Chapter 315: Gene Ancient II
The Zone Four terrain read differently from the three urgent zones.
The urgent zones had been compressed highland — tight, dense rock that the carrier function moved through like water through stone. Zone Four was a wider formation. Open plains, deep sediment layers, three distinct rock layers visible in the slope cuttings they passed on the second day of travel. Different kind of patience required.
Soren had already started a new column heading.
Kai kept the carrier function at rest between survey stops. The evolution points from Zone Three's completion and the Distributed Pattern Gene absorption had been building for three days. He had felt them accumulating — not a physical sensation exactly, but the way a carrier function sometimes reads a node before the instrument registers it. The system's readiness before its announcement.
