# Codex-Tic Audit — Chapter 17, Codex parallel draft (`output/drafts/codex/chapter_17.md`)

Audited material: the Codex parallel draft only. The accepted Claude-base chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_17.md`) is consulted solely to determine where REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE is available. Stance: skeptical professional editor; every claim quoted; findings convert to orders.

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## Tic 1 — Arrangement-coded prose

**FOUND — tic 1 Arrangement-coded prose — 3 instances:**

1. "He did work there. He did close. He did know where the catalogs lived and which door stuck in damp weather and why the back stair light came on before the front room went dark." (line 29) — The reclassification beat is rendered as an exhibit table: anaphoric "He did" rows laying out the evidence in display order. Nothing in the sentence sequence is driven by June at her kitchen table; it is driven by the presentation of the case. The packet requires the prior facts to "relabel themselves" *through* June, not to be filed for the reader. ORDER: REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE — the accepted chapter runs the same reclassification through a lived anchor (the wall-label memory, "Third shelf, left side: he hadn't memorized the stockroom; he'd grown up on its floor") and keeps June's hands and table in frame.
2. "If the lie broke, she would be the stranger who had conned her way in. If his broke, he would be family who had done something stupid. One of them had been risking expulsion. One of them had been risking a conversation." (line 31) — Two matched conditional cases followed by two matched verdict rows: a grievance arranged as a brief, with June removed to the bench. This is exactly the rupture-scene risk named for this chapter — categorized grievance, the asymmetry sorted into columns rather than suffered. ORDER: REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE — the accepted draft's single-sentence version ("every Tuesday she had walked into Odile Marchetti's room as a stranger telling a lie that could end her there... and every Tuesday he had walked in beside her telling the same lie with a key ring in his pocket and Sunday dinner waiting on the far side of any disaster") keeps the asymmetry inside one continuous experienced Tuesday.
3. "Somewhere inside, the room held the two fear paintings, one of her leaving and one of his blank usefulness, paired because Odile had made them pairable." (line 97) — Mid-confrontation, the prose leaves the stair to tour the building's interior and display the symbolic inventory with captions attached ("one of her leaving and one of his blank usefulness"). June cannot see these paintings; the sentence exists to arrange meaning, not to render her pressure. The "paired/pairable" polish is display varnish. Note also the packet rules the Ch16 blank-ground image at ceiling; "his blank usefulness" re-spends it. ORDER: REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE — the accepted chapter holds this beat for June's exit past the dark glass, where the canvases are actually in her sightline.

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## Tic 2 — Taxonomies disguised as narration

**FOUND — tic 2 Taxonomies disguised as narration — 2 instances:**

1. "He had told her all of that in the register of wages and shifts." (line 29) — Speech sorted into a named register class. This is a taxonomy of language and simultaneously a disguised dialogue diagnosis: it characterizes *how* Theo's past statements were phrased rather than what June does with them. The reading guide's zero-tolerance rule covers narration about speech, not just spoken comments. ORDER: REWRITE — state the facts he told her and the fact he omitted, with no classification of the telling (the accepted draft's "*She's my boss* was payroll-true" shape is the permitted register: it tests the fact, not the phrasing).
2. "Not Odile in the shared language of students surviving critique." (line 155) — A second language-taxonomy: speech communities catalogued ("the shared language of students") inside what should be June's worst moment of the scene. ORDER: REWRITE — see tic 4, instance 4; the whole paragraph goes.

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## Tic 3 — Three-item catalogs

**FOUND — tic 3 Three-item catalogs — 3 instances:**

1. "gray paper, narrow margins, plates that made all the rooms look darker than they probably had been" (line 7) — default tricolon, immediately followed in the same paragraph by a second one (the three sample titles "*South Wall, 7:15.* *Two Chairs Before Closing.* *Back Room, Late November.*"). One of these triplets is defensible as examples; two stacked in one paragraph is the Codex metronome. ORDER: REWRITE — break one of the two: vary the count (two titles, or four), or fold the physical description into a single non-parallel observation.
2. "He did work there. He did close. He did know where the catalogs lived and which door stuck in damp weather and why the back stair light came on before the front room went dark." (line 29) — a tricolon with a second tricolon nested in its third slot ("where... and which... and why..."). Rhythm filler squared. ORDER: REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE (same order as tic 1, instance 1; one replacement clears both findings).
3. "tired, useful, hands full." (line 37) — three-beat character summary at the moment June should be seeing one specific thing about him, not a rounded list. ORDER: REWRITE — one concrete observation (the flattened flyer box is already doing this work in the same sentence; cut the triplet).

Borderline noted, not counted: "She checked the cover. She checked the year. She checked the name..." (line 25) is a triple but is sanctioned by the packet's instruction that June reread because facts refuse to change; it survives as procedure rather than rhythm filler.

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## Tic 4 — Thesis closers

**FOUND — tic 4 Thesis closers — 4 instances:**

1. "After that, accident was no longer available." (line 19) — paragraph-final epigram filing the conclusion of the discovery moment in a polished abstraction-turn instead of letting the acknowledgment text land it. ORDER: REWRITE — cut the second sentence; go straight from "She read the first line by accident" to the quoted page.
2. "One of them had been risking expulsion. One of them had been risking a conversation." (line 31) — paragraph-final verdict stating the point of everything above it; the prose closes its own argument. The packet requires the one-sentence grievance *in the confrontation, in June's mouth, June-specific and concrete* — not as a narration aphorism delivered to the reader before Theo is even on stage. ORDER: REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE (covered by tic 1, instance 2 replacement; the accepted draft correctly holds the one-sentence grievance for dialogue: "Every Tuesday I stood in her room knowing she could throw me out, and you stood in it knowing she couldn't.").
3. "The words were plain. That did not make them small." (line 53) — a free-standing paragraph whose entire function is to tell the reader what the preceding line of dialogue meant; it is also narration rating speech ("plain"), a zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis hit. ORDER: REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE — the accepted draft follows the same admission with physical consequence only ("He kept his hand on the door a second longer and then let it close behind him. The latch went.").
4. "The word opened between them. Aunt. Not boss. Not Odile in the shared language of students surviving critique. Aunt, the word that returned him to the building and put June outside it." (line 155) — the most concentrated defect in the draft: a thesis paragraph explicating its own best line ("Ask your aunt"), built on a word-as-agent figure ("The word opened between them" — the banned active-atmosphere move wearing new clothes), a Not-X-Not-Y-but-Z arrangement, a language taxonomy (tic 2, instance 2), and a closing clause that states the chapter's meaning outright. ORDER: REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE — the accepted draft renders the identical beat through Theo's body alone ("He flinched at the word"); the Codex paragraph must be deleted, not trimmed.

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## Tic 5 — Em-dash interruptions as emotional substitute

**CLEAR — tic 5 Em-dash interruptions — checked:** full scan of the draft for em-dashes and dash-broken dialogue; the draft contains zero em-dashes — interruptions are carried by hard sentence breaks and June's spoken "Stop"-equivalents instead. **Nearest miss:** "He flinched, and she was sorry for one second, then not sorry enough to take it back." (line 141) — a comma-chained rhythm break performing an emotional reversal, the closest structural cousin to the dash-as-intensity move. **Why it passes:** the intensity is built before the break — the flinch is shown, the retraction is stated as content, and the sentence would survive being read flat. No order.

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## Focused extra checks

**FOUND — disguised dialogue diagnosis / rating speech — 3 instances beyond those already cited in tics 2 and 4:**

1. "She hated how badly she wanted that sentence to do something useful. It did not. It lay on the stair between them, correct and inert." (line 81) — June grading Theo's "You're right" as an object: its correctness, its inertness, its failure to perform. This is sentence-rating, zero tolerance, and additionally an object-as-agent figure of the kind the packet bans. ORDER: REWRITE — render the failure through what June does next (she does not move, she does not answer, she goes on to the one thing she "can say once"), with no narration about the sentence.
2. "That is the same request in a better shirt." (line 139) — June, in dialogue, rating the phrasing of Theo's "Please" against his "Then tell me what I should do": same content, better dressing. That is a comment on wording and delivery in a speaker's mouth — the banned move exactly, and it tips June toward the prosecutorial essay voice the rupture must avoid. ORDER: REWRITE — June refuses again in plain speech ("No" repeated, or a concrete refusal), perceptiveness shown by the refusal itself, not by captioning his request.
3. "He closed his eyes. Not long enough to perform pain. Long enough to understand that she had found the exact place." (line 89) — narration grading the duration and sincerity of Theo's gesture as a performance ("perform pain"), in the banned Not-X-but-Y contrast shape, and claiming June's certainty about his interior state. ORDER: REWRITE — keep "He closed his eyes" and his "Yes"; cut both grading clauses.

Borderline, flagged for the synthesis step but not counted: "He took that. She could see him take it the way he took inventory, item by item, putting nothing down until he knew where it went." (line 69) — captions Theo's reception of a line rather than showing his next action, and adds an inventory/filing figure to June's narration when the packet rules clerical/custody figures at cap after Ch16. Recommend cutting the second sentence at synthesis.

**June prosecutorial essay voice — RISK CONFIRMED in narration, contained in dialogue.** The narration block at lines 29–31 is the prosecution brief (anaphoric exhibits, matched-case verdict — see tic 1 and tic 4 orders, which clear it). Her dialogue mostly stays in voice — short, concrete, exit-shaped ("Read it." / "Then say what it says." / "Tell her you don't know.") — except line 139 (ordered above) and the self-announcing frame "Here is the part I can say once" (line 83), which is tolerable as June trying not to fall apart (full forms under the contractions policy) and is not ordered.

**Theo task-list machine without human shame — PASS, work shown.** His work-order spiral (line 99: "I can return your supplies. I can move the canvases... I can send Mara...") is the voice card's sanctioned stress behavior and is called out in-scene by June ("You are making a work order"). The shame is on the page and plain, per his allowed-plainness list: "I was scared" (line 113), "I decided badly" (line 121), the flinch at "aunt," and the closing humiliation of picking the box back up "because he could not stand there empty-handed" (line 173). Strongest counter-candidate considered: "You're right" (line 79) as glib capitulation — it passes because the draft itself refuses to let it work (though the narration *about* its failing is ordered out at extra-check instance 1).

**"load-bearing" and variants — VERIFIED ABSENT.** Scanned for `load-bearing / loadbearing / load bearing` per `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`: zero occurrences. Nearest conceptual cousin considered: "give the truth a job" (line 109) — passes; it is June diagnosing Theo's behavior, not a structural-support figure and not a rating of speech.

**Thesis-closer check on the scene ending — PASS.** "She shifted the strap and kept walking." (line 175) ends on action, not maxim, as the packet requires. The thesis-closer disease in this draft lives mid-scene (tic 4), not at the curtain.

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## Verdict

Twelve tic instances across tics 1–4 (3 + 2 + 3 + 4), plus three dialogue-diagnosis findings under the focused checks, concentrated in nine passages; the densest cluster (lines 29–31 and line 155) should be resolved by the REPLACE-WITH-CLAUDE-BASE orders above rather than local patching.

**CODEX-TICS-FOUND (15)**
