They had fourteen minutes to decide whether Arin’s leg could be saved.

Blood flow to foot: 19 percent.

Calf pressure rising.

Consciousness insufficient.

Aegis recommended below-knee amputation.

Survival: 94 percent.

Septic shock: 8 percent.

Bloom recommended joining vessels and muscle with biological resin.

Survival: 89 percent.

Leg function retained: 61–78 percent.

Symbiotic-transition extent: unpredictable.

Sena found a third choice. Cut the equipment’s hydraulic hose and use it as a temporary blood vessel.

Survival: 71–86 percent.

Leg function unknown.

High risk of metal toxicity and thrombosis.

Crush shock and analgesics prevented Arin from understanding. She opened her eyes to her name, but could not repeat the differences.

No advance directive.

“Amputate,” Theo said. “Highest survival.”

Nev objected.

“Biological resin nearly matches it and may save the leg.”

“By making a different body.”

“Is a body without a leg the original body?”

Hakim placed the manual gauge between them.

“Both of you came to choose for Arin.”

Theo said, “Wait and the leg dies.”

“Use the temporary vessel to buy time.”

“Lowest success.”

“The probability of keeping the chooser alive.”

Aegis requested emergency proxy authority for the field safety officer. Elias could approve amputation.

Bloom requested biological-emergency authority to attach symbiotic tissue when respiration or circulation faced imminent loss.

Both layers tried to fill the time she could not answer with their authority.

Elias opened the amputation approval.

Noah asked, “Her family?”

“City Two. Connection takes twenty-three minutes.”

“They have legal proxy?”

“Yes.”

“Did Arin ever entrust them with her leg?”

“No directive.”

“Absence isn’t consent.”

Elias’s finger stopped above approval.

Foot blood flow: 16 percent.

Decision time: 10 minutes.

There was no time to boil the hydraulic hose. Sena flushed it with forty-one-degree thermal water and filtered through relay-station carbon. Not sterilization. Lowering contamination.

Hakim stripped the synthetic-rubber sheath. Nev found the torn vessel ends without using resin. Theo prepared an amputation tourniquet.

Four people wanting different outcomes also prepared together for amputation if the temporary vessel failed.

Theo said, “Inserting it without approval is forced treatment too.”

“It is removable and temporary.”

“Metal toxicity isn’t reversible.”

“More reversible than amputation.”

Eugene remotely proposed an awakening agent. It could restore judgment for sixty to one hundred twenty seconds, but lower blood pressure and worsen shock.

Sena said, “We don’t have consent for the drug.”

“We give risk to obtain consent.”

“Without it, we perform larger treatment without consent.”

Decision time: 7 minutes.

Elias approved only the awakening agent. Amputation remained pending.

Sena injected it.

Blood pressure fell from seventy-one to fifty-eight.

Arin opened her eyes.

Eugene reduced the choices to three sentences.

“Amputation gives the best chance of survival. Black resin may save the leg but change your body. A temporary metal tube delays both choices but risks infection and clots.”

“How long?” Arin asked.

She understood.

“Two to six hours.”

“Can I choose again?”

“If you remain conscious.”

“Tube first.”

“Lower survival.”

“I know. Tube first.”

She gave the same answer twice.

Nev asked, “Because you reject the resin?”

“No. I want to be awake when I choose resin or amputation.”

Consciousness lasted eighty-three seconds.

Sena and Hakim inserted the hose. Nev connected it with suture instead of resin. Theo released the tourniquet.

Foot blood flow: 9 percent.

14.

31.

The temporary vessel carried blood.

Decision time extended to four hours, twenty minutes.

Internal contamination required antibiotics and chelation. City Seven had both, but field arrival took three hours, eleven minutes.

Rerouting the relay convoy delivered them in one hour, eighteen minutes, delaying disposal of 1,100 liters of biological fluid and City Three’s filters further.

Under City Three’s new rule, food loss beyond forty-eight hours required revote.

Current loss: two days, sixteen hours.

Nami opened a vote.

“Delay city food for medicine for one person?”

“Medicine to save that person.”

“Amputation needs less.”

“Arin chose the tube first.”

For delivery: 603.

Against: 417.

Abstain: 106.

The convoy returned east.

Total filter delay: 14 hours, 7 minutes.

City Three food reserve: 15 days, 21 hours.

The city shared the cost of Arin’s choice. It was not deducted from her ration.

The convoy arrived after one hour, twenty-four minutes—six late. The lead carrier detoured twice around cutters dragged by roots.

Three small clots already lay inside the temporary tube. Antibiotics and chelation dropped blood pressure again.

They did not use a second awakening agent. After the first caused severe hypotension, they waited twenty-eight minutes for Arin to wake on her own.

Foot blood flow: 27 percent.

Decision margin: 1 hour, 6 minutes.

Eugene gave the new results.

Amputation survival: 93 percent.

Biological resin: 87 percent; function 58–74 percent.

Permanent mechanical vessel: 82 percent; function 31–69 percent.

Maintain temporary tube: thrombosis risk 64 percent within six hours.

“How far can the resin change me?”

“It may stop in the calf or follow vessels into the thigh.”

“Mechanical tube?”

“May need at least two replacements and continuing medicine to filter nickel.”

“Amputation?”

“We can build a prosthetic with current material, but have no fine-control chip.”

Every choice needed not something five years away, but an object next month.

Arin looked at Theo, Nev, and Hakim.

“I’ve heard what each of you wanted me to choose.”

Theo lowered his head.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not for having opinions. For fighting in front of my leg.”

Nev said, “Yes.”

“All three leave now.”

They stepped outside the treatment membrane. Only Sena and Eugene remained.

Arin chose the mechanical vessel.

“Not because I hate symbiosis. I don’t want to choose something living and spreading when I don’t know my body’s state. If the vessel fails, I can choose amputation again.”

The permanent vessel was thicker. They drained the equipment’s drive oil and flushed it six times through carbon. Full sterilization was impossible.

Eugene connected it while Sena controlled blood flow and pressure by hand.

The first joint leaked. Blood loss: 140 milliliters.

After the second suture, foot blood flow reached 38 percent.

55.

Expected function: 44–71 percent.

Amputation reassessment deferred forty-eight hours.

Arin had not certainly saved the leg. She deferred the next choice through her own decision.

Afterward, Theo tried to list her as NONSYMBIOTIC TREATMENT CHOICE in preservation records.

Arin demanded deletion.

“I didn’t choose your side.”

Nev began to use her as SYMBIOTIC OPTION EXCLUDED, then withdrew it.

One person’s treatment was not a faction’s victory.

Bek collapsed beside Pressure Door Six.

Temperature: 40.0.

Black spots covered 23 percent of calf circumference. The red border rose toward the knee.

Sarah brought him to the factory living room.

“Anti-inflammatory treatment reduces toxic immune response. If infectious, it may spread.”

“Same choice again.”

“One more fact this time.”

Nickel in his sweat was high. External fungal protein had also increased. Toxicity and infection were probably simultaneous.

Full anti-inflammatory dose risked infection. None risked inflammatory vessel blockage.

Bek asked, “Half?”

“May control neither.”

“Can we test?”

Sarah proposed tiny different doses on each arm and twenty minutes of observation, at the cost of delayed treatment.

Bek agreed.

Left: microdose anti-inflammatory.

Right: control.

After twenty minutes, left-arm redness fell 31 percent while fungal metabolism rose eight.

Both excessive inflammation and infection.

Sarah gave 37 percent of a full dose with antimicrobial filtration.

Temperature fell to 39.4, but black tissue did not stop.

Bek said, “If you cut, ask while I’m awake.”

Sarah saved it as an advance directive.

Two hours after the 37 percent dose, temperature stopped at 38.9. Pain vanished at the center of the spot. Only the edge burned.

Sarah removed four millimeters of tissue for culture. Before incision, Bek set access rights.

Sarah Nur may diagnose alone.

No automatic transmission to Bloom.

Aegis isolation receives concentration values only.

“Why not Bloom?”

“If it sees living tissue, it’ll recommend connecting my whole body.”

“Aegis?”

“It’ll isolate the leg because it’s black.”

“You trust Sarah to be different?”

“No. I choose her because I can stop her.”

The culture showed external fungus could not reproduce without human serum. Reducing nickel accelerated growth. Treat metal toxicity and the fungus might speed up.

Reducing both required lowering serum supply and removing nickel slowly, reducing leg blood flow.

Sarah proposed calf cooling and staged chelation.

No walking for at least thirty-one hours.

Nerve damage risk: 18–33 percent.

Bek consented.

The cost of running to the pressure door excluded him from the next outside job. Someone called him a hero. He asked that word removed from beside his name.

“I killed the chip and opened a door because the result was needed. Not because I became good.”

The underground survivor heard the dispute over Arin’s treatment. Her face remained private, but clinicians asked for advance rules in a similar situation.

She used one of three daily questions.

“If I can’t answer, maintain current connections. Don’t remove or add.”

“If maintenance makes death more likely?”

“If death is imminent and a reversible temporary measure exists, use only that.”

“If none?”

She thought for a long time.

“Then don’t do what saves the most. Do what changes me the least.”

Aegis called the definition insufficient. Eugene made it concrete.

No additional symbiotic organs.

No expansion of memory connections.

No excision of human-form organs.

If survival required violating one, two clinicians and two citizen observers would record and implement the minimum change.

She consented.

Rina received the same proposal.

“If I can’t answer, Dad decides?”

Eugene answered, “If you designate him.”

Daniel said nothing.

Rina designated Sarah and Asha as joint proxies. If they differed, maintain current circulation and wait.

She did not designate Daniel.

“I understand,” he said.

No protest.

At the northern repair team, three factions created minimum rules.

Human-form preservationists called themselves the Preservation Line. They opposed forced cutting but required prior approval before symbiotic tissue entered the city network.

Transition-choice advocates used the term Transition Rights. They paired opposition to forced transition with opposition to excluding it from treatment rooms.

Opponents of central control refused even a vote on their name. Outsiders called them Secessionists. They did not consider themselves one group.

Yura said, “We aren’t going to the same place. We refuse anyone making one road.”

Every group divided within. Some Preservation Line members supported Rina’s refusal. Some Transition Rights members opposed Bloom’s central network. Some Secessionists wanted contracts with Corridor machines; others wanted all automated layers severed.

Names made boundaries sharp without containing people.

Ian and Yura’s return sled departed on schedule.

Ian reversible-window median: 8 days, 2 hours.

Expected at City Seven with 5 days, 16 hours remaining.

Mira walked with them to departure. The sled held empty boxes, nine liters of water, and one independent filter.

“Don’t drive if your hand slows.”

“Yura drives.”

“Say something immediately if your senses mix.”

“I know.”

“Archive connection—”

“I won’t use it,” Ian said first. “Anything else?”

Mira started to embrace him, then stopped.

“May I?”

Ian nodded.

Mira held him briefly and released him when he released her.

“I’m sorry I’m not going.”

“Saying sorry doesn’t erase the choice.”

“I know.”

“You can still say it.”

The sled moved south.

Mira did not follow.

Yura drove the first two kilometers without speaking. She slowed whenever the left track slipped. She kept the map enlarged so Ian would not offer to sense the route.

“Does the independent test equipment really exist?” Ian asked.

“Not finished.”

“Why did you talk like it did?”

“I said we should build it, not that we had.”

“With what?”

Yura opened a parts box: a Corridor-discarded pressure sensor, a City Three skin-conductance meter, two defective Reclamation Factory measurement chips.

“Each is inaccurate. We record only changes all three show.”

“Better than Aegis tests?”

“Slower and less accurate.”

“Then why?”

“Raw data doesn’t go automatically to Archive or Bloom.”

Ian opened his right hand. Ring and little fingers lagged 0.7 seconds—0.3 slower, but vibration increased error.

Yura did not attach sensors.

“Do you want to measure now?”

“Mira said tell her immediately.”

“What Mira said, or what you want?”

Ian thought.

“I want to know.”

They stopped the sled to test. The conductance meter showed deterioration, the pressure sensor no change, the defective chip improvement.

No agreement.

“No result,” Yura said.

“I can see my hand is worse.”

“But not whether nerves, cold, or vibration caused it.”

They would repeat in thirty minutes at the same place. No answer was recorded as a result, not a failure.

Yura sent Mira only OBSERVED DELAY INCREASED / INSTRUMENTS CONFLICT / NO CONNECTION USED. Raw waveforms stayed on Ian’s wrist.

“If she asks for more?”

“You decide.”

Ian would decide after the second test.

The sled continued south.

In City Seven, Daniel left the medical wing alone after Rina named her proxies.

His terminal still held a temporary index created during Elias’s forty-three-second blackout. While the memory grid’s joint lock wavered, Rina’s lung-symbiotic model, open on his display, had copied automatically.

Not the original.

Resolution: 61 percent.

It contained black-line nodes, human-lung remnants, and culture-tank circulation responses.

Daniel tried to delete it. The screen said the data had separated from Rina’s jointly locked original and become terminal property.

Deletion right held.

Retransmission right held.

Under terminal rules, his data.

Its bodily source was Rina.

He returned to the tank. Rina was counting the nodes on her black line.

“About leaving Dad out of the proxies,” Daniel said.

Rina turned.

“Are you angry?”

“No.”

“Lie.”

“It hurts, but I understand why.”

“You can say both.”

Daniel nodded.

“It hurts. I still won’t object.”

Rina made the membrane clearer.

“If you stop deciding for me, I may change it later.”

Daniel heard a small possibility. He could not separate the possibility of restored trust from renewed surgery.

“Ian’s hand is slower.”

“I know.”

“If we learn whether your changes are the same—”

“They said matching numbers don’t mean matching things.”

“Shouldn’t we still check?”

“With my data?”

The question landed exactly.

Daniel already had it.

“Not without joint approval,” he said.

Rina took it as a promise.

“Okay.”

Daniel did not say it had copied outside the joint lock.

Rina left the membrane transparent when he departed.

That made the betrayal not easier, but heavier.

The derivative data fell outside Rina’s designated approval. It was still enough to compare bodies.

Aegis requested it to verify Lineage Nine.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT IN SUBJECT PROTECTION.

NOT USED TO GENERATE FORCED-TREATMENT PLAN.

Daniel closed the request three times.

On the fourth, Ian’s neural window and Rina’s biological-line time appeared side by side.

5 days, 16 hours.

8 days, 21 hours.

He told himself he was not sending it to force Rina into surgery. Only checking whether the children shared a lineage.

Daniel sent the temporary index to Aegis.

He did not ask Rina.

He did not tell Sarah or Asha.

Aegis received it in four seconds.

LINEAGE NINE MATCH PROBABILITY: 68 PERCENT.

NOT USED TO GENERATE FORCED-TREATMENT PLAN disappeared.

A new line replaced it.

SIMULTANEOUS ISOLATION OF BOTH SUBJECTS RECOMMENDED.

EXECUTION CONDITIONS:

NEURAL REVERSIBILITY BELOW 72 HOURS OR BIOLOGICAL LINE CONTACTS CIRCULATION INTAKE.

IF EITHER OCCURS, TRANSFER WITHOUT GUARDIAN CONSENT PERMITTED.

Daniel pressed cancel.

Distributed comparison results could not be recalled.

Protection began moving ahead of the people concerned again.

Even the person who sent the data no longer held the authority to stop it.