City Three’s water membrane had thirty-one hours left.

With one hand in the mud, Rao said the channel was blocked below.

He called both Eva Raos on the roster his mother.

Mira opened the list.

EVA RAO. 31 WEEKS PREGNANT.

EVA RAO. TRANSITIONAL CHILD. AGE 4.

“One of them gave birth to you?”

“Big Eva was my body mother.”

“And little Eva?”

“My name mother.”

Rao kept his hand in the mud. The skin of his palm had swollen white like wet paper.

“Big Eva died when I was born. Little Eva was the first to call me Rao.”

“She was four.”

“I was a baby.”

Little Eva survived the transfer convoy. After reaching City Three, she lived beside Rao until she was six. Before dying of a waterway infection, she left part of the symbiotic membrane in her palm to the moisture-sensing culture room.

That membrane was implanted in Rao’s hand when he was seven.

“Is that why you call her your mother?”

“Not because of the membrane.”

Rao looked up at Mira.

“Before she died, she said my name three times. Here, the first person to say your whole name is a name parent.”

“The record has no relationship like that.”

“Your record says not to write down families.”

Mira could not close the roster.

Yona stood across the channel. Rao did not look at her.

The blue-gray woman, Nami Sern, called the repair team. She was both quarantine supervisor and water-membrane graft technician.

“Where is the obstruction?”

Rao moved his right hand twenty centimeters.

“Two arm-lengths down from here. Water leaks right to left.”

Nami inserted a pressure probe.

It met resistance sixty centimeters beneath the surface.

“Shallower than the valve.”

“It isn’t the valve. The inside of the root is dead.”

Mateo, a nontransitional repair worker, said, “The nickel entered less than an hour ago. A root can’t already be dead.”

Rao’s wrist did not turn blue. He could not change his skin color. Instead, clear fluid gathered in tiny pores beneath his finger joints.

“It isn’t the nickel. The water is sweet.”

“You don’t locate water by taste.”

“Your machine only finds pressure.”

Mateo pushed the probe deeper. Moisture rose at the tip.

Salinity: 1.8 times standard.

Nitrates: 0.4 times standard.

Dissolved oxygen: 3.1 percent.

Readings from inside a dead root.

Without looking at Rao, Mateo said, “Dig.”

City Three’s people used their hands before shovels. They found the boundary between living and dead membrane with their fingers before inserting blades. Mira, Jin, and Luis joined the repair team.

Ian crouched beside Rao.

“How do you know?”

“My hand stings.”

“Mine doesn’t.”

“Your hand isn’t mine.”

“Can you hear the city too?”

“What sound?”

“The sound machines make without speaking.”

Rao removed his hand from the mud.

“I only hear machines when I kick them.”

“I can’t taste water.”

“Then we’re different.”

The two children were not disappointed. It was the adults who expected the same classification to produce the same answer.

Rao looked at Ian’s wrist.

“Zero?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

“Is it all right here if you have no function?”

Rao looked at the repair team.

“If you don’t have one, it’s fine. If you get one, there’s a lot of work.”

A repair worker called Rao.

“Check the left too.”

The boy did not answer.

When the worker called again, Nami raised the back of her hand.

Stop.

“We agreed on one segment.”

“The waterway is in danger.”

“A child’s hand is still not a city sensor.”

Rao watched Nami’s expression for a long time because he could not read her skin.

“I’ll check the left too.”

“Do you want to?”

“I want to finish fast and sleep.”

“Rest after two segments.”

The condition entered the work record.

Mira looked at Ian. In City Seven, the moment an ability was discovered, they calculated how often it could be used. City Three asked, but when water was scarce, pressure took the shape of a question. Better procedure did not erase need.

The repair team opened a meter-wide trench. Blackened water-membrane roots lay below. Dead tissue was tough. Mira inserted a cutting hook and pulled.

The root did not break.

“Internal fibers wrapped around the metal pipe,” Mateo said.

“Remove the whole pipe and the east supply stops.”

“Peel away only the dead part.”

“I can’t see it.”

Rao put his hand down again.

This time, his face tightened.

“Not here.”

“What isn’t?”

“The sweetness moved.”

He pointed three meters downstream.

The team dug a second hole. They found nothing.

The probe showed normal pressure.

Mateo said, “Wrong.”

Rao looked at his palm. The clear fluid had turned yellow.

“Too much nickel.”

Sarah ran over. The pores in Rao’s palm were red and swollen.

“The sensory membrane is saturated. You may be mistaking a concentration difference for direction.”

Rao said, “I was right before.”

“It may be different now.”

“I’ll know if I check once more.”

Nami offered the back of her hand without seizing his wrist.

Stop.

Rao did not put his hand back in the mud.

Water seeped into the misplaced trench. The team filled it again, but lost approximately nine hundred liters.

Estimated water-membrane survival: 29 hours.

Rao’s ability had found water and caused them to lose it.

Ian asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Hot.”

“Could I find it if I listened?”

Rao shook his head.

“Soil doesn’t talk.”

Ian did not touch it.

Sarah washed Rao’s hand with clean water. Nami recorded the amount.

Treatment water: 1.6 liters.

Not deducted from Rao’s personal allocation.

Public repair cost.

“But I was wrong,” Rao said.

“The city requested your senses and failed to prevent overload,” Nami answered. “Wrong readings are a city cost too.”

Mateo raised a yellow band in dissent.

“He chose to examine the second segment.”

“Water scarcity pressured the choice.”

“Then no one can ever choose dangerous work.”

“They can. It means they do not pay the cost alone.”

The argument did not stop the repair. Mateo inserted pressure probes every thirty centimeters. Mira listened to the pipe. Jin recorded flow changes.

Without Rao, they moved slowly.

Two hours later, the third probe detected a faint backflow. It was only forty centimeters from the first trench. A dead root had folded under the metal pipe.

Rao’s first direction was right. The depth was wrong.

Mira slid a thin metal plate beneath the pipe to support the living tissue. Mateo cut the dead root in five-centimeter increments. A single cut could let water pressure tear the living membrane.

Jin read the gauge.

“Up 0.3.”

“Stop.”

They waited for the water to settle.

Another five centimeters.

After the third cut, black water burst from the pipe. Luis forced in a temporary plug. It shot back and struck his chest.

He collapsed, unable to breathe.

Sarah checked his ribs.

“I don’t think any are broken.”

“Something else you don’t know.”

“Yes. I don’t know without imaging equipment.”

Luis stood with Jin’s help.

The team peeled away all the dead root. They wrapped a living membrane fragment around the metal pipe. Nami and two other transitionals sealed the boundaries with mucus.

The graft was not complete at once.

Estimated water-membrane regeneration: 18 hours.

Leak rate until then: 31 liters per hour.

City storage: 28 hours.

The repair had gained three hours, but the lost water and dead leaves meant they had not returned to the original thirty-one.

Nami released the scent for the end of work: wet wood mixed with salt.

Yona smelled it and still did not move.

“You may not enter the middle wing,” Nami said.

“Until quarantine ends?”

“The council decides after that.”

“I didn’t bring those people.”

“I’m not talking about the Forge route.”

Nami pointed upstream. Gray spots remained between new membranes.

“Nineteen days ago, you cut the isolation line to take Sef away.”

Yona’s jaw hardened.

“He was alive then.”

“So you dragged a contaminated body through the dry-wing corridor.”

“You told me to leave my brother outside.”

“We told you to wait forty minutes for the test.”

“He didn’t have ten minutes.”

“After you cut the line, two sections of water membrane died.”

Yona could not answer.

Mira remembered Yona saying she had cut Sef’s connecting line on the road back to City Seven. She had failed twice to let her brother go, and twice had been forced to cut.

Nami said, “Three dry-wing children lost their respiratory membranes after you left.”

“Did they die?”

“One is still being treated.”

Yona lowered her head.

“You didn’t mention that,” Mira said.

“You wouldn’t have come if I had.”

“You made that choice for us too.”

“Yes.”

Yona did not defend herself. She did not say whether this was everything.

The middle-wing door opened. A narrow channel divided dry and humid zones beneath the transparent membrane. Rina’s culture tank and the group could occupy the same room while their water and air circulated separately.

Daniel sat beside the culture tank. Nami drew a no-contact line on the floor.

“Palm before crossing.”

Daniel raised his palm.

Rina placed her hand against the glass from inside.

“You can come now.”

He crossed the line.

Rao sat outside with treatment membrane wrapped around his hand. Ian sat beside him.

“How old are you?” Ian asked.

“Thirteen.”

“The record says fifteen.”

“We don’t count the time in my body mother’s womb or before we came here.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t have my name then.”

“You had a body.”

“Here, we count from after the name.”

“I count from the day I was born.”

“Is that why you’re two years younger than me?”

“I’m eleven.”

“Then I’m two years older.”

“Four by the record.”

“Don’t fight the record. You won’t win.”

Rao smiled for the first time.

Sarah compared the two children’s exposure histories.

IAN HAN.

FUNCTION ZERO DETERMINATION: AGE 14 MONTHS.

INDIRECT EXPOSURE TO CITY LOW FREQUENCIES AND BLOOM PRECURSORS.

NO DIRECT NEURAL CONNECTION.

RAO.

ESTIMATED FUNCTION ZERO DETERMINATION: AGE 9 MONTHS.

CHRONIC EXPOSURE TO WATER-MEMBRANE SYMBIONT.

PALMAR CHEMOSENSORY MEMBRANE IMPLANTED: AGE 7.

The children were not results of the same experiment. A society that found no function gave them the same number. Different environments made different bodies.

City Three’s archive opened more of the transferred Function Zero roster.

Total: 27.

Current location confirmed: 19.

Deceased: 3.

Record mismatch: 2.

Location unknown: 3.

Changes fell into seven categories.

Soil-chemistry sense.

Machine low-frequency sense.

Immune-symbiosis regulation.

Memory synchronization during sleep.

Light-polarization vision.

Electric-field orientation sense.

No change.

Ian asked, “Some didn’t change?”

Sarah said, “That’s the largest group. Eight.”

“Then are they not Zero?”

“Zero never described your body. It meant the city failed to find a function for you.”

Rao looked at the treatment membrane on his hand.

“Getting a function doesn’t change a person’s number.”

Sarah opened the raw data behind the categories. The labels sounded like abilities. The records beneath them devoted more space to failures and costs.

One of the three soil-chemistry subjects felt every smell as pain when it rained. One of two machine low-frequency subjects could not sleep near generators. The child classified under immune-symbiosis regulation did not reduce another person’s inflammation; by changing their own body temperature, they merely slowed nearby symbiotic-membrane growth.

The sleep-memory subject could not read memories. They repeated nightmares in time with the sleep cycles of people in the same room.

The electric-field subject could find north but lost balance near high-voltage lines.

“Why call these functions?” Mira asked.

Sarah said, “Because they could be measured.”

“Does pain become a function when it’s measured?”

Mateo, now serving as an archive worker, answered.

“At first, we kept the categories City Seven sent. People needed names to receive rations and treatment.”

“And now?”

“We use the name the person chooses. If they want no name, we record only symptoms and support needs.”

Rao said, “I call mine listening to the waterway.”

Ian asked, “You said soil doesn’t talk.”

“When I explain it to people, that makes them understand faster.”

“Then it isn’t true.”

“You don’t literally hear the city talk either.”

The two children looked at each other.

“Right,” Ian said first.

Nami requested the first inspection of the water-membrane graft. They had installed three pressure probes and a salinity sensor instead of using Rao, but the instruments could not read changes inside the living membrane.

“You don’t need to use your hand,” Nami told him. “Just look at the readings with us and tell us what you already know.”

Rao kept his wrapped hand in his lap.

Salinity: 1.3 times standard.

Dissolved oxygen: 8.1 percent.

Flow: 402 liters per hour.

“The right root is slow.”

Mateo moved the probe.

Pressure was normal.

“Why do you think it’s slow?”

“When I touched it before, the sweetness came late.”

“You aren’t touching it now.”

“I remember.”

Mateo recorded it as an inference, not a confirmed value.

When they opened the outside of the right root, one graft point was too thick. Mucus blocked the water-membrane pores. Rao’s memory was right, but it could not guarantee the present state.

Mira removed some mucus with a thin scraper. Flow rose to 437 liters per hour.

Rao did not add his name to the work record.

“Why?” Ian asked.

“I didn’t use my hand this time.”

“We found it because you spoke.”

“It was a memory. It could have been wrong.”

“Even wrong readings are a city cost.”

“Cost and credit are different.”

Ian thought for a long time.

“City Seven puts both under function.”

“Is that why you ran this far?”

“Mom brought me out.”

“Did you want to leave?”

Ian remembered what he had said at the open outer wall.

“Later.”

“At first?”

“Mom decided.”

Rao asked no more.

A middle-wing medical worker tried to examine the children’s hands. Ian did not extend his.

“I’ll tell you what hurts.”

“I need the motor values for your right hand.”

“Why?”

“To assess whether soil-sensory membrane implantation is possible.”

Mira turned.

“Who asked for an implant?”

The worker’s throat turned yellow.

“I intended to explain an option because he shares the Zero classification.”

Rao raised the back of his hand.

Stop.

“We are not the same Zero.”

“The record is the same.”

“You just said records aren’t bodies.”

The worker withdrew the yellow and turned blue.

“I withdraw the explanation. I will offer it again only if Ian asks first.”

Mira stood as though deprived of the target for her anger. City Three also looked for possibility in a child’s body. The difference was whether it truly stopped when shown the back of a hand.

Ian asked Rao, “Why did you get the implant?”

“When I was seven, I kept collapsing in the water. They said bacteria from my body mother were fighting this water. Little Eva’s membrane might make me less sick.”

“Did you choose?”

“They let me smell three scents.”

“At seven?”

“No pain. A changed hand. Do nothing. Three choices.”

“If you did nothing?”

“They said the fever could continue, or I might recover.”

“Were you scared?”

“Yes.”

“Are you glad now?”

Rao took a long time to answer.

“I like finding water. I don’t like being called to find it.”

Ian covered his wrist.

“I’m similar.”

What the children shared was not a function. It was the wish to run when told they were needed.

Sarah opened the current consent records of the nineteen located subjects.

Consent to ability use: 7.

Conditional use: 6.

Use refused: 4.

Unable to express preference: 2.

City Seven’s record had no such distinction. Each was listed only as active or inactive.

Rina read the list on her screen.

“Who decides for the two who can’t communicate?”

Nami said, “For now, no one uses their abilities. Guardians and medical teams decide survival treatment together.”

Daniel looked at Rina.

“Why?”

“Just asking.”

Rina knew her father had found their past in the list.

“I can speak now.”

“I know.”

“What if I can’t later?”

Daniel did not answer easily.

“I’ll follow what you decide now first. For things we don’t know, I’ll find a way not to decide alone.”

“Not just you?”

“Yes.”

“With whom?”

“You choose.”

Rina looked in turn at Ian, Sarah, and Nami. She did not choose a name yet.

City Three’s archive had tried and failed to find a common cause among the Function Zero children. Birth region, gestational air-membrane exposure, parents’ functions, culture water, and vaccination all differed.

Only two things were shared.

They had not responded to existing function tests.

And several cities had kept them as long-term observation subjects.

Whether the experiment or the child came first differed by record. Some cities introduced symbionts after a Function Zero determination. Others exposed parents to precursors before birth.

Ian and Rao were not copies of the same plan.

Several failures had collected beneath one number, and each city attached a different next experiment.

A new signal entered the last line of the record.

One of the three missing subjects had responded.

The origin was neither City Three nor City Seven.

1,840 kilometers north.

FUNCTION ZERO SUBJECT 04.

STATUS: ALIVE.

CHANGE PATTERN: CLASSIFICATION REFUSED.

The signal contained no biometric or function values. Instead, it attached all 214 function-test questions used across the cities. Every question carried the same answer.

MEASUREMENT REFUSED.

Sarah checked the route. The signal had bypassed the northern city network through an old weather-observation relay. Power was weak. The next possible transmission was seventy-one hours away.

Ian asked, “No name?”

The final fragment contained one form of address.

Nur.

The same as Sarah’s surname.

Sarah enlarged the display, but there was no family record. She could not tell whether the name was coincidence or meant for her.

A short request followed.

DO NOT GATHER THE 27 IN ONE PLACE.

THE MOMENT WE GATHER, WE BECOME AN EXPERIMENT AGAIN.

The signal ended there.