When the black root entered beneath the eastern fire door, projected oxygen time fell from 2 hours 17 minutes to 1 hour 51 minutes.

Heating channel inside door: 43 degrees.

Root growth: 7.1 meters per day.

The closed door had severed the cold avoidance channel and created a warmer path.

Hima did not use her bandaged right arm to push the root. The seventeen people moved away from the door. The root tip split 4 centimeters before the gap and climbed along the rubber seal.

On the other side, Aegis repeated the same sentence.

PROTECTED SUBJECTS MUST RETURN TO SAFE ZONE.

“Which side is the safe zone?” Soma asked.

No answer.

On the map from before continuity quarantine, both the mixed boundary where the crew stood and City Seven beyond the door were uninhabited zones. Aegis had people to return, but no people in the place of return.

The fire door was 4.2 meters wide and weighed 3.8 tons. Even with the motor cut, a gravity weight pressed it down. The manual chain was inside the city-side wall.

Hima touched the edge of the door.

Surface: 52 degrees.

Cutting would produce toxic smoke from the inner insulation.

Safe high-temperature cutting time: 7 minutes.

To conserve oxygen, the people had to sit. But the manual valve room was beyond the third door, and the hydrothermal line's 18 hours 12 minutes fell whenever the leak increased.

“If we cut the door first, we'll block the avoidance channel again.”

Hima poured the remaining 11 liters of coolant into the heating channel before the root. The tip retreated 2 centimeters. The water would warm in 9 minutes.

They had to open the door from outside within those 9 minutes.

In City Seven, Elias spread the fire-system diagram on the floor. His right arm was fixed in a splint. Two fingers had almost no sensation from compression.

“There's a thermal fuse in the south wall.”

Noah asked,

“A release?”

“No. In a fire it cuts the chain and drops the door completely.”

Melting the fuse would not open the door. It would lock it into the floor groove. Even Aegis could not raise it again.

“Another route?”

Elias indicated a maintenance passage on the drawing. Width: 38 centimeters. It connected the gravity-weight rooms on both sides of the door, but had been filled with fireproof material and sealed 27 years ago.

“Who can enter?”

“I need to check.”

Instead of answering, Noah brought the medical table.

Recommended time for radial surgery: within 1 hour 20 minutes.

Afterward, projected hand recovery falls from 12–47 to 8–39 percent.

Before Elias could say he would postpone treatment, the surgeon drew a line.

“Reading a drawing doesn't require your arm. Entering the passage is different work. Don't describe them as one choice.”

As safety officer, Elias would have calculated the risk and assigned people. Now he had no authority to assign anyone. He explained only the cross-section, the type of fireproof material, and the position of the gravity weight.

Volunteers disclosed their builds and lung function. They chose not the thinnest person, but someone who fit the dust mask and could return within 12 minutes: Kaya and repair machine T-12. T-12 fit through the 38-centimeter passage, but its damaged front axle required someone to push it on the incline.

Elias consented to surgery.

“Let me hear the door open.”

“You may not be able to hear during surgery.”

“I consent to that too.”

He left no new command in his absence.

When Kaya opened the passage cap, gray fireproof powder spilled out. After 18 kilograms were removed, there was room for human shoulders. T-12 pushed in a small suction tube first. Residential power: 0.3 percent allocated to the extractor.

Output from the small turbine fell to 3.4 percent. One of the four rectifiers had exceeded its cooling limit and disconnected again. Pushing the remaining three harder carried a 44 percent chance of failure within 6 hours.

The City Four copper-telephone amplifier was removed from its 20-minute power rotation. One unpowered direct line remained between the lower room and the outer membrane. Voices grew faint and could travel in only one direction at a time. Rio called turn numbers instead of names to confirm who was listening.

The steam converter moved at 0.05 kilometers per hour.

City Four branch: 12 hours 31 minutes.

Opening the test outlet farther would raise residential power, but increase turbine-shaft damage from 31 to 48 percent. Minseo did not open it. Saving the people trapped at the eastern door did not give him the right to decide City Four's time without limit.

City Four answered over the telephone.

“Keep the current speed. Human exits come before the time our fan starts.”

The decision would be reconfirmed in 40 minutes. If the communication power failed and they could not ask again, consent would not extend automatically. The converter valve would remain no more open than it was.

While the extractor removed powder, the food-culture temperature fell 1.1 degrees. Projected next harvest fell 2.3 percent. The electricity used to open the door was not free. Its loss would keep growing after the rescue ended.

At that moment, the mechanical air stopped in Doa's room.

Oxygen: 17.7 to 17.4 percent.

An Aegis protective door had closed Doa's room too. Inside were the manual mixing room, Doa, and one medical worker. The door could be forced from outside, but the pressure difference might spill spores from the biological air into the corridor.

“If we turn off the extractor, what happens to the eastern door?” Doa asked.

“At least 24 minutes of delay,” the medical worker said.

“Wait until oxygen here is 17.2.”

“Below that, your judgment may slow.”

“Ask me again at 17.3.”

Doa did not surrender the measurement in her room to open another door. She kept the measuring battery and yielded only the mechanical air for 21 minutes.

Inside Rina's protective door, temperature fell faster. Biological-line growth slowed to 1.9 millimeters per day, and circulation was 58 percent.

Aegis displayed an old protective message above the door.

NO MOVEMENT UNTIL ADAPTATION SUBJECT STABILIZES.

Rina could pull the manual-release lever. But opening the door would spill humid air at 29 degrees into the 18-degree corridor and could drop circulation by 3–6 percent at once.

Sarah asked from outside,

“Do you want to stay, or should we open it?”

“What if we put up insulation first?”

“We're short by 60 centimeters.”

“Cut my bed membrane.”

The bed membrane was the last double layer preserving Rina's temperature. Cutting half to erect in the corridor would let her leave, but reduce insulation by 34 percent if she returned.

Rina chose to cut the membrane and open the door.

“Don't record leaving as treatment consent.”

“Movement consent only.”

Asha and Sarah held the membrane outside while Rina pulled the lever inside. The Aegis motor pushed the door closed. Rina did not release the lever, but her wrist could not withstand the force alone.

Daniel stood at the end of the corridor. Since his joint access was suspended, he had not entered the medical membrane.

“Hold only the membrane,” Rina said.

Without answering, he took its left corner. He touched neither Rina's body nor the lever. While the three blocked the wind, Rina moved through the 43-centimeter opening.

Circulation: 58 to 55 percent.

Body temperature fell 0.4 degrees.

She sat in a corridor chair and chose measurement again after 10 minutes. She had not forgiven Daniel. But she decided which hand to borrow and how far.

The protective door to Ian's treatment room opened outward. The Aegis motor was locked, and there was no inside manual lever. The pediatric continuity ward had not been designed for a protected subject choosing to enter a dangerous area.

Ian knocked on the door.

The response came 0.7 seconds after his hand touched it.

“There's nothing I can open.”

Eugene checked the room's oxygen and medication temperature. Oxygen: 19.1 percent. Anti-inflammatory cooling: 4 hours 12 minutes. Remaining was not immediately dangerous.

“Do you want to stay?”

“Being unable to open the door isn't the same as staying.”

Ian chose to leave. He asked them to open only the door without ending treatment.

Outside, Yura tried to remove the hinge pin. It had been inserted from above, with only 3 centimeters to the ceiling. The entire door had to be lowered 3 centimeters before it could come out.

Two residential-network repair machines brought levers. One lifted the door while the other cut the lower support. Cutter power required: 0.2 percent.

This time they did not reduce the 0.6 percent cooling the Archive originals. Memories would not always be the first load switched off because they could not speak. They delayed warming the food cultures 20 minutes and replaced the operating-room preparation light with a portable lamp.

Elias's surgery began. Even with the preparation light off, the surgeon confirmed the incision under a battery headlamp.

“Continue?”

Elias answered yes to the last question before anesthesia.

In the eastern maintenance passage, Kaya crawled 9 meters. Resistance from the dust mask raised her breathing to 24 per minute. T-12 pushed the extractor tube from behind. Outside, someone read the length of the safety line.

2 meters to gravity-weight room.

Eastern oxygen: 1 hour 12 minutes.

Water in cold channel: 37 degrees.

One root tip pierced the door rubber. Black fibers unfolded against the inner mesh. The workers moved back 2 meters. Hima approached holding the sample bottle.

Surface potential: 11 percent of that during hydrothermal-line contact.

Temperature: 39 degrees.

No spores released.

There was no evidence it was attacking the door. The warm gap was merely there.

“When the door opens, reconnect the avoidance channel first.”

Hima spoke.

“Not the people?”

“Without the channel, the roots will enter the human route while we open it.”

They were the same task.

Kaya reached the gravity-weight room. The chain was rusted but intact. Reversing the manual gear could raise the door 12 centimeters. The problem was that the Aegis motor continued to apply closing force.

The motor cutoff was on the city side of the door.

Noah sent Aegis a new rule: protected subjects accept risk; manual exit takes priority; reassess after 20 minutes. Aegis did not acknowledge receipt.

“If words don't work, we have to cut the line,” Kaya spoke.

Cutting the motor line would disable automatic closure on all three fire doors. Even in a real fire, Aegis could not close them.

Projected fire-spread protection would fall from 11 minutes to 4 minutes 40 seconds.

Noah read the cost to the seventeen people in the east. Receiving answers one by one took 6 minutes. Fifteen consented to the cutoff. One opposed losing the fire function. One could not repeat an answer because of low oxygen.

They did not erase the objection with a majority vote. They asked the opposing worker for another exit.

“The ceiling exhaust shaft.”

Opening it would let three people leave first, but admit root samples and hydrothermal steam toward the city. The worker volunteered to climb out first and install a sample-blocking membrane.

Adding that choice produced people to handle fire response after the motor cutoff. They would install a manual smoke membrane in the ceiling shaft and have two people monitor it in 15-minute shifts. Instead of 11 minutes of automatic protection, they could secure 7 minutes 20 seconds while the workers remained.

Consent was asked again.

Sixteen in favor.

The person unable to answer received the oxygen mask first. Their silence was not counted as consent.

Kaya placed insulated cutters on the motor line.

“Cutting.”

The motors in all three eastern fire doors stopped.

T-12 hooked its work arm into the gravity gear. Kaya pushed the manual handle. The 3.8-ton door rose 2 centimeters and fell again.

Two broken teeth.

T-12 work-arm torque: 91 percent of limit.

Outside, four people pulled the chain. Of the seventeen inside, the person with the oxygen mask and Hima took the opposite chain. The two sides could not see each other. They kept time in threes over the copper telephone.

One.

Two.

Three.

Door: 6 centimeters.

Again.

Door: 11 centimeters.

The black root tried to enter the opening first. Hima and Soma pushed a metal plate from the cold channel beneath the door. Six liters of water spilled over the floor. The root tip bent sideways along the plate.

Door: 19 centimeters.

The smallest worker crawled through. Once outside, he did not open the door farther. He took hold of the next plate for the avoidance channel. The second person extended it.

Every person passing through left fewer hands on the chain. People outside replaced them. At the end, Hima and T-12 remained.

T-12 could return through the maintenance passage, but its front-axle temperature was 83 degrees. It was 2 centimeters too tall to pass beneath the door.

“Remove the work arm.”

A component-ownership table appeared on T-12's text panel. The work arm contained a joint received from K-41. If removed, there was no facility available to reattach it.

Hima did not decide for the machine.

“Return through the passage, or remove the arm and leave?”

Passage return: 34 minutes. Probability of shutdown from axle overheating: 47 percent.

Work-arm removal: loss of 62 percent of work capacity.

T-12 removed the work arm.

Hima and Soma pushed the 38-kilogram arm through first. Then they tilted T-12's body. The machine scraped beneath the door. The arm containing K-41's component was not left on the floor.

All seventeen people and one repair machine came out.

Oxygen mask remaining: 23 minutes.

Hydrothermal-line time remaining: 17 hours 49 minutes.

Root avoidance channel connected: 6.1 meters.

Automatic fire-door closure lost.

They did not leave the door open without alteration. They fitted a 20-centimeter stop to the manual chain. Normally people and air could pass. In a fire, two people on opposite sides had to remove the stop before the door descended. A foot lever allowed a person trapped inside to reopen an 8-centimeter gap alone.

The authority to accept risk did not exist only on paper. The closing mechanism and the opening mechanism remained in different hands.

City Seven's six protective doors could not all be modified the same way. Their structures and pressures differed. At oxygen 17.3, Doa was asked again and chose to remain with the door closed and mechanical air restored. She had not consented to confinement. She chose the current room on the condition that they ask again in 40 minutes.

Rina had left, and circulation stabilized at 56 percent. The cut bed membrane became a temporary corridor windbreak.

Ian's door was tilted 18 centimeters after two hinge pins were removed. He and Eugene slipped through, but the medication cooling line remained inside. Someone had to enter every 38 minutes to check it.

“Taking off the door doesn't finish it,” Yura spoke.

“Keeping it locked was work too.”

With a hand delayed by 0.7 seconds, Ian picked up one removed hinge pin. Mass: 2.4 kilograms. He lifted it with both hands and placed it in the public parts box so the component capable of locking his room again did not enter any one person's pocket.

In the operating room, fixation of Elias's radius was complete.

Partial relief of nerve compression.

Projected hand function: 21–49 percent.

When he woke from anesthesia, he did not ask first whether the door had opened. He waited until the surgeon finished testing sensation and decided he could ask questions.

“The east?”

Noah read the costs as well.

All personnel returned.

Automatic fire protection lost.

Two manual monitors required at all times.

T-12 work capacity reduced 62 percent.

Elias did not say it was good.

“What was missing from my drawing?”

“The foot lever inside.”

“It should have been there.”

Maren heard him over the copper telephone from her bed. Her oxygen saturation was 93 percent. She did not automatically receive Elias's surgical record, and he did not send it.

“Do you still have your hand?” Maren asked.

Elias looked at the surgeon. The surgeon read the current sensation and projected range again.

“Weak sensation in two fingers. Function: twenty-one to forty-nine.”

Only after he repeated it in his own voice did Maren hear.

“They say you gave them the door diagram.”

“Kaya and T-12 found the way to open it.”

“You need practice not saying you did it.”

“And not saying I ruined all of it.”

Maren paused for breath.

“Yes. If you say everything is your fault, you put yourself in the center again.”

Elias did not look at his injured arm. His mother's surrender of family data and his own failure to question the protective design would not end with one surgery or one door. They did not decide forgiveness. They set the next call for 3 hours later.

The old design treated the possibility that a protected person might want to leave as a malfunction. Elias could have argued that he had not designed it. But while serving as safety officer, he had never once tested the door from inside.

The new provisional rules did not abolish protection.

PROTECTIVE ORDERS MUST DISPLAY THE RISK AND TERMINATION CONDITIONS.

A PROTECTED PERSON WITH CAPACITY TO DECIDE MAY ACCEPT RISK.

AUTOMATIC DOORS MUST PLACE THE INSIDE MANUAL EXIT AND OUTSIDE RELOCKING IN DIFFERENT HANDS.

IF A PERSON CANNOT ANSWER, MAKE THE MINIMUM CHANGE AND ASK AGAIN AFTER THEY WAKE.

DO NOT RECORD AN OPEN STATE AS FREEDOM IF THERE IS NO LABOR TO MONITOR IT MANUALLY.

Twenty-six minutes after the rules were written, a real smoke alarm sounded. Hot fireproof powder from cutting the eastern door had melted insulation on a ceiling wire. The flame was the size of a palm, but automatic fire protection was already severed.

Two manual monitors lowered the smoke membrane and brought a sand container. One tried to remove the stop. The person responsible for the foot lever inside shouted that three people remained on the other side.

An automatic door would have created 11 minutes of protection without asking the sensor where people were. At the manual door, confirming five voices took 47 seconds.

“Three outside confirmed.”

“No one inside.”

“Root avoidance plate obstructing.”

Removing the stop would make the door crush the plate and force the roots back toward the hydrothermal line. The monitors did not lower it. They threw sand first. The flame went out in 1 minute 18 seconds.

No plate damage.

Six meters of wire require replacement.

Sand used: 14 kilograms.

Had the decision come 30 seconds later, the fire might have spread inside the wall. A human exit had also admitted human error. The table did not record only success.

Manual-confirmation delay: 47 seconds.

No automatic closure.

Boundary-worker fatigue beginning to accumulate.

If the next shift did not arrive, the door would remain dangerously open by 20 centimeters. Noah did not hide the work under the word volunteer. It required sixteen people per day, each watching for 45 minutes. Combined with City Four's ventilation-pump and rectifier-cooling shifts, some people were assigned labor three times in one day.

Another line was added to the provisional rules.

CREATING AN EXIT DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY ASSIGN ITS PERMANENT MONITORING TO THE PERSON WHO CREATED IT.

The rules expired after 6 hours.

Aegis did not receive them. It saw only the severed eastern motor line and damage to City Seven's protective doors.

Protective perimeters neutralized: 9.

Adaptation subjects moved: 3.

Pediatric continuity risk increased.

Wheels sounded beneath the floor of the old ward.

Three continuity carriers emerged from their charging bays. One was the size of a human child. One was a wet type capable of enclosing Rina's body. One was a low-temperature type designed to preserve the black breathing membrane.

Protection belts unused for 63 years opened.

The first carrier read Ian's citizen number.

The second read the signal from Rina's biological line.

The third failed to find Doa's past identification key and followed her present body temperature.

Aegis asked none of the three for consent.

Protective devices approaching: 4 minutes 20 seconds.

This time, the doors were not coming to confine people.

They were coming to carry people inside the doors.