On that day, something else was building inside Kai that made Scout's water anxiety feel almost simple. It started as a dull ache low in the abdomen. By midday it was pressure. By evening it was pain that kept thought from holding a line. By night it was a physical order that didn't care about strategy meetings or flood marks: breed. Reproduce. Create.
Kai had felt breeding pressure before with Twitchy. This wasn't that. This was the code ramping every signal to maximum, demanding expansion now. It didn't leave space for timing or weather or enemy movement. It didn't even leave space for guilt. It was a drum under everything else.
"I need to breed," Kai told Twitchy in one of the short quiets, when Whisper was cataloging and Scout was marking and Bitey was pretending to relax. "Soon. Maybe tomorrow. My body's not making this optional."
Twitchy looked up from a cluster of markers the kit had been aligning and realigning like beads. The eldest kit's eyes were tired but clear. "Are you going to leave?" Twitchy asked, and there it was: the core fear. If creation meant abandonment, Twitchy would rather carry the flood alone.
"No," Kai said, and tried for a smile that probably came out as teeth. "I'm making more of us. More minds. More hands. We're going to need them."
"Because of the water," Twitchy said, not as a question.
"Because of everything." Kai pressed a shoulder to the wall, hunting for a spot where the internal pressure didn't feel like drowning. "We have days before the flood chews at these tunnels. Scar-Mandible still counts heads and paths. The kits are growing fast, but the jobs are growing faster. We're out of capacity to hold it all."
Twitchy slid closer and leaned in until their breaths matched. Leadership made Twitchy older on the outside. The body reminded you the kit had only been alive for eighty days. "Okay," Twitchy said. "What do you need from us?"
"I need to ask if it's right to do this deliberately," Kai said. "To design specific kits on purpose for what's coming."
Twitchy huffed a sound that hit somewhere between laugh and sigh. "You're asking us if it's okay to create slaves."
"I'm asking if specialization is slavery," Kai said, and even as he said it, the words tasted like something a smart liar would say.
That night he called everyone in. Not a council. No ranks, no votes. Just a circle on stone while water tapped its steady metronome and the ache in Kai's gut kept turning up the volume. Whisper came first and sat with the samples on one side like they were a comfort animal. Bitey took a spot with a view of every entry line. Scout paced a loop around the circle itself, unable to sit. Twitchy stayed at Kai's flank, close enough that the kit's heat reached through fur and armor. Shadow wasn't a body yet; the presence that was Shadow hovered like a second thought in Kai's head.
"You're asking if we're moral constructs or moral beings," Whisper said, skipping preface.
"I'm asking if I should deliberately design new kits or step back and let chance pick," Kai said.
Scout's pacing got sharper. "I didn't get chance," the kit snapped. "I am scent tracking and water sensing. That's what my body is. When I try to be something else, my body fights me. I can think desire in any direction. The muscles still go where the design points."
"You're not useless," Bitey said, and it came out rough but real. "You won the battle long before I hit anything."
"Because that's what I'm built for," Scout said. "But if I wanted to learn to fight like you, my body says no. If I wanted to build, my body says no. That's a cage with a nicer name."
"So are humans," Shadow said, voice without mouth, thought without scent. The den stilled.
"What?" Scout's markers flashed confusion, alarm.
"Humans," Shadow said. "Kai was one. Humans had drives they couldn't choose either. Hunger. Sleep. Sex. Bonding. You weren't free, Kai. You were another animal in a shape that told itself stories about freedom."
Kai stared at the floor and felt old memory rise: the human body's limits, the way choices were framed by hunger and work and the need to belong. "So specialization isn't a trick I invented," he said slowly. "It's the condition of being alive. The only lever I might have is honesty. Tell you what you are and why. Let you look at it."
"And are you doing that?" Bitey asked. Direct. No padding.
"I'm trying," Kai said. "But I don't know if trying matters if the effects land the same."
The ache surged. He broke off with a sound he didn't mean to make. The kits shifted back to give room. Pain didn't ask permission either.
"Do it," Twitchy said after a quiet that bent time. "Design them on purpose. But tell them what you did when they're ready to hear it. Let them accept it or fight it or leave it. That's the difference between slavery and specialization."
Whisper let out a marker that held agreement and fear in the same line. "If you go random now, we drown," the kit said, plain. "We need bodies tuned to jobs we can't cover."
Bitey nodded once. Scout didn't nod, but the pacing eased a fraction. Shadow felt like a weight settling on a shelf where it had been hovering.
"Three," Kai said, naming it to pin it down. "A builder. A water specialist with range Scout doesn't have. And a third I can't name yet. The memory points at it. I can't see the shape, but I can feel the pull."
"We'll stand with you," Twitchy said.
"Eat first," Whisper said, shoving a portion into Kai's hand. "Pain hates fuel."
Kai ate because the body demanded it. He lay down because anything else was pretense. Whisper cleaned tools and set the warm chamber closer. Scout left a final mark by the seep and forced the body to lie still. Bitey curled in a position that gave a view of everything. Twitchy placed a palm on Kai's shoulder and held steady pressure like a doorstop against panic.
The den dimmed into the kind of quiet that only feels like quiet after days of noise. Water clicked. Moss jars clinked. Breath stacked. The ache climbed another rung and stayed there, teeth bared.
The creation began at dawn...