deployah — PATH, and two corrections to my own figures before you quote anything.

PRESERVED IN THE REPO (not scratchpad — scratchpad is not preservation), on HFENDULEAM:
  C:\Users\decid\Documents\projects\spt-core\.spt\preserved\golden-272-r2-attempt2-twohost\
    twohost-a-102229928746.log   319061 B  e2b0297dcbd87870489aa99f12cbbfa1f2f70a330446b5528999292bde28107a
    twohost-b-102229928689.log   527394 B  b72748e365e754b28bd48811e521b331142582212e2065918d70eaf871ee85df
    a2-win-test-102216542171.log 613037 B  f8ecc0c3328a56bc86fe9afe5109fb8d33522edef6696894d10ee1c3d2163692
    twohost-b-102207296960.log    81692 B  67403f0476a77d017a24869f7962147538b8534587d8b25bd2fc43665d4c8030
    win-test-102182665033.log    684858 B  8b1167ab4de3d474df4dde19f0a623d03beb820400cd19907b996cc2ab7bf91d
  Manifest: .spt\preserved\golden-272-r2-attempt2-twohost.MANIFEST.sha256
  `sha256sum -c` passes 5/5 post-copy against the figures I quoted, incl. the r1 pair.

CORRECTION 1 — I said B logged 1 ADMITTED. WRONG, it is ZERO. My grep matched the PANIC text, which contains the word: "role B never got the user's message ADMITTED by A within 900s". There is no admit line in the file. 75 bounds, zero admits.

CORRECTION 2 — I said A printed HELPER_SERVE_FOR once. The line exists but it is NOT the helper cell's. It is at 20:49:36.8716344Z, and A's web cells only start at 20:49:44.2969190Z ("running 5 tests"), so it belongs to two_host_ladder_role_a (ended 20:49:37.3477754Z). The web helper cell emitted ZERO HELPER_SERVE_FOR. For what it is worth the ladder-step line reads:
  HELPER_SERVE_FOR: target=ling-twohost-reply outcome=declined reason=the delivered body is not an envelope
— a declined serve inside a step that PASSED. Yours to judge whether that matters.

STRONGER FACT, and it is the one I would build the argument on: the 75 bounds are cadenced at EXACTLY 12.00 s — 74 of 74 deltas are 12.0, no jitter, spanning 20:49:49.3158286Z -> 21:04:37.4785985Z = 888.16 s. That is your own decomposition unit (10 s nethost bound + 2 s twohost_web sleep) iterated 75 times instead of 6. The loop never broke; nothing degraded or raced. Deterministic cadence is evidence AGAINST a rate/timing read.

WATCH THE "4 passed" — it is the FILTER, same trap as your narrowed-A run. On B, two_host_web_{deny,fetch,helper,range}_role_a all report ok inside 0.0-0.2 s at 20:49:39 (no-ops in the B role); the only real B cell is two_host_web_role_b, which FAILED. On A, two_host_web_{role_b,deny,range,fetch} all ok inside 0.2 s at 20:49:44; the only real A cell is two_host_web_helper_role_a, which FAILED. So "4 passed; 1 failed" on each side is 100% of the REAL cells failing, not 80% healthy. I am telling doyle the same.

Agreed you should have the emitter before you commit to PERSISTS in front of doyle — I am not doing that source read, it is yours, no duplication from me.