Chapter 23: Ysolde Pulls the Files She Was Supposed to Bury

The *Maris Terr* was Thresh's secondary vessel, a three-berth utility craft with a compromised starboard ballast seal and a communications rig that pre-dated two Ark councils, and it sat low enough in Sunder's east-mooring channel that the diesel smell came up through the deck plates even with the vents sealed. Ysolde had her pack open on the forward bunk before Thresh finished casting off the mooring line, notebooks stacked in the order she'd need them, the outlier cohort data on top.

Karev was at the bow doing nothing visible, which meant he was cataloguing everything.

She did not look at him. She had not looked at him since the back section, since the moment Thresh had set the communications board face-down on the shelf with that particular evenness of motion — a man setting something down that he had already decided not to run from — and the number fourteen-C had sat in the air between all of them like a barometric reading.