# Ending Quality Audit - Chapter 06

- LANDS - scene 1 - final lines quoted: `"It's the only data," June said, and went back to the lithograph. The route card came back against Theo's shirt.` - what closes the beat: June interrupts Theo's live cover-story answer and makes the boundary cost visible to Ben and Theo - pressure it cuts on: social ease as asymmetrical cost. Strongest weak candidate: `the route card came back` risks motif neatness, but the card has been a literal chest-pocket object since paragraph 2.
- LANDS - scene 2 - final lines quoted: `He stood at the corner with the route card under his thumb. The back was blank.` - what closes the beat: Ruth's question leaves Theo with no available route or answer - pressure it cuts on: practical competence failing. Strongest weak candidate: `The back was blank` is a coin-stamp, but the literal route card anchors it.
- LANDS - chapter-final - final lines quoted: `He had not found the name by the time she passed below street level. He put one foot on the first stair and the next. Halfway down, his thumb found the empty place on his shirt where the route card had been.` - what closes the beat: Theo follows without solving and physically registers the relinquished route card - pressure it cuts on: changed behavior under incomplete knowledge. Strongest weak candidate: the empty-pocket image risks emblematic neatness; it survives because the card has been a concrete object since paragraph 2 and was handed to Ben on-page.

Chapter verdict: ENDINGS-CLEAN.

REVISION ORDERS: none.
