The pool reached sixty-five percent during the morning zone run.
He was not in zone nine. He was in zone eight, running a standard Beast-type collection contract, using the dual-channel absorption on each kill the same way he had been using it for the past week. The pool had been climbing at roughly two percent per day. He had stopped tracking it every hour and started checking it once in the morning and once at night, the way you stopped watching water boil when you understood it would boil on its own schedule.
The system flagged it between the third and fourth kills.
Dragon-line pool: 65% capacity
Functional threshold for Mantle Cat engagement: reached
Dragon Predator Mode ceiling at current pool: 9–11 seconds
All pre-conditions for engagement: confirmed
He finished the fourth kill. Filed the contract completion at the station. Ate a meal at the lodging house. Sat at the small table in his room for forty minutes and thought about nothing else.
Then he went to zone nine.
