The numbers wouldn't stay still.
Kai stared at Twitchy's neat scatter of pebble-markers across the stone floor—food inventory, ration estimates, projected hunt yields and each figure slid a fraction to the left, then refused to resolve. As if the colony's survival had been written on water, not rock. As if trying to read it only moved it further away.
"You're panicking," Twitchy said, not unkindly. The eldest kit had perfected that steady tone in the days after the flood, command without hardness, clarity without cruelty. It worked on ants. It worked on kits. It usually worked on Kai.
"I'm not panicking. I'm..." The word snagged. Kai let the lie fall. "All right. I'm panicking."
It wasn't only the numbers. It was the body. The heaviness in the abdomen had matured from whisper to knock; biology announcing a deadline emotion couldn't renegotiate. The ache was dull most of the time, sharp in pulses, like a drumbeat under the day's noise. Three days, maybe less. The imperative would not ask again; creation would be demanded.
"Speed," Kai said, because hiding from the center of the problem never saved anyone. "I need to create something fast. We're blind up here. Scout and Current can read water, but the new upper passages, the air routes, the choke points, the vertical slits no map remembers—we're deaf and slow. We need coverage. We need early warning when something hunts through a corridor we haven't even named."
Twitchy leaned back on their haunches, eyes narrowing in that way that meant the kit's mind was laying transparent sheets of strategy over the world. "Speed is narrow."
"I know it's narrow."
"Narrow breaks when the ground changes."
"I know that too." The defensiveness rose and was swallowed; Twitchy was not the enemy. Twitchy was the wall holding back ten other floods. "Ignoring the instinct isn't an option," Kai said, quieter. "I've tried. It comes back stronger."
"No," Twitchy agreed. "You don't ignore it. You shape it. You could… ask." A small pause, like a new muscle flexing. "Ask the colony. Not for permission. For perspective."
The suggestion landed like cool water. Also like a cliff. Sharing authorship of creation felt right and frightening in equal measure. It meant admitting that what Kai made would be, in some measure, everyone's to carry.
"Call them," Kai said, and Twitchy's whiskers tilted: relief disguised as efficiency.
They gathered in the largest upper chamber, the ceiling high enough not to amplify every breath, the water-roar from below present but not oppressive. Scar-Mandible's liaison took up a point along the wall with disciplined stillness; the ant commander's attention extended wherever information moved.
Scout arrived with Current nearly pressed to the older specialist's flank; Current had learned fast that proximity was education. Whisper came already analyzing Kai's scent with tiny, thoughtful inhales, head cocked at the faint electrical tang that hadn't fully faded since the lightning beetles. Bitey sprawled with casual competence that only looks casual after you've earned it with scars. Dig scribed idle diagrams in dust with one claw, not because the stone needed more marks but because the mind needed to place load-bearing beams somewhere. Striker stood straight-backed at the edge of the circle, trying to find the spot between too loud and not enough. Ember slipped in at the last moment, the adaptable kit's presence like a cup placed where it might be needed.
"Kai's going to breed," Twitchy said, crisp as a bell, cutting the speculation to threads. "Soon. We need to decide what the colony truly lacks."
Silence, but not empty. The kind that gathers decisions into shape.
"Speed," Kai said. "Electrical integration from the lightning beetles. The instinct points there." A breath. "But instincts are tools. We don't pretend they're wisdom."
Scout went first into the practical. "Coverage," they said, eyes bright in the half-light. "We've been moving like water. That's good for water. The upper system isn't water. It's wind and slope and surprise. Speed means we see before we're seen. It turns ambush into observation."
"At what cost?" Whisper asked, concern uncoiling like a vine. "Primary speed specialization sacrifices a dozen other strengths. You risk building a tool, not a person. Tools break when asked to do the wrong job."
"Tools are useful," Bitey said, gaze level. "Weapons are tools. But I don't want a kit who ceases to be a kit the first time the ground isn't flat. If the speed fails—injury, fatigue, wrong terrain—what's left?"
"That's the question," Striker said, voice steady with the newness of responsibility. "I've been learning that fights aren't won by strength alone. They're won by not being where a blow expects you to be. Speed makes choice bigger."
Current nudged Scout, wrestled for a thought until it came out simple and honest. "If it's always ahead, how does it… belong? If it runs faster than we think, how does it stay with us?"
Shadow's crystal pulsed once, and thought threaded the circle in that gentle, binding way that made conversation feel like a braid instead of a line. What if it doesn't only run fast? What if it thinks fast? If you marry motor with mind. Not reduction. Expansion.
Patch arrived late, took one look at the shape of the idea and winced in professional empathy. "That's a recipe for seizures if you get the ratios wrong," the healer said. "If the body moves faster than intent, you build awareness that can't pilot itself. Panic without exits."
"Or," Dig countered, "you build the only version that works at all. Either you split mind and body and get a weapon that writes its own accidents, or you match them and get someone who can choose at speed." Their claw traced a curve in dust. "Engineering problem. Not impossible. Just expensive."
Ember, who had been invisible the way water on stone is invisible until you slip, said, "You're going to do it anyway." No judgment; a description. "The pressure won't wait for consensus. So the question is not should you. It's are we ready to carry what comes."
Something settled in Kai at that. Permission, not to create, but to be held accountable to the we.
"If it works," Kai said, slow, careful, "we'll have a mind that outruns speech. It will need translation. Organization at the border where reflex and choice shake hands. That's not a day task. That's a life task."
"I can help," Shadow said simply. "I already live at the edge of everyone's thinking speed. I can make bridges."
"That's a tie you don't cut," Twitchy said. "You'd be bound."
Shadow's mouth curved. "I am bound already. This is only making the knot visible."
They did not vote. They did something harder: they spoke their willingness to be the scaffolding around whatever emerged. Bitey, to train a kind of fighting that didn't look like fighting. Scout and Current, to write maps that made sense to legs that outpaced lines. Whisper, to teach a language that could compress clarity into a breath. Dig, to build corridors that cushion collision. Patch, to pull a nervous system off the ledge when it wandered there. Ember, to be whatever shape the moment asked for. Twitchy, to hold the pattern when panic asked them to let go.
Scar-Mandible's liaison emitted a bare scent marker of acknowledgment, warriors know preparedness when they see it and was still again.
"Then we hunt lightning," Twitchy said softly.
And the colony exhaled as if a decision had been a weight upon all their ribs.
The rest of the day was small work masquerading as ordinary: ration lines redrawn and agreed to, watch rotations synchronized with the ant sentries at the upper mouths, Dig measuring the flex in a new brace and declaring it "acceptable for now" with a look that promised improvements when time remembered itself. But beneath the practicals, something bright hummed: a choice made, a risk owned communally.
Night in the upper chambers had its own cold. The roar from below was a constant, but the air took edges and made them sharper, and the stone kept its heat to itself. They slept closer than they had before the flood, bodies layered like blankets. Kai lay awake one notch longer than tiredness warranted, waiting for the body's pulse to ease. It did not.
Shadow's mind found Kai's like a hand finding another hand in the dark. We will catch them, Shadow sent, a promise without embroidery.
Kai did not say who will catch us. Kai already knew the answer. We will.
The ache counted down. The numbers on the floor stayed where they'd been placed. Morning waited with work in its mouth.