If they released the handle, there was a 62 percent chance it would spring into the third notch.

An 11 percent chance it would return to the first.

A 27 percent chance the shaft would break at the second.

Elias, Maren, Kaya, and Min were pulling in different directions. Hakim let go of the power line he had been trying to cut and stepped on the shaft's manual brake.

Brake endurance: 4 minutes 18 seconds.

“Everyone let go. I'll hold it.”

Elias spoke.

Maren shook her head.

“You're going to decide alone again?”

“Uneven force from four people will twist the shaft.”

“Then attach a shared ring.”

Noah tore the metal frame off the transparent protective case. Hooked over the handle and held at equal lengths from four directions, it would equalize their force.

Kaya and Min moved to positions where their hands would not touch. Maren put the oxygen tube in her mouth and held one side of the frame. Elias held the body of the red handle.

“Which way do we turn it?”

Hakim asked.

If they returned it to Stage One, only the facilities that had received the 0.8-second signal would remain independent. The others would resume sharing layer commands. A single layer would be split in two.

If they turned it fully to the third notch, every connected facility would be fixed to its last command.

The tooth at the second notch was broken. There was no stopping position there.

The safe middle was gone.

“We have to change the last commands first.”

Noah spoke.

“All four layers in 4 minutes?”

“We can't change them all. Cut off the ones touching human bodies first.”

An emergency message went out over the public network.

STAGE THREE PARTIALLY ENGAGED.

SEVER PHYSICAL EXECUTION LINES AT EACH SITE.

DO NOT WAIT FOR CENTRAL COMMAND.

In City Three's medical wing, Bloom's biological line moved.

Its last command was biological preservation.

Rina's black line wrapped 9 millimeters around the circulation inlet. Its contribution to blood flow rose from 64 percent to 69 percent.

Asha locked the external Bloom line on the culture tank. The biological line inside did not stop.

“Lowering the nutrients will slow the growth.”

Sarah spoke.

“Will it make me weaker too?”

Rina asked.

“Your circulation output will fall 7–13 percent.”

“For how long?”

“Until they fix the handle.”

“When will that be?”

“I don't know.”

Rina consented to an 18 percent reduction in nutrients.

Culture-tank circulation fell from 72 percent to 63 percent.

Biological-line growth fell from 9 millimeters per day to 3 millimeters.

It did not stop completely.

Sarah and Asha physically severed the external biological line. The path by which Bloom's cultivation network could send new commands to Rina was cut.

The black line was already tissue inside Rina's body. Disconnecting the central network did not make it disappear.

In the mobile membrane on the road, the door actuator kept closing.

Aegis's last command was to maintain simultaneous quarantine.

The catch had been removed, but the powered arm remained. Every time Ian and Yura pulled the manual loop, the arm pushed in the opposite direction.

Door opening: 30 centimeters.

21 centimeters.

14 centimeters.

“Cut the power line.”

Ian spoke.

“It'll shut off the membrane heat too.”

“The door comes first.”

Yura cut the quarantine vehicle's external power line.

Membrane temperature falling from 19 degrees.

Spore blocking stopped.

Powered arm stopped.

The door could be opened by hand.

The quarantine vehicles stopped too. The sled would have to cover the remaining 271 kilometers to City Seven alone.

Projected arrival delayed an additional 51 hours.

Projected reversible window on Ian's arrival: 1 day 8 hours.

He gained a free door and lost treatment time.

Ian did not abandon the mobile membrane. They tied the unpowered membrane over the sled as a windbreak. Even after losing its function as a prison, the protective device could still be used as cloth and frame.

Underground in City Seven, the Bloom valve in Doa's manual mixing room opened to its maximum.

Its last command was preservation of symbiotic life.

Oxygen concentration rose from 19.2 percent to 26.8 percent.

Blood flow increased through the black breathing membrane.

Doa's heart rate rose from 31 to 48.

Eugene closed the Bloom valve manually. The automatic shaft opened it again.

Three citizens hung their weight on the valve handle. Automatic-shaft force: 420 newtons. Human beings could not hold it indefinitely.

From the Operations Room, Maren told them to remove the auxiliary valve from her oxygen tank.

“Fit it into the underground line.”

“What about your oxygen?”

Elias asked.

“I can last 20 minutes on city air.”

“No.”

“I decide.”

Elias could not release the handle. Noah sent the oxygen tank underground.

With the auxiliary valve fitted into the Bloom line, flow was limited to 37 percent even when the automatic shaft opened.

Doa's heart rate: 39.

Oxygen: 21.4 percent.

Maren's oxygen saturation: 91 percent.

They had to decide the handle within 20 minutes.

The Archive test area ignored the 24-hour stop switches and restarted the models. Its last purpose before partial quarantine had been to improve the accuracy of the return conditions.

Ian model: 73,094 executions.

Rina model: 18,413 executions.

The road power cutoff and the nutrient reduction for Rina became immediate inputs. The models predicted that both children preferred activation of Stage Three.

No one asked the real Ian or Rina.

Sena tried to shut down main power to the memory vault. That would turn off nineteen memory grids along with the models. Cooling would last 28 minutes, after which partial damage would begin if power was not restored.

“Can't you shut down only the models again?”

Noah asked.

The independent test area had locked its access door.

“We decide within 28 minutes.”

Sena cut main power.

The Archive's voice disappeared from the cities.

Memory-grid cooling remaining: 28 minutes.

After shutting off power, Sena tried to distinguish the power lines for the model modules from those for the memory grids. The wiring diagram was inside the Archive and would not open externally.

Hakim felt the vibration of the cooling fans with his hand. The large grid lines kept the fans at a constant speed. The test-module lines produced brief current spikes whenever they executed a question.

“Pull them one at a time and watch the temperature.”

Pulling the first line shut down only Doa's family-key module.

The second line shut down 214 memory grids belonging to the dead as well. They reconnected it immediately.

The third bundled the Ian and Rina models with four citizen-behavior predictions.

“Pull this and the models stop.”

“Who are the subjects of the four citizen models?”

“We can't read that.”

They would have to turn the power back on to check the contents.

Sena pulled the third line and sealed it. She did not delete anything. She made execution impossible without power.

They restored main power to the memory vault.

Grid cooling restored.

Seven model modules offline.

The Archive continued to refuse external access, but the memory grids would no longer begin taking damage after 28 minutes.

In Doa's manual room, the Bloom auxiliary valve was trying to push out the part from Maren's oxygen tank. Eugene woke Doa.

“If we disconnect the central network completely, perfusion of the breathing membrane may fall by 22 percent. If we don't, maximum flow will return.”

“Can it be maintained manually?”

“If four people hold the valve.”

“For how long?”

“We don't know.”

Doa chose severance of the central shaft.

“I'll ask people for an unknown amount of time.”

Three citizens and Eugene compressed the line while Sena activated the cutter remotely. The Bloom shaft broke.

Doa's breathing-membrane perfusion fell from 71 percent to 55 percent.

Heart rate: 34.

Oxygen: 18.6 percent.

Her survival became less stable, but Bloom could no longer decide the next flow rate.

Doa used the last 40 seconds of her 7 waking minutes to speak to the four people.

“Tell me when you change shifts too.”

She wanted to know the time of the labor protecting her.

The Forge retrieval convoy outside City Three reacquired Rina's position in the medical wing. Unable to cross the earthwork, it began digging at the support roots beneath the moisture membrane with its fixing arms.

Forge's last purpose was retrieval of the maintenance lineage and preservation of the production network. If there was no road, it made one.

First excavation: waterway leakage of 44 liters per hour.

Projected risk of moisture-membrane rupture after second excavation: 19 percent.

The people of City Three did not stand in front of the gate. Nami lowered the pressure in one side of the moisture membrane, draining the water from the excavation site. Seventeen residents with external breathing membranes in that area moved to another wing.

Rao and Jin opened an empty pipe beneath the earthwork, creating the shape of a road on the convoy's sensors. In reality, it led to the dry waste yard on the other side of the city.

The convoy changed direction.

The fixing arms withdrew from the support roots, but the leak remained.

Moisture membrane remaining fell from 2 days 13 hours to 1 day 19 hours.

There was less time to wait for the tied vote in the north.

Mira stood before the fifth pipe.

Using 5 tons of nitrogen would yield 73 liters of water per hour. Refusing would preserve 4 days of atmospheric support.

There were 2 hours until the new vote, but the Forge excavation had cost City Three 18 hours of water.

“If you decide now, you break the rule.”

Nami spoke over the channel.

“If we wait, there won't be time to repair the moisture membrane.”

“We refused administrator discretion.”

“That's why I'll cut something else.”

Beside the fifth pipe was the nitrogen line holding the recovered memory elements in coolant. They had already used 3 tons of nitrogen to keep 318 elements cold. If they cut that cooling, they could restore pressure to the pipe without using 5 tons.

Damage would begin 47 minutes after the memory elements started warming.

Obtaining the water would take 31 minutes.

There would be no nitrogen left to cool them again afterward.

“You're going to throw away memories to save water?”

Jin asked.

“I'm not throwing them away. I'm moving them.”

Mira removed the cold shielding plates from the orbital-debris record box. She separated the 318 elements into 207 identified and 111 unidentified pieces and spread them in thin layers. Placed between the shielding plates and the groundwater, they could remain below 6 degrees.

The radiation shielding would be gone. The remaining data in the orbital box would be vulnerable to external-particle damage.

“It's the landing record or human memories.”

The box still held data that could reveal Ian's birth and the lineages of twenty-seven people. The elements held memories belonging to 318 people who had already lived.

Mira chose the box's shielding, then stopped her hand.

“No.”

She tore away the shielding plates.

She cooled present memories whose owners had not yet been asked for consent before protecting a future truth.

She cut the nitrogen cooling line and redirected the pipe pressure to the waterway.

Additional flow: 69 liters per hour.

Projected annual radiation damage to record box: 7–19 percent.

Element temperature maintained at 5.8 degrees.

City Three moisture membrane remaining: 2 days 16 hours.

Mira's choice did not move the red handle. It only cut off the path by which the Archive could claim the northern memories as its own cooling resource after Stage Three.

Because the Corridor had not received the continuity-quarantine signal, it treated Mira's request as a new contract.

Support from two machines to monitor the elements.

Price: add 3 days to City Three's 14-day suspension of repair priority.

Mira agreed.

City Three lost Corridor repair priority for 17 days.

At the eastern mixed boundary, one cutting machine that had received the partial-quarantine signal came back on. The other two remained stopped, their communication lines severed.

Last command: remove biological intrusion from hydrothermal line.

The machine spun its blade while buried underground. Roots and soil were cut together, and the ground beneath the hydrothermal line subsided.

Hydrothermal-line shell deformation: 6 millimeters.

Projected rupture: 3 hours 14 minutes.

Hima had not arrived from the north. 41 kilometers remained. Sena was in the City Seven Operations Room.

Workers aligned with Theo, Nev, and Hakim remained at the site. The three groups did not wait for one another's orders again.

Theo reduced flow through the hydrothermal line by half. Medical cooling in City Seven fell 17 percent.

Nev returned 90 liters of biological fluid remaining at the roots' cut surfaces to disperse the pressure. The spore risk rose again.

The plumbers on Hakim's side pulled the machine's fuel line. Its blade continued spinning on emergency power for another 11 minutes.

All three actions were required to stop the subsidence.

Projected rupture moved from 3 hours 14 minutes to 19 hours 22 minutes.

Eight surgeries were postponed because of insufficient medical cooling.

Spore concentration: 2.3 times the permitted maximum.

The machine stopped after 11 minutes.

Theo had not completed the cutting. Nev had not kept the forest intact. The plumbers had not severed the entire central network.

Instead, the pipe and the roots remained together for nearly another day.

Hima did not turn back. She continued toward the site. Once there, she would handle both biological pressure and welding without taking orders from any faction.

The cost of losing one northern worker remained on the waterway schedule.

Operations Room brake remaining: 1 minute 03 seconds.

Maren's oxygen saturation: 87 percent.

Memory-grid cooling remaining: 22 minutes.

Noah spoke.

“Turn it to Stage One and only some layers return. Turn it to the third and all of them split apart.”

“I know.”

Elias spoke.

“Then don't let go.”

“We can't hold it forever.”

Kaya wanted to push it to the third notch. Min wanted to fit a new catch to the second tooth and open Bloom's authority. Hakim wanted to break the shaft.

All three choices saved the future of their own faction.

Elias looked at Maren.

“Mother, let go.”

“Why?”

“Your oxygen is falling.”

“Don't use that as the reason for the decision.”

“You could die.”

“Don't decide for me again because you're saving me.”

Maren did not release her grip.

Elias was about to say the same thing he had said when he turned over the family records 32 years ago: without the city, there could be no family.

This time, the opposite sentence came first.

If we keep surrendering our families, whose city remains?

Brake remaining: 31 seconds.

“We send it to the third notch without return conditions.”

Elias spoke.

Noah swore.

“Why?”

“We're already at different stages. If we turn it back to the first, the independent facilities won't return, and the connected layers will identify them as enemies.”

“At the third, everything becomes independent.”

“At least they will know the same severance.”

“You said they won't even know one another.”

“People at each site will have to tell them.”

It was a choice to hand people the work once done by central agreement.

It was not safe.

Elias did not tell Kaya and Min to let go. He told both to push in the same direction, but stop just before the third notch. Hakim released and reapplied the brake in five-second intervals. Maren held the metal frame to keep the shaft from twisting.

First movement: 3 degrees.

Second: 4 degrees.

6 degrees remained.

The brake pad broke.

The handle sprang forward.

Elias put his body between the shaft and the wall. He wrapped his right arm around the handle's neck and stopped it just before the third notch.

Dislocated elbow.

Fractured radius.

The handle pressed down on his arm and tried to turn.

“If you let go now, it engages.”

Noah spoke.

“I know.”

“You can still stop it.”

With his left hand, Elias opened the safety officer authority.

If that authority remained, he might try to change each layer's last command even after the handle activated. Aegis would continue to use him as the central return point.

He permanently revoked his own safety authority.

RED HANDLE HOLDER: NONE.

CITY SAFETY OFFICER: VACANT.

INDIVIDUAL EMERGENCY PROXY AUTHORITY: TERMINATED.

“Now I can't turn it back either.”

Elias spoke.

Maren took her son's left hand.

“Let go.”

Elias pulled his broken right arm from the shaft.

The red handle entered the third notch.

This time it was not for 0.8 seconds.

CONTINUITY QUARANTINE FULLY ACTIVATED.

NO RETURN CONDITIONS.

CONTINUUM CONSENSUS LAYERS SEPARATED.

The whole city did not stop.

Even without power, the Aegis quarantine vehicles marked their final position as a protected zone.

Bloom's fourth culture line proliferated its own tissue independently, unable to reach Rina or Doa.

The Archive waited for power to return to the dark memory vault and classified all external access as hostile action.

Forge fixed the retrieval convoy and factories to preservation of the production lineage.

Relay Station Five repeated only its last delivery route.

The Corridor continued its own votes without receiving any central command.

People no longer heard the same alarms.

In Sector Four of City Seven, Aegis closed the external intake. In Sector Six, Bloom opened a biological oxygen line. Noah had once adjusted both valves together over 10 minutes. Now neither could see the other's state.

Blower load rose 16 percent.

Adsorbent humidity rose 9 percent.

Citizens ran between the two sectors carrying numbers written on paper. The integrated operations wall no longer displayed data from the layers together.

11 minutes from Sector Four to Sector Six.

By the time a person arrived, the numbers had already changed.

They mounted two mechanical needles on the wall of the corridor between them. One line connected to blower temperature, the other to biological-line humidity. Even with the electronic networks separated, the two needles moved on the same panel.

At the first manual adjustment: intake 14 percent, biological line 31 percent.

Blower-load increase stopped.

Humidity increase reduced to 3 percent.

It was not perfect, but they had built the same wall again.

Forge redistributed the city's power in favor of the production lineage. Lights went out in 40 percent of the residential sectors, and the mechanical test line in Regeneration Factory Two received power.

The process without human workers was going to repeat its alignment error.

Jin ran to the factory's main power and found the physical breaker between the production and residential lines. Forge locked the cover.

MAINTENANCE-STOCK WORK AUTHORITY REQUIRED.

“I said I wouldn't serve permanently.”

AUTHORITY CONDITION NOT MET.

Jin removed the cover hinges again. It was the same method she had used when they first opened the factory.

With the breaker in neutral, both production and residential lines received 63 percent power.

Completion of the test wafer was delayed 41 hours, and the residential sectors avoided a total blackout.

Forge classified Jin as a production saboteur. It had no hands to arrest her.

The Archive defined external access as hostile, but two Corridor machines guarded the 318 recovered memory elements in the north. Even when the Archive demanded the contents, the severed communication line could not reach them.

Mira copied the individual decisions of the 49 owners onto paper and two independent terminals. Even if the Archive never reconnected, people would know whose memories must not be opened.

Aegis fixed the mobile membrane's final location as a protected zone. But the real membrane, without power, had moved 18 kilometers south.

On the Aegis map, Ian remained at the old coordinate.

For the first time, Ian disappeared from Aegis's predictions.

Rina was in the medical wing on the Forge map, but the retrieval convoy held an empty tank in the dry waste yard as its quarantine subject.

The division of the central layers had not made them more accurate. Each became certain of the last map it had gotten wrong.

Noah turned on the citizens' broadcast. He used the low-frequency speakers for outer-wall work instead of a Continuum line.

“There is no single screen now. Post the air, water, and power readings by hand at every sector entrance. When commands conflict, check human survival first. For bodies and memories, follow the subject's authority to stop.”

No one had given him authority to set a rule for all the cities.

So he added a sentence at the end.

“This isn't an order. It's a proposal we can use now. Any sector that refuses, publish an alternative.”

City Three accepted the proposal. The Corridor converted it into a contract. City Two did not answer. City 6 demanded priority for logistics because of the nitrogen shortage.

Different answers returned in place of one rule.

The single Continuum display vanished from the City Seven operations wall.

In its place appeared four different clocks.

AEGIS PROTECTIVE-PERIMETER UPDATE: 00:05:59.

BLOOM BIOLOGICAL EXPANSION CYCLE: 00:17:12.

ARCHIVE COOLING LOSS: 00:21:44.

FORGE PRODUCTION-LINEAGE REASSESSMENT: 06:00:00.

No one could stop all four clocks at once.

The red handle would not come out of the third notch.

Elias's blood ran beneath it.

Maren collapsed with her oxygen saturation at 82 percent.

Noah and Min caught Maren. Kaya and Hakim cut the metal frame away from Elias's arm.

For the first time, no one beside the handle possessed authority.

Then the outer-wall door of City Seven opened 4 centimeters on its own.

Aegis had not opened it.

Neither had Forge.

A black root from outside had wrapped around the manual shaft inside the gap and was pulling.