Whisper stood in front of tablet ten for longer than they had stood in front of any of the others.
This was notable because Whisper's movement through the tablets had been continuous and fast.
Whisper had not slowed at the extinction tablet. Had not slowed at the Dimensional Descent tablet, even for the four seconds they had stopped—those four seconds had been reading time, not hesitation. They had been consuming information as fast as the information could be accessed and transmitting it as fast as the pen could move.
At tablet ten, the pen moved differently.
It moved. Stopped. Moved again. Not the abbreviated efficient strokes of someone producing translation under time pressure—the slower, more deliberate movement of someone whose pen was encountering content that the hand was finding reasons not to commit to paper, reasons the rest of Whisper was overriding one word at a time, because accuracy was what they did and the content did not get to change that by being what it was.
