Before Ryan could take more than a half-step toward the relative quiet of the main district road, the chaotic wake of the magistrate's departure crashed back over the cobblestones. A breathless lieutenant, his leather armor streaked with river mud and panic, hurtled around a stack of timber scaffolding and collided squarely with Ryan's shoulder. Without pausing for breath or checking identification badges, the frantic officer shoved a sodden, waterlogged scroll directly into Ryan's chest. Barking an urgent demand that sounded entirely too much like an unannounced supply audit, the lieutenant insisted on an immediate, itemized physical inventory of the eastern palisade before the incoming tide compromised the outer trench logs.
Ryan blinked, instinctively catching the heavy, dripping parchment against his pressed white collar with the automatic reflex of an events coordinator intercepting a botched vendor delivery. He stared down at the messy ink bleed and the rushed tactical diagrams scrawled across the damp paper, noting the complete lack of a proper header or standardized tracking codes with a quiet, professional disapproval. It bore all the hallmarks of a poorly briefed subcontractor trying to palm off their operational backlog onto an unrelated department.
Sighing with the deep, bone-weary patience of a man who had spent far too many Monday mornings handling phantom logistics crises, Ryan shifted the weight of his canvas messenger bag and reached into his coat pocket for his trusty plastic ballpoint pen. If he was going to be dragged into a makeshift defensive audit without so much as a proper brief or a courtesy email thread, the least he could do was ensure the run-sheet was filled out correctly before the whole project collapsed.