“Yes.”
“You omitted the bond.”
“No.”
Rosalind looks at me. So does Ila. I do not look away from Adran.
“The bond is unfinished,” I say. “The system noticed resonance before it noticed that word. Do not make a word into a chain because it is easier to hold than the truth.”
Adran’s face hardens.
“Pretty for a Zmaj,” Ila mutters, her mouth curving slightly into an almost smile.
Syin hears and looks offended on behalf of everyone. Virn does not smile.
“Then we proceed as if the system reacts to multiple living signatures and energetic sources. No one goes below without containment protocols,” Rosalind says, tapping one finger on the map.
“Containment protocols we do not have,” Ila says.
“Then no one goes below,” Rosalind says.
Adran steps forward. “People will not accept that.”
“No,” Rosalind says. “You will not accept that. The people will accept what keeps them alive if we speak clearly and move quickly.”
“You do not know City people,” Adran counters.
“I know frightened people,” Rosalind says.
“They are not the same,” Adran says.
“They are close enough when the floor opens,” Rosalind says.
Another tremor moves beneath us. The table shivers. Everyone stops.
Once. Pause. Again. The wrong rhythm travels through stone, faint but precise. The healthy sample brightens under its cloth. The blackened sample twitches. The anchor gives one sharp white-gray spark.
Ila jerks her hand back before touching the healthy strand.
Virn grabs the edge of the table to steady it. Syin steps toward the door. Adran’s guards look down like fools expecting the floor to apologize before it kills them.
I put my burned hand flat on the stone. Pain rises. The rhythm reaches through the table, through the map, through my palm. Not zemlja. Signal. Closer than before. Moving upward through branching channels.
The sample flares. Then the map moves. Not because of wind. Not because of tremor.
A thin line of blue-white light crawls from the edge of the cloth covering the healthy sample and touches the marked route Sera drew from the reservoir. The ink darkens. The line travels along her map marks, following the path she sketched from the pool, through the old structures, through the upward passage, toward the City lower district.
Then it splits. One line follows the route we took. The other goes where Sera marked no passage. A blank space beneath the west heat exchangers.
Ila inhales. “That is under Second Stillness.”
Adran’s head snaps toward her.
Rosalind looks up. “What is Second Stillness?”
Ila’s face has gone gray. “A ration dormitory. Heat shelter during peak. Elder overflow when the lower rooms are too hot.”
“How many?” Rosalind asks.
