"Temporal absorption signatures."
"Yes."
Satou was quiet for a moment.
"Chronus didn't evacuate them," he said. "He moved them. Deliberately. For a specific purpose."
"Yes."
"Which means the city being empty isn't a side effect," Satou continued, his voice carrying the flat precision of someone thinking through logic rather than feeling through it. "It's a requirement. He needed it empty."
"That's my assessment as well," Loki said.
Satou looked at Lyra.'
She was already writing in her folio — not notes, he recognized the movement. Tactical assessment. Laying out variables the way she'd learned to lay out battlefield problems, building the picture from confirmed facts outward toward probable conclusions.
She didn't look up. "Ask him when the border patrols stopped relative to when Richard Clay died."
Satou relayed the question.
