polishing and fixing continue

chapters/book2/ch15-final.md

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ I checked the bag. There was bread. She'd wrapped it in a cloth with a sprig of
 
 The bracelet sat warm against my wrist. Seventy percent. I'd checked three times since waking, which was twice more than useful. The number wasn't going to change by wanting it to — the passive charge thread was dead, confirmed dead, and checking again wouldn't resurrect it. But the noise kept circling back, prodding the absence the way your tongue finds a missing tooth.
 
-Mere applied a fresh compound to Devod's left wrist — the binding salts she'd used to stop the drain echo earlier. Maintenance dose. She checked the colour against the skin, held it for ten seconds, wiped, reapplied. Clinical, precise, completely absorbed. She'd been doing this for — I counted back — thirty-some hours with breaks measured in minutes. Not exhaustion. Endurance. The same focused energy she brought to everything she decided mattered.
+Mere applied a fresh compound to Devod's left wrist — the binding salts she'd used to stop the drain echo earlier. Maintenance dose. She checked the colour against the skin, held it for ten seconds, wiped, reapplied. Clinical, precise, completely absorbed. She'd been doing this for — I counted back — thirty-some hours with breaks measured in minutes. Past exhaustion into something steadier. The same focused energy she brought to everything she decided mattered.
 
 Devod's eyes opened.
 
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ The man in the doorway was large enough to make the frame look like a suggestion
 
 He moved into the room the way experienced people move through unfamiliar spaces — a half-second scan of the corners, the window, the door's swing radius, the placement of furniture relative to exits. Not paranoid. Habitual. The scan completed before his second step, and then he was just a man visiting a friend.
 
-(*Combat-trained. The corner check was reflex, not assessment. Entry protocol, not caution. And Mere knew his name.*)
+(*Combat-trained. Corner check as reflex. Entry protocol in the muscle memory of a delivery driver's friend. And Mere knew his name.*)
 
 "Wolf," he said.
 
@@ -70,8 +70,6 @@ I was standing in the corner by the window. Brennan hadn't acknowledged me — n
 
 It never came up. Four words delivered with the complete sincerity of someone who genuinely didn't understand why it might have.
 
-(*She and I have entire chapters of each other's lives we haven't read. Not a problem. But it's a fact that sticks.*)
-
 "You're the Locksmith," Brennan said, turning to me for the first time. Not a question. His handshake was the kind that communicated without performing. Firm, brief, released cleanly. "Wolf's mentioned you. Mostly good."
 
 (*The Locksmith. Not "Phelan." Not "Mere's partner." The Locksmith — guild alias, guild nomenclature. Mere doesn't use that name. Devod doesn't use that name. Whoever briefed Brennan had guild-level operational context and connected it to Devod's situation. Either the guild feeds into Brennan's network, or the network feeds into the guild, or they're the same infrastructure wearing different faces. Brennan doesn't read as guild — but I don't know every member, and the ones I don't know are the ones designed not to be known. Doesn't resolve. Filed.*)
@@ -128,7 +126,7 @@ He leaned forward.
 
 (*Ten ideas. Not flawed logic. Survival methodology. Pathfinders operate where most recruits die. You generate solutions until one works because the alternative is everyone dies.*)
 
-(*Everything. Everything I categorised as civilian instinct was elite military competence wearing civilian clothes, and I missed it because the model I built was wrong from the first data point.*)
+(*Everything I'd been filing as civilian instinct was elite military competence wearing civilian clothes. The signals were all there — the forearm, the collarbone, the mine-cart — I just kept assigning them to the wrong column. Wrong frame. Not wrong data.*)
 
 "That's why we called him the Wolf," Brennan said. "Wolves are pack animals. The alpha doesn't run from the threat — he runs toward it. Puts himself between the pack and whatever's coming. That's what Devod did. Every time. Every mission. Always has an idea that'll save your life." He rested his hand on the bedframe, close to Devod's shoulder without touching it.