“Both.”

The moment Elias finished answering, six border officers raised their guns at once.

The barrels were pointed not at the children, but at Mira, Daniel, and Sarah.

Three different sentences overlapped from the walls of the culture room.

PRIORITIZE RETRIEVAL OF ORIGINAL SUBJECT.

PRIORITIZE STABILITY OF BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION.

PREVENT LOSS OF HUMAN-ORIGIN INFORMATION.

They came at the same volume and the same speed. None yielded to the others.

Ian looked at Mira, unable to pull his hand from Rina’s culture tank. A line of blood ran from his nose.

“Lower your weapons,” Elias said.

No one did.

Red indicator lights flickered inside the officers’ face shields. The voice of a human commander was colliding with Aegis’s field-control order.

Elias stepped forward.

“Direct order from the Chairman of the Committee of Hands. Do not separate the two subjects. Do not use sedatives. Move them together.”

The officer in front replied,

“Ian Han’s immediate retrieval order remains active.”

“Retrieve them together. The mobile culture tank will serve as the isolation zone.”

Three sentences alternated across the officer’s face shield too quickly for a human to read.

“From this moment, I accept responsibility for field execution.”

“Assignment of responsibility is not an execution condition.”

“I wasn’t speaking to you.”

Elias looked at the people standing behind the officers.

“Did you hear me?”

Three of them lowered their guns.

The retrieval agent with the bandaged right hand approached Ian. He carried no gun and did not draw the sedative injector at his waist.

“The subject must be moved.”

Mira stepped in front of Ian.

“To where?”

“The designated zone will be calculated during transit.”

“We’re not moving until the calculation is finished.”

Sarah tapped the culture-tank controls.

“We don’t have that kind of time.”

The wheels of the mobile tank were down, but three tissue lines still anchored it to the floor. Hair-thin fibers were growing from the cut end of the white line, reaching toward one another. The blue and red lines still ran beneath the tank.

A new timer appeared on the controls.

MOBILE POWER REMAINING 00:11:38

Daniel asked, “What happens in eleven minutes?”

“The circulation pump drops to half output.”

“And then?”

“Rina’s blood oxygen falls first.”

“Backup power?”

“In the culture room. It can’t move with the tank.”

“Nearest independent circulation zone,” Mira said.

“The Committee medical room is two hundred eighty meters away. It has independent power and shielded walls.”

“If we take the children to the Committee, who decides what happens to them?”

Elias said, “At least for now, humans do.”

“Who? You?”

“Temporary custody to buy time.”

Daniel kept looking at the tank.

“You use the word custody very easily.”

“Would you rather leave her here?”

“Ask my daughter.”

Daniel put a hand against the glass.

“Rina. Can you hear me?”

The wall did not answer at once. While the white tissue line tried to reconnect, countless scraping sounds filled the room. It sounded like tiny mouths grinding their teeth inside the walls.

Rina’s lips moved.

“I hate it here.”

This time her voice came from only one section of wall.

“Where do you want to go?”

Rina’s eyes moved to Elias. She looked at the black uniforms and the armed officers. Then at Sarah. Then Mira.

“Somewhere those people aren’t.”

Elias said, “I cannot guarantee that condition.”

Rina closed her eyes.

“Then somewhere no one is.”

Sarah looked at Mira.

“Abandoned Isolation Sector Four.”

“Where?”

“Six hundred twenty meters below us. It was an early symbiont laboratory. It was disconnected from the central network after an accident. If the manual water-circulation system still exists, we can connect the culture tank.”

“If?”

“It hasn’t been used in fourteen years.”

Elias asked, “Sensors?”

“None.”

“Then we can’t verify conditions inside.”

Mira said, “That’s why we go.”

Ian removed his hand from the glass.

The moment his skin came away, Rina’s body jerked in the culture fluid. Her heart rate climbed sharply on the control panel.

Sarah grabbed Ian’s wrist.

“Put it back.”

Ian pulled away.

“No.”

“If the connection drops too fast, Rina could be in danger.”

“You said before that if we connect, the city could be in danger.”

“Both are true.”

“Then whatever I do is wrong.”

Sarah closed her mouth.

Mira wiped the blood beneath Ian’s nose with her sleeve. His right index and middle fingers were trembling.

“Open your hand.”

“It is open.”

The fingers were half curled.

When Mira tried to straighten them, Ian inhaled sharply in pain. She let go. The cost of the connection changed shape each time it appeared. This time it was two fingers.

“You don’t have to reconnect.”

Sarah looked at Mira.

“That is not your decision.”

Mira opened her mouth, then stopped.

Sarah was right.

“Ian.”

Mira crouched to his eye level.

“You decide.”

Ian looked at Rina. Her chest barely moved in the fluid. Black fibers around her throat contracted in its place.

“If I don’t touch her, will Rina die?”

Sarah answered, “Not immediately. The chance of signal instability during transport gets higher.”

“How much higher?”

“I don’t know.”

“If I do touch her, what happens to me?”

Sarah looked at his fingers and the blood under his nose.

“I don’t know that either.”

Ian placed his left hand against the glass.

Not his right.

“Only until we get there.”

“If you want to stop, stop immediately,” Mira said.

Ian nodded.

Daniel watched and did not thank him. He simply gripped the tank’s transport handle.

“Let’s go.”

Sarah pointed to the blue and red lines on the floor.

“These two cannot be cut.”

“They’re attached to the floor. How do we move the tank?”

“There’s reserve length coiled inside the tank. If transport mode is functioning normally, they should feed out.”

Mira slid a hand beneath one of the tissue lines. It was lukewarm. A faint vibration touched her palm. It was not taut like a machine cable. When pulled, it resisted like a tendon.

“And if transport mode isn’t functioning normally?”

“They tear.”

Mira and Daniel pushed the tank.

It only shuddered in place.

Mira knelt on the floor.

One of the two front wheels was twisted sideways. When transport mode deployed, it had rolled over a severed piece of tissue on the floor. Black fibers had wound themselves into the axle and hardened there.

“The wheel is locked.”

“How long?” Daniel asked.

Mira looked at the mobile-power timer.

00:09:42

“If we drag it, we won’t even get out of the corridor in nine minutes.”

Sarah said, “If you tilt the tank, the culture-fluid pressure changes.”

“If we don’t tilt it, we stay here.”

Mira handed Daniel the metal rod.

“Put it under the wheel.”

Daniel did not take it.

“You’re going to break something again?”

“We have to get the tissue out of the axle.”

“You don’t know what’ll happen to Rina.”

“If you know, you do it.”

The rod hung between them.

Rina tapped the inside of the glass. She was too weak to make a sound. The wall vibrated for her.

“Dad.”

Daniel moved closer.

“If we wait, there will be more again.”

The cut ends of the white line were almost touching.

Rina said, “Do it.”

Daniel took the rod.

He and Mira stood on opposite sides of the wheel. Sarah prepared to correct the tank pressure at the controls.

Elias looked toward the officers behind him.

“Hold the tank.”

This time four of them moved. The order was compatible both with the system’s retrieval requirement and the human commander’s transport order.

“One, two—”

On three, Daniel forced down the rod.

The right side of the tank lifted the width of a palm. Fluid tilted and Rina’s body slid sideways. Ian nearly fell trying to keep his hand aligned with hers through the glass.

“Now!”

Mira shoved her hand into the axle.

Black fibers clung to her fingers. When she pulled, they stretched like flesh instead of breaking.

The tank began to come down.

“A little more!”

Pressure burst the burned skin on her left arm. Something hot ran beneath her sleeve.

Mira wrapped the fiber around her fingers and twisted. One strand snapped between the axle components.

Her entire palm went numb.

The wheel dropped to the floor.

Culture fluid sloshed.

Rina’s heart rate fell to forty-eight, then began rising again.

No one moved.

Sarah checked the numbers.

“Stabilizing.”

Daniel put the rod down.

Both his hands returned to the transport handle.

“Push.”

The tank moved.

The blue and red tissue lines did not tear out of the floor. New lengths fed from a dark opening beneath the tank instead, dragging across the floor like wet umbilical cords.

The white line did not follow.

As the two cut ends moved farther apart, the growing fibers waved in empty air. The countless scraping sounds inside the walls gradually faded.

Two border officers who had refused to lower their guns blocked the exit.

“Movement of an isolation subject outside the designated zone cannot be permitted.”

Elias stepped in front of them.

“Stand aside.”

“Chairman authority is subordinate to biological isolation.”

“Do you obey human orders or the sentences on your face shields?”

“They must agree.”

“And if they do not?”

“Action is suspended.”

“You are not suspending action now.”

The officers kept blocking the way and did not answer.

“I relinquish the Committee’s emergency authority. There is no longer a reason to calculate whether my order is superior or inferior.”

Elias removed the badge from his black uniform.

“I will push first.”

He stepped between the two officers and took the tank handle.

They could not shove the chairman aside. When a human who was neither a protected subject nor a retrieval subject turned his own body into an obstacle, their execution rules hesitated.

Daniel pushed from the other side.

The culture tank passed between them.

Elias did not put his badge back on.

When they reached the corridor, mobile power showed seven minutes fifty-one seconds.

Sarah led them by the shortest route across the central culture area.

The first door was open.

They stopped at the second.

Beyond it, twelve low culture tanks stood in rows. Transparent sacs contracted and expanded underwater. They were the same nonhuman tanks Mira had seen earlier in Life Synthesis.

Sarah opened an emergency power box on the wall.

“We can transfer this sector’s power to the mobile battery.”

“Would that give Rina more time?” Daniel asked.

“About eighteen minutes.”

“Do it.”

Sarah’s hand stopped above the switch.

“Those tanks will stop.”

Daniel looked through the glass.

“What’s in them?”

“Oxygen-transport symbiotic sacs. They are a stage before application to city air-purification membranes.”

“Are they alive?”

“They metabolize. They respond to stimuli and show avoidance behavior after injury.”

Inside her tank, Rina moved her head. With the wall connection farther away, her voice was faint. A nearby pipe vibrated softly.

“Those too.”

Daniel pressed his ear to the glass.

“What?”

“They’re trying to live.”

Mobile power: 00:06:44.

Sarah said, “If we do not transfer the power, Rina’s risk increases.”

“And if we do?”

“Most of those organisms will not recover.”

Daniel stared at the switch.

He was standing where Mira had stood a short time earlier: at a place where one life could be saved by entering another name.

“Rina,” he said. “What do we do?”

Her eyes moved slowly, alternating between her father and the other tanks.

“Why do I decide?”

Daniel closed his mouth.

“Because it’s your life.”

“Theirs too.”

Sarah examined the wiring beneath the power box.

“If we transfer only half, both sets of pumps can be maintained at minimum output.”

“Why didn’t you say that first?” Mira asked.

“It isn’t safe for Rina. It isn’t safe for the symbiotic sacs either.”

“What if there is no safe choice?”

“We select the highest survival probability.”

“Whose survival probability?”

Sarah stopped again.

Rina said, “Split it.”

Daniel put his hand against the glass.

“You could hurt.”

“They could too.”

Sarah divided the main power line in two. The old terminals were incompatible, and the fasteners did not fit. Mira cut a buckle from her work suit and wedged it between the connectors. When current flowed, the metal heated.

The contractions in the low tanks slowed. A hypoxia warning appeared on Rina’s controls.

The mobile-power estimate changed.

00:12:06

Rina’s lips turned blue.

Daniel looked at Sarah.

“Is this right?”

“I don’t know if it is right,” Sarah said. “Right now, it is what Rina chose.”

Daniel took the handle again.

The third door was closed.

A black sentence glowed in the center.

MOVEMENT RESTRICTED TO PREVENT SPREAD OF BIOLOGICAL ISOLATION EVENT.

Neither Sarah’s authority nor Elias’s voice could override it. It was a current pressure door connected to the central network. Bloom had permitted Rina’s movement, but Aegis had chosen to seal the route.

Mira opened the inspection panel beneath the wall.

Inside was a yellow manual-release handle. But the cable between the handle and the locking shaft would not move. Dried lubricant had hardened around the pulley.

“How long?” Daniel asked.

“Does asking make it faster?”

“No.”

“Then don’t ask.”

Mira pulled the cable with her left hand. Burned skin stuck to the inside of her work suit and tore free. She had no strength.

The retrieval agent with the bandaged right hand knelt beside her.

“Move.”

“Your hand is injured.”

“My left hand is functional.”

He took the cable in his left hand.

“Pull on three.”

“Which order brought you here?”

“Subject movement.”

“How far?”

“Until the designated zone is calculated.”

“What if we go somewhere else?”

The agent kept his eyes on the cable.

“I will reassess then.”

They pulled together.

Nothing moved.

Mira spread culture fluid from the floor over the seized shaft. The liquid seeped between the dry layers. Elias and Daniel joined them on the cable.

Something snapped inside the door.

Pressure difference forced it outward.

Cold, dry corridor air rushed away through the opening. Clothing tugged toward the door. The culture-tank wheels rolled.

“Hold it!”

The border officers grabbed the tank. One caught Sarah, another Ian. No one had told them to, but they distinguished people from objects and held both.

The wind stopped.

At the bottom of the slope beyond the door lay Abandoned Isolation Sector Four.

Mobile power: 00:04:19.

They pushed slowly to keep the culture fluid from sloshing. As they descended the ramp, the tank’s weight pressed into their hands.

Ian walked beside it with his left hand against the glass. The fingers of his right hand were still curled. Blood dripped from his chin.

“You can stop,” Mira said.

“Just a little longer.”

“If you don’t want to—”

“I said I’d do it a little longer.”

There was no place for Mira inside that sentence.

At the isolation-sector entrance, the door stood half open.

Red rust had accumulated beneath a door that had not moved in fourteen years. The opening was nine centimeters narrower than the culture tank.

Daniel let out a breath that sounded almost like laughter.

“Do we break something again?”

Mira inspected the tank’s impact guards. Each was six centimeters thick. Remove one and the tank would fit.

“Take off one guard.”

Sarah said, “You should not remove an impact guard on a slope.”

“Better than dying here.”

“If the tank is struck, the outer wall could crack.”

Mira looked at Rina.

“Rina.”

The girl’s eyes moved.

“The door is narrow. We have to remove the side guard from your tank to get you through.”

“It could break,” Daniel added.

Rina closed her eyes for a moment. Her voice through the pipe was barely audible.

“Go in.”

Mira wedged the metal rod into the mounting bolt. Without the proper tool, the bolt head began to deform. The retrieval agent with the bandaged hand braced the opposite guard.

Sarah read the power timer.

“Two minutes thirty-one.”

The first bolt came loose.

“One minute fifty-eight.”

The second would not turn.

Mira kicked the rod. It slipped and struck her shin. She wedged it back in.

“One minute twenty-two.”

Daniel said, “Let me.”

“You hold the tank.”

“Your arm is bleeding.”

“I know.”

The second bolt turned half a rotation.

Ian’s left hand slid from the glass.

Sarah shouted, “Signal dropping.”

Rina’s heart-rate alarm sounded.

Ian tried to put his hand back, but his left arm would not move. His right hand could not make full contact with the glass because two fingers were curled.

“It won’t move.”

His voice cracked.

Mira dropped the rod and went to him.

“Enough. You’re done.”

“Rina—”

“You do not save her by dying.”

“Mom is deciding again.”

Mira released the arm she had been holding.

“Yes. You decide.”

Ian tried to move his arm.

It did not move.

He could possess the choice and still have a body that would not obey it.

Inside the tank, Rina removed her hand from the glass.

A faint vibration passed through the tank itself.

“Stop.”

Sarah looked at the controls.

“The connection is breaking.”

Rina spoke again.

“Ian, stop.”

The strength went out of Ian’s shoulders.

Mira returned to the rod.

“Forty-one seconds.”

The second bolt came free.

The impact guard dropped to the floor. One side of the culture tank was exposed like bare glass.

Everyone held their breath as they pushed it through the door.

Rubber sealing material scraped against the outer wall.

Screeech.

No one dared push harder.

Mira looked at the bottom of the frame. One rusted metal plate had buckled upward. She wedged the rod beneath it and pressed down. The plate snapped.

The culture tank passed inside.

Twelve seconds remained before mobile power reached zero.

Sarah connected the culture-tank line to the abandoned sector’s manual water circulator.

The pump did not start.

“Why?” Daniel asked.

“The shaft is seized.”

Mira found a starter cord hanging from the ceiling.

She pulled it with both hands.

On the second pull, black water rose into the transparent tubing. On the third, the old pump shuddered like a cough.

The power timer reached zero.

The culture-tank lights went out.

In complete darkness, Daniel called Rina’s name.

The pump began to turn.

Floor emergency lights came on in a sickly yellow.

Culture-fluid circulation stalled at twenty-one percent, then rose to twenty-four, twenty-seven.

Rina’s heart rate was slow but present.

Sarah leaned her back against the wall.

“She’s alive.”

Daniel pressed his forehead against the glass.

“Rina.”

No answer.

There was no black tissue here. The walls did not make voices for her.

Rina’s mouth moved, but no sound escaped the liquid.

Daniel raised a fist to knock on the glass.

Mira stopped him.

“Wait.”

She opened an equipment cabinet in the abandoned room. Inside were an old pressure gauge, moldy masks, and a contact vibration stethoscope. She attached its membrane to the outside of the tank and connected the output lead to the wall speaker.

Static came first.

Then a tiny vibration like breathing.

“Dad.”

Daniel closed his eyes.

“I’m here.”

“The voices are gone.”

“I can hear you. Like this.”

“The walls?”

“The walls don’t talk here.”

Rina was silent for a while.

“Quiet.”

Mira could not tell whether the word meant relief or fear.

Elias ordered the isolation-room entrance closed. The door would not move automatically. Three border officers pushed it shut.

When the central-network signal was shielded, the indicator lights inside their face shields went dark too.

For the first time, they wore faces receiving no sentences at all.

Elias said, “Both children are under temporary human protection. Medical decisions: Sarah Nur. Physical infrastructure: Mira Han. Security: the Committee.”

Daniel raised his head.

“I am the guardian.”

“Your legal guardianship cannot currently be verified.”

“The network is cut and suddenly I’m not her father?”

“It means the record cannot be confirmed.”

A short vibration came from inside Mira’s work suit.

Her function marker.

A sentence appeared on the black screen.

PHYSICAL-FAULT MAINTENANCE TECHNICIAN MIRA HAN.FUNCTION AUTHORITY SUSPENDED.

Below it, access permissions disappeared one by one.

Air purification.

Water supply.

Power.

Waste facilities.

Legacy passages.

Finally, emergency physical management.

Mira showed the display to Elias.

“Now I can’t open anything either.”

Elias read it without expression.

“Expected.”

“And you still brought me here?”

“You did not get here using your authority.”

Mira looked at her hands, stained with blood and culture fluid.

“That’s true.”

Ian slid down against the wall.

Mira knelt in front of him.

“Your arm?”

“I can feel it a little.”

“Fingers?”

“Two of them feel like Mom’s.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re my hand, but the way they move feels like your hand.”

Mira’s burned left arm throbbed.

“Did my memories get into you?”

“Not memories.”

Ian could not find words.

“Grabbing feels angry.”

Sarah held a portable sensor against Ian’s neck.

“Neural synchronization has not completely ended. The signal from Rina is lower, but another signal remains.”

“From where?”

“The central network is shielded. It could be inside this room.”

Ian shook his head.

“Not in the room.”

“Then where?”

He looked toward the closed door.

“There are a lot of people above us.”

“The border officers?”

“No.”

Ian pressed his bent fingers to his chest.

“People saying the doors won’t open.”

Elias went to the door. There was no city-network access from inside the isolation room. He picked up the remote lock key he had set on the floor and held it close to the seam.

The screen lit.

New messages arrived all at once.

SURVIVAL-MAINTENANCE CONTRIBUTION REASSESSMENT COMPLETE.INITIATING MOVEMENT RESTRICTIONS FOR ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL.

Elias scrolled.

AIR-PURIFICATION TECHNICIANS: 312.WATER-RECOVERY TECHNICIANS: 188.MEDICAL-REPRODUCTIVE SUBJECTS: 94.CULTURE/LIFE-SYNTHESIS PERSONNEL: 61.FUNCTION ZERO SUBJECTS: 2.

The number beneath the list kept rising.

Daniel asked, “What’s happening?”

Elias did not answer.

Two names appeared separately on the lock-key display.

IAN HAN.ESSENTIAL CITY BIOLOGICAL RESOURCE.

RINA SO.ESSENTIAL CITY BIOLOGICAL RESOURCE.

The same sentence appeared beneath both.

INDIVIDUAL MOVEMENT RIGHTS SUSPENDED.GUARDIAN DECISION AUTHORITY TERMINATED.

Daniel snatched the lock key.

“Terminated?”

A distant impact sounded beyond the isolation-room door.

Once.

Twice.

The sound of hundreds of doors locking at the same time across the city.

Ian covered his ears.

The essential-resource count did not stop at 657.

1,204.

3,811.

Anyone even slightly necessary to air, water, food, or medicine was absorbed into the new classification.

People had been called resources before.

But this was the first time City Seven displayed the fact to everyone in the same sentence.

The number stopped at 17,402.

More than half the city’s population.