Her gaze moves over the cavern, the pool, the blackening channels, and the old structures half-buried in glowing waste. I see her counting. Not food this time. Not rations. Loss.
How much can be saved. How much must be abandoned. How much hope the City can hold before someone takes it.
“We need proof,” she says.
“We have proof.”
“The broken anchor, the sample, the residue thread. Not enough.”
“Sera.”
“Not enough to make them understand this.” She gestures with her good hand toward the pool, the eye, the enormous, impossible glow of the reservoir. “If I say there is abundanceunder them, they will hear salvation. If I say it is being drained, they will hear delay. If I say wait, test, map, decide carefully, they will hear only that I am standing between starving mouths and food.”
She is right. I hate that she is right. The City will hear epis, and hunger will become law. The Council will argue ownership over a thing already being stolen by something under their feet.
And Sera will stand in the center of that wanting. Her blood glowing. Her wound answering. Her body, turned by need into another resource.
No. The red rises, and I push it down until my claws ache.
“What proof?” I ask.
Her eyes flick to me.
Surprise, then something softer. She expected refusal. I give none.
“The map,” she says. “We mark the reservoir shape, the pool, the old structures, the corrupted channels. We take a visual record from here if we can. A strand from the blackened area and one from healthy growth.”
“No.”
Her expression sharpens. “That was fast.”
“Healthy growth, yes. Blackened area, no.”
“We need comparison.”
“The blackened area moved when the signal pulsed. It may contain the same filaments as the thing that cut you.”
“Then we contain it.”
“No.”
“Kavor.”
“No.”
The word lands too hard. I hear it, and so does she. Her face closes by one careful layer.
I loosen my hands at once. “Not as command.”
“It sounded muscularly command-shaped.”
“Yes.”
“At least you know.”
“I know the blackened growth is not worth your blood.”
Her eyes flash. “My blood is not the only blood available.”
