The Oversight Committee issued the biological verification order on a Thursday morning.
Victor read it at his desk.
He read it twice.
Then he set it down and did not pick it up again because there was no reason to.
He had already memorized it.
-----
It was a legal instrument.
Cold.
Bureaucratic.
Two pages of formal registry language that had been drafted, presumably, by someone who had never met Damian Roberts and never would and had no particular feeling about him one way or the other.
That was exactly why Victor had chosen this method.
Emotional instruments could be argued with emotionally.
Legal instruments required legal responses.
And legal responses took time.
And time was the thing Victor had been engineering toward since the beginning.
He read the key provision.
Damian Roberts was required to report for classification verification at a registry-approved facility within fourteen days of service.
Failure to comply was legally actionable.
