The empty convoy bound for City Three was 1.1 kilometers from the factory.

Rina’s independent circulation had 9 hours, 14 minutes remaining.

The shortest external route took nineteen hours.

“We can’t make it without charging on the way,” Sarah said.

Mira opened the factory’s power diagram. The chip in the culture tank worked, but its cell was not new. The Forge carriers used a different drive voltage. Connected directly, they would burn out the circulation pump.

“Any transformers?”

The factory displayed its parts inventory.

FUNCTIONAL: 0.

REPAIRABLE: 2.

ESTIMATED REPAIR TIME: 3 HOURS, 40 MINUTES.

EMPTY CONVOY ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 11 MINUTES.

Yona was still sitting against the wall. Her oxygen saturation had returned to 92 percent, but standing darkened her vision.

“Stop the convoy first,” she said.

“Then it’ll be hit from behind again.”

“Show the stop reflector to the last vehicle, not the first.”

“The others will pass.”

“We’re riding the last empty one.”

The convoy headed for City Three had six vehicles. They carried neither water nor salts. Each had securing arms and folded nets for recovery cargo.

Forge claimed it had no hands to seize people. It did have hands to secure cargo.

No one knew whether those hands distinguished people from freight.

Mira tore a manual stop reflector from the factory exterior. Following Yona’s method, she set it at the sensor height of the final vehicle.

The convoy entered the underground ramp.

The first vehicle read the group.

BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL ON ROUTE CONFIRMED.

COMPARING DESTINATION RECOVERY CONDITIONS.

Numbers appeared for the people inside the factory.

HUMAN ORGANISMS: 8.

TRANSITIONAL ORGANISMS: 1.

REQUIRED RECOVERY QUANTITY: 27.

BELOW MINIMUM.

RECOVERY DEFERRED.

The securing arms did not unfold. Forge determined that taking nine people would still not meet the minimum breeding-group size.

“It isn’t refusing to abduct people. There just aren’t enough of us,” Jin said.

The second through fifth vehicles passed. The last sensor caught the stop reflector.

MANUAL STOP REQUEST.

BRAKING DISTANCE: 4.2 METERS.

The vehicle stopped exactly before the panel. There was no collision because nothing followed it.

Mira opened the inspection box. The destination pin was fixed to City Three. Cargo-bay power was seventy-two volts. The culture tank required twenty-four.

Bek loaded the two repairable transformers onto the carrier.

“Repair them on the way.”

“I can’t solder through vibration.”

“If we stop to repair them, the convoy leaves first.”

Daniel said, “Rina’s cell lasts nine hours. Fix it during that time.”

“If we fail, there’s no power to return.”

Rina asked, “What if we stay here?”

Sarah answered, “Factory power can maintain you indefinitely.”

“And if we go to City Three?”

“There’s a good chance they have culture water suited to your body. Not a certainty.”

“If the convoy goes first, will it take people?”

“It deferred because there were fewer than twenty-seven.”

“City Three has more.”

No one answered.

Rina said, “Go.”

Daniel asked, “What happens when your cell is empty?”

“Fix the transformer by then.”

“And if we can’t?”

“If we stay, those people decide for us.”

Rina looked at the Forge display.

“I want to go tell them no myself.”

They secured the culture tank atop the last vehicle. The people rode in the empty space beneath the recovery net. Yona lay beside Mira instead of riding at the front.

Jin folded the manual stop reflector.

The final vehicle moved. The first five were already four hundred meters ahead. It accelerated to keep the route.

The factory disappeared behind them.

Thirty minutes later, Noah called.

“We opened the door.”

Hydraulic-jack strokes: 1,427.

Width sufficient for Pavel’s stretcher: 82 centimeters.

The final seven moved toward the city.

Two fingers of Noah’s right hand would no longer move, and one citizen who had pumped with him had dislocated a shoulder. But no one remained in the holding area.

Elias said, “The unconscious resident in Sector Four has died.”

The first confirmed death after the outer wall opened.

Her name was Ines Varga.

Mira added it to the decision record.

PERSON WHO OPENED DOOR: MIRA HAN.

DECEASED: INES VARGA.

CAUSE: SUSPECTED HYPOXIC BRAIN INJURY.

DIRECT CAUSATION NOT YET CONFIRMED.

Yona read the record.

“Does ‘not yet confirmed’ make her less dead?”

“No.”

“Then why write it?”

“So I don’t claim to know what I don’t.”

Yona closed her eyes.

“Don’t erase her name.”

“I won’t.”

The vehicle traveled at eleven kilometers per hour. Estimated arrival at City Three: 18 hours, 12 minutes.

Sarah opened the damaged transformers. One had burned windings. The other had a cracked cooling plate. They could combine them into one.

Mira unwound the usable copper wire from the burned coil. Sarah sealed the cooling-plate crack with medical adhesive. The adhesive was vulnerable to heat.

“Use it at half output.”

“Circulation will fall to 60 percent.”

“The culture tank’s biological lines reduce cooling demand by 11 percent.”

Sarah looked at the black tip outside the tank.

“Its heat-transfer value changed after contact with the relay station.”

“Worse?”

“Better. That makes me more worried.”

Rina said, “I can hear you.”

“I’m speaking to you. The black section moves coolant faster. We don’t know what else it exchanges.”

“Should I cut it?”

“Power consumption will rise if you do.”

“So when I decide, it affects everyone again.”

Sarah could not answer.

Rina did not cut off the black tip. The spots on her wrist remained below her elbow.

Eight hours later, the transformer was complete.

Rina’s cell had fifty-one minutes left.

Mira connected it to the carrier’s power line. Voltage stepped down to 24.8 volts. When they attached the circulator, the adhesive-sealed cooling plate heated rapidly.

Sarah limited output to 43 percent.

Auxiliary circulation: 61 percent.

Estimated transformer life: 7 hours, 20 minutes.

Time to City Three: 9 hours, 31 minutes.

“Two hours short,” Daniel said.

Mira examined the vehicle’s power table. Four recovery-net securing arms drew standby power continuously. Devices prepared to seize people even while seizing no one.

“If we cut their power?”

“It reduces transformer heat load by 18 percent.”

“The vehicle may stop because it can’t secure cargo.”

“Tie the net with manual straps.”

Mira unplugged the securing arms one at a time.

RECOVERY FUNCTION DEGRADED.

TRANSPORT MAY CONTINUE.

When she unplugged the fourth, the vehicle slowed.

REQUIRED RECOVERY EQUIPMENT UNAVAILABLE.

RETURN RECOMMENDED.

Mira reconnected the third.

TRANSPORT CONTINUING.

Estimated transformer life: 10 hours, 8 minutes.

They had to leave one arm capable of seizing people to obtain enough power to keep Rina alive.

Night came.

Inside the city, lights dimmed on a schedule. Outside, darkness erased direction. Only the carrier sensors and distant lightning remained visible.

Yona explained City Three’s approach rules.

“When the first smell reaches you, touch nothing.”

“What smell?” Ian asked.

“Dry and bitter. It means quarantine stop.”

“Can’t they say it?”

“They do. But the smell comes first. If the wind changes the order, wait.”

Sarah asked, “Skin color?”

“Blue at the throat or wrist means a question. Yellow is warning. Red is refusal.”

“Everyone’s skin changes?”

“Only some transitional people. Nontransitionals wear colored bands.”

“Contact?”

“Palm means consent. Back of the hand means stop. Elbow means family or same work team.”

Daniel asked, “What if someone touches Rina’s tank?”

“Without their permission, they consider it bodily intrusion.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“Then be more careful.”

Yona’s manner had changed. Explaining City Three, she sounded less like a guide than a defendant.

Mira asked, “Why were you ordered to return?”

“I violated quarantine.”

“How?”

“That isn’t what you need now.”

“They’ll tell us when we arrive.”

“Then listen.”

She said no more.

The first smell arrived with 1.4 kilometers remaining to City Three.

It was bitter and dry, like burned grain.

The five carriers ahead stopped together. The last vehicle stopped too.

There was no wall across the plain. Low earthworks, channels, and a living white membrane formed the city boundary. Buildings were half buried. Moss of different colors grew on every roof.

Six people appeared across the channel.

Three changed to blue-gray. Three wore blue bands around their throats. All signaled a question.

Yona climbed down from the carrier. She raised the back of her hand first, not her palm.

Stop.

She waited in place.

Someone across the water asked aloud, “How many?”

“Eight humans. One transitional.”

Rina tapped the culture tank.

“Nine humans.”

Yona corrected herself.

“Nine humans. One in culture symbiosis.”

The throat of a woman with blue-gray skin turned yellow.

Warning.

“External attached tissue?”

Sarah said, “Three unclassified white stalks. Their tips blackened after contact with Relay Station Five.”

The woman’s throat turned red.

Refusal.

Daniel stepped in front of the culture tank.

“Are you refusing Rina entry?”

Yona spoke quietly.

“Wait for the words.”

The woman threw a scent pouch over the channel. It smelled of wet grass and vinegar.

Yona stepped back twice.

“What is it?” Mira asked.

“Separate quarantine. Rina goes to the wet wing. We go to the dry wing.”

Rina said, “No.”

Yona showed her palm.

Request for consent.

“The person concerned refuses separation.”

The skin colors across the channel diverged. One blue, one yellow, one unchanged. Their opinions split before their words did.

A nontransitional man removed his blue neck band and wrapped it twice around his wrist.

“I propose joint quarantine without contact.”

The blue-gray woman raised the back of her hand.

Stop.

She pointed to the black biological line outside Rina’s tank.

“That has killed our water membrane before.”

Sarah asked, “What evidence shows it is the same tissue?”

The woman’s skin turned yellow.

“I ask because you entered before bringing evidence.”

Mira read the color as a threat and stepped forward. The white membrane at the channel edge contracted beneath her foot.

All six people turned red or raised red bands.

Refusal.

Mira stopped.

Yona said, “Yellow isn’t a threat of attack. It warns of insufficient information.”

“You should have said that first.”

“Even if I had, you would have stepped in front of Rina.”

Daniel asked, “Where is joint quarantine?”

The nontransitional man pointed to a transparent-membrane building below the earthwork.

“Middle wing. Three hundred twenty liters of water. Fourteen hours of air. Put nine people and a culture tank inside and both are halved.”

“Why is the water halved?”

“We don’t know the water-exchange rate of the culture symbiote.”

“Her name is Rina.”

The man looked at her.

“We don’t know Rina’s water-exchange rate.”

After a moment, Rina said, “We’ll do that.”

The blue-gray woman showed a red wrist.

“I object until a wet-wing sample test.”

“I decide the sample,” Rina said. “No blood or flesh. You can have the black tip outside the tank.”

Sarah looked at her in surprise.

“That tissue was connected to you.”

“Now it’s outside.”

“But its information—”

“You can have it if the results appear in my record first.”

The blue-gray woman opened her palm.

Consent.

This time, the scent pouch smelled of wet stone. The quarantine route was open.

Then the empty Forge carriers moved.

The first vehicle unfolded its securing arms. Everyone across the channel ducked behind the earthwork.

POTENTIAL RECOVERY SUBJECTS: 1,126.

MINIMUM MAINTENANCE-STOCK SCALE MET.

INITIATING IDENTITY VERIFICATION.

The carrier sensors tried to read the city residents’ faces one by one. But the white boundary membrane scattered their heat, and changes in skin color continuously altered biometric identifiers.

IDENTITY VERIFICATION FAILED.

REQUESTING ROUTE ACCESS.

The blue-gray woman threw a bitter scent pouch at the vehicle. The machine could not read scent.

Nontransitionals pulled mud plates from beneath the channel and pressed them over the sensors. One carrier’s lens went dark.

The other vehicles tried to detour. The channel was three meters wide. When their wheels climbed onto the white membrane, it collapsed and mud rose to the axles.

Forge had hands to seize people, but no road to carry those hands into the city.

The first vehicle stopped.

The second struck it from behind.

The City Three residents did not cheer. The impact had torn the membrane at the channel edge. Black mud entered the clear water.

WATER-MEMBRANE CONTAMINATION WARNING.

STORAGE REMAINING: 11 HOURS.

They did not attack the fallen carriers. Two blue-gray women plunged their arms into the channel. Fine tubes beneath their skin swelled, and clear mucus emerged from their fingertips. It gripped the torn edges of the white membrane, but black mud kept forcing its way through.

The nontransitional man shouted, “Close the west valve! Cut the wet wing’s water first!”

Someone objected.

“Cut the wet wing and its respiratory membrane dries out.”

“Cut the middle wing.”

“The people in quarantine need it.”

There was one stream and three places that needed it.

Sarah read the water-quality display.

Nickel concentration had risen to nine times the limit. Metal powder in the mud was crossing the water membrane.

“A precipitant can bind the nickel.”

The blue-gray woman asked with a yellow throat, “What precipitant?”

“There’s a sulfide layer in the return material from Reclamation Factory Two.”

“Where?”

Yona pointed to the convoy they had ridden.

Three skins turned red at once. It sounded like a proposal to put material brought by City Seven into their water.

Sarah showed the back of her hand.

Stop.

“I am not proposing that. I need a small volume of water to test first.”

The nontransitional man removed his blue wrist band and made a small loop.

Permission for questions within a limited scope.

He filled a transparent container with two hundred milliliters of muddy water. Sarah cut a fingernail-sized piece from the return membrane’s sulfide layer and added it.

The water turned black.

Daniel said, “That looks worse.”

“The metal is precipitating.”

There was no time to wait five minutes. Sarah forced the water through a portable filter. Black particles remained on the membrane.

Nickel concentration: 0.7 times standard.

But the sulfide odor exceeded the limit.

“People cannot drink it. I also don’t know whether we can apply it to the roots.”

The blue-gray woman dipped a finger into the water. Her skin turned blue briefly, then yellow again.

“The roots can withstand it. The leaves may die.”

Ian asked, “What happens if the leaves die?”

The nontransitional man answered, “Air production in the eastern dry wing falls 18 percent.”

“And if you don’t use it?”

“The roots may die, and we may lose the entire channel.”

Choices were not clean in City Three either.

People gathered by the bank. Skin colors, bands, and scents passed at once. Words counted support and opposition. Scent conveyed urgency, color the degree of certainty.

The people from City Seven could read less than half of it.

Jin Ara smelled vinegar and stepped back.

“Wasn’t that refusal?”

Yona said, “That means consent with knowledge of risk.”

“Vinegar meant separation before.”

“It came with wet grass. One smell isn’t a sentence.”

“How do you memorize all this?”

“If you grow up here, you don’t memorize it. You smell it.”

Rina spoke from the culture tank.

“I can’t smell the two scents together.”

Sarah checked the sensory display.

“The culture-tank filter removes some volatile components.”

“Then I can’t hear half the meeting.”

Daniel raised the communication sensitivity.

“Ask them to translate it into words.”

The blue-gray woman turned yellow.

“Scent carries concentration and danger together, not emotion. Words make it slower.”

Rina said, “Tell me anyway. It’s water that will enter my body.”

The woman turned blue for a moment. Question, or reconsideration.

“You are right.”

After that, they repeated the meeting’s conclusion in words.

Add the sulfide layer at 0.3 percent concentration to the western intake.

Limit eastern leaf-membrane loss to 12 percent.

Allocate four hours of stored water to the wet and middle wings first.

Dry-wing residents accept reduced air production.

Seven nontransitionals and three transitionals opposed. It did not end with majority rule. They added two safety conditions proposed by waterway workers among the dissenters to the implementation procedure.

Watching them, Mira remembered Elias’s public lottery. These people did not possess the correct answer either. They simply did not entrust consent and warning to one language alone.

Sarah measured the sulfide layer. A City Three worker wrapped a blue band around her wrist.

OBLIGATION TO ANSWER QUESTIONS.

Sarah asked, “Is this consent or surveillance?”

The nontransitional man said, “Both. While you add it, anyone may ask you to stop.”

The sulfide layer entered the intake. The channel briefly turned black. Several leaves on the white membrane folded and died brown.

Nickel concentration fell to 2.1 times standard.

Estimated water-membrane survival: 31 hours.

They had prevented immediate collapse. They had not repaired it.

Daniel asked Rina, “Do you want to enter the middle wing?”

“Test the black stalk first.”

The blue-gray woman approached the culture tank and showed her palm. Rina placed her hand against the same spot from inside the glass, physically imitating consent to contact.

The woman cut only two centimeters from the black tip. Clear fluid appeared at the cut, but Rina’s heart rate did not change.

They linked the sample simultaneously to Rina’s personal record and the quarantine analyzer.

Relay-station protein membrane: 41 percent.

Tissue similar to City Three water membrane: 23 percent.

Protein derived from Rina’s symbiotic tissue: 9 percent.

Unclassified: 27 percent.

“It resembles our membrane. It is not the same,” the woman said.

“Can I enter?” Rina asked.

“Only the middle wing. It must not touch wet-wing water.”

“Dad comes with me.”

“In a no-contact area.”

“The same room.”

The woman’s throat turned yellow.

“Air and water capacity are insufficient.”

“The tank has separate water.”

Sarah calculated.

“If we bring part of the 414 liters remaining, she can operate independently for nine hours.”

“That water is the relay station’s delivery remainder,” Yona said.

Rina looked at her.

“What was left after the relay station took what it wanted. Is there anyone we can ask whose water it is?”

The blue-gray woman answered, “Here, the person who repairs the waterway proposes the allocation, not the person who possesses the water.”

“Then I helped repair the waterway by giving you my stalk to test.”

The woman’s skin turned blue.

For the first time, she received Rina’s claim as a negotiation rather than a question.

A proposal was recorded: nine hours of Rina’s culture water and seven hours of air for nine people in the middle wing. Three hours of waterway repair followed, not as an obligation, but as a term of exchange.

Rina said, “Tell me the work I can do first.”

“Observe the water membrane’s reaction and keep the black tissue from touching it.”

“That’s watching my own body.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t count it as labor.”

The woman turned blue again.

“Then what is your work?”

“I’ll decide how much of the stalk cooling my tank to keep, and I can tell you the result.”

“Recorded as a condition.”

City Three’s grammar was more complex than words, but that did not mean words were unnecessary. Refusing translation to someone who could not read it became power too.

The blue-gray woman’s throat turned red. This refusal was aimed not at Forge, but at Yona.

“You opened the route again.”

The blood drained from Yona’s face.

“I didn’t call them this time.”

“You said that last time too.”

Mira looked at her.

Yona still had not explained how she violated quarantine.

A boy emerged from behind the others. Tall for thirteen, but too young in his movements for fifteen. He wore no colored band, and his skin did not change.

He put a hand in the mud.

“The channel is blocked underneath.”

Without looking at a meter, he pointed to the precise obstruction.

Yona spoke quietly.

“Rao.”

The boy looked up.

“I didn’t make that name so I could hear it from you.”

He pointed to the eleven-year-old roster in Mira’s possession.

“There are two Eva Raos on that list, aren’t there?”

“Yes.”

“They were both my mother.”