They worked until fourth hour the next morning.
This was not unusual for Darin. Sleep was something he did when the work was finished, and the work was finished when every variable he could address had been addressed, and there were always more variables than there was night. He'd accepted this about himself around age fourteen, the same year he'd accepted the shoulder tell and the iron rod and the processing bucket, and had not spent energy on it since.
Aion, by contrast, had gone horizontal on the floor of the facility at third hour and was still there when Darin paused the planning session to mark the best current exit route on the diagram in red.
Kervath looked at the sleeping shape of him for a moment. "Does he do that often?"
"When he's run through everything he needs to think about and hasn't found anything left to worry at." Darin made a notation beside the red line. "It's useful, actually. He processes while he's under. He'll wake up with three questions I didn't think to ask."
"Is that the vein?"
"I've wondered."
By fourth hour the diagram had four red lines through it — each one a different exit route from the northern installation's perimeter, ranked by timing requirements and detection risk. Drin had revised his original hand-drawn version twice, once with Kervath's input on standard Ironmark installation design and once with Darin's read on monitoring gap exploitation windows. The problem, laid out clearly now, was not getting to Bode. Drin knew where he was housed, knew his rotation schedule, knew the timing.
The problem was getting Bode out.
Bode was a contract holder in good standing. He hadn't violated any terms. He was Stage 1 and managing his output carefully, which Ironmark's monitoring would read as a compliant, functional contractor. From the outside he looked like someone doing exactly what he'd agreed to do.
Which meant the extraction had to look like something other than an extraction.
"Open Palm medical transfer." Elsa had been in the room the whole time, which Darin had registered and filed. She contributed at specific moments and then sat back, and by this point in the evening Darin had started to understand that she was tracking four or five threads simultaneously and choosing when each one was ready. "If a contract holder displays signs of abnormal Set progression during medical assessment, the Palm's charter gives them the right to transfer the bearer to Palm care facilities for specialist evaluation. Ironmark cannot block a medical transfer."
"Bode's Set is Stage 1 and stable," Kervath said. "Abnormal progression requires…"
"Abnormal progression requires documentation from a qualified Palm practitioner." Elsa looked at him steadily. "I'm a qualified Palm practitioner." A pause that had a shape to it. "Heart-type vein bearers under sustained high-intensity Thread-use show early stress indicators in the anchor-adjacent tissue before standard Set progression becomes visible in the monitoring data. The Stage classification is still Stage 1. But the stress indicators which I am qualified to identify and document, indicate elevated progression risk that justifies precautionary transfer under the Palm's charter."
Silence.
"That's true," Darin said.
"Yes," Elsa said. "It's also convenient." She didn't look away from the diagram. "I've been documenting this pattern in northern sector case records for fourteen months. The documentation exists. It's real. I would be applying an established assessment protocol to a situation the protocol was designed for."
Kervath looked at her for a long moment. "The Root knew you'd be in this room when she gave you the vessel authorization."
"The Root anticipated the situation." Elsa looked at the diagram. "She tends to."
—-
Aion came up from the floor at fourth hour.
He sat up, pulled his hair back from his face where it had come loose during sleep, retied it roughly, and looked at the diagram on the table with the focused attention of someone who had been somewhere else and was now entirely present.
"The monitoring gap is thirty-six hours," he said. "But Drin's timing could be off by up to six hours either direction based on when the handover actually runs versus when the cycle nominally runs."
"Already accounted for," Darin said. "Three-hour buffer built into the approach timing."
"Okay." A pause while he looked at the red lines. "Bode's rotation, what's his next high-intensity deployment period."
"Three days after the gap window," Drin said. "If we miss the window, there's a next one. If we miss both…."
"He goes into a high-intensity period," Aion said. "Which accelerates Set progression against the projection." He looked at the diagram. "Missing both windows doesn't reset the clock. It shortens it."
"Yes," Drin said.
The third question took a moment longer.
"The chamber," Aion said. "The extraction hardware. Is Bode flagged for assessment."
Drin looked at the table. "No. Not yet. He's Stage 1, his output management is keeping him below the assessment threshold."
"What's the threshold."
"Not a fixed number — it's a combination of expression tier, Set progression rate, and deployment duration. Bode's management is keeping him under it. But-"
"But he can't manage forever," Kervath said. "The deployment conditions push the expression whether you're trying to hold it back or not. He can reduce it. He can't eliminate it."
"How long before he hits the threshold."
"At his current management rate?" Drin looked at the diagram. "Maybe four months. Maybe five."
"Well inside the fourteen-month projection."
"Yes."
Aion looked at the red lines. At the three-hour buffer and the Open Palm medical transfer that was legally sound and would work if nothing went wrong.
"We leave in two days," he said. "One day earlier than planned. We arrive before the window opens and we have time to set up the approach properly."
Darin looked at him. "We planned for three days to allow…."
"I know. Two days." He met Darin's eyes. "The three-day plan worked on the assumption that the window timing is accurate. If it's off by six hours late, our buffer holds. But if it's off by six hours early-"
"We miss the window entirely." Darin was quiet for a moment. "You're right."
Kervath was watching Aion with a particular quality of attention, not surprised, not confirming something, but the look of a man who had been holding a theory carefully and had just watched it hold weight.
"Two days," he agreed. "I'll pack tonight."
If we miss this, Ironmark doesn't hunt Bode, it hunts us too