah but it is an estimation."
Elsa Ruvan was in the doorway. She'd been standing there for the last four minutes, long enough to hear the shape of the conversation before she chose to enter it.
Drin pushed another page across the table. "There's a monitoring gap. Eastern perimeter check cycle at the installation. Thirty-six-hour rotation, during the eastern check handover, the sensor reset runs. Twelve-minute window where the monitoring infrastructure is cycling." He paused. "I used it to get out."
Aion looked at the page. A hand-drawn diagram, the installation's perimeter, the eastern corridor, the checkpoint positions, the reset window marked in pencil with the timing alongside it. Clean lines. Someone who'd looked at this layout long enough to draw it from memory.
"When does it cycle next," he said.
"Based on my exit timing, and assuming they haven't changed the cycle in response, four days." Drin held his gaze. "If they noticed the exit and changed the cycle, that number is wrong and I have no way of knowing by how much."
"How likely is it they noticed."
"I ran the standard handover window. My report for that check was standard. Nothing unusual on the perimeter. I left through the eastern descent that night." He spread his hands slightly. "They'll notice I'm gone eventually, probably within the next few days if they haven't already. Whether they connect the timing to the gap cycle depends on how much the installation commander pays attention to gap timing. Most don't."
Aion looked at the diagram.
Four days. Maybe. If the cycle hadn't changed. If Drin's timing held. If a hundred things that could go wrong hadn't.
Elsa stepped into the room. "The Root left transport authorization before she departed." She said it cleanly, without preamble. "She anticipated a situation requiring rapid movement. The authorization covers an Open Palm vessel and crew — neutral flag, no Ironmark boarding rights."
"She knew this was coming," Aion said.
"She knew something was coming. She tends to." Elsa looked at the diagram on the table. "The vessel can be ready in twenty-four hours. If we leave in three days, that's sufficient."
Aion looked around the room.
Darin was writing fast, the sharp, committed motion of someone who has finished receiving information and started turning it into a plan. Nera had her Thread-sight on Drin, narrow focus, the assessment she ran on anyone new. She wasn't hiding it. Kervath stood against the wall with his arms crossed, looking at the diagram with the particular stillness of a man with something to say who was waiting to be asked.
"Is he safe right now," Aion said to Drin. "Bode. Today."
"He's in the standard contractor rotation. Nothing unusual. He's managing his output, keeping his head down, doing everything right." Drin paused. "He doesn't know the fourteen-month limit. He doesn't know about the chamber."
"What chamber."
Drin looked at the table for a moment. Then he looked up.
"There's an unlabeled room in the east wing of the installation. Not on the facility maps. I found it during a perimeter check." A pause that had some weight in it. "It has the extraction hardware."
The room went quiet in a different way than it had been quiet before.
"The assessment array," Darin said.
"And the rest of it." Drin's voice was flat and even. "The full setup. Operational."
Aion looked at the diagram. At the four-day window and the timing uncertainty and the twelve-minute gap where the sensors cycled and a hundred things that could go wrong.
"Alright," he said. "We plan tonight. We move in three days. Two-day window on the gap timing means we need to be there before the window opens so we have time to set up the approach."
He looked at Kervath.
"What do you need to tell me about northern sector facility layouts."
Kervath came off the wall.
"Everything," he said. "Because you don't get a second attempt at northern layouts."