Marcus's journal was dense with the specific handwriting of someone thinking faster than they wanted to.
The early pages were neat, the engineering notation he defaulted to when he was being systematic. Zone maps with distance estimates, NPC behavioral notes, resource locations marked with the same care he had brought to every task I had ever given him. He had approached being trapped in a game the way he approached everything: methodically, with the assumption that the problem was solvable if you gathered enough data.
The later pages were different. The handwriting loosened. The margins filled. The crossbar sevens became less consistent, the lean more pronounced, the kind of drift that happened when the hand was keeping up with thoughts that were moving faster than patience allowed.
I
