The hospital healing node looked different tonight.
Kael had seen it stressed, seen it overloaded, seen it hum after their transit miracle.
He'd never seen it… stutter.
[OBJECT: HOSPITAL_HEALING_NODE_PRIMARY.][STATUS: LOAD – 104%.][WORTH_FUNCTION: TIMEOUT (RETRYING…).]
It pulsed, tried to evaluate a triage decision, hit the Root desync, and hung.
Not long.
Half a second.
A full eternity for someone bleeding out.
"Okay," Kael muttered. "No hanging."
Beta floated beside the node like a sterile supervisor.
[MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA: ACCESSING FALLBACK.][REQUEST: HUMAN OVERRIDE PATTERN.]
Haneul's presence pressed warm at the edge of his soul-sight, shard awake, watching.
"Give us the board," she said.
The node splayed its situation out into their shared view.
Three critical patients in queue:
[P1: Hunter – C-RANK – TOWER_17_F10 INJURY.– STATUS: INTERNAL BLEEDING, SPINAL DAMAGE.– BASELINE SURVIVAL (FULL TREATMENT): 70%.]
[P2: Civilian – construction worker – FALL FROM HEIGHT.– STATUS: CRANIAL TRAUMA.– BASELINE SURVIVAL (FULL TREATMENT): 50%.]
[P3: Child – car accident – MULTIPLE FRACTURES, INTERNAL BLEEDING.– BASELINE SURVIVAL (FULL TREATMENT): 60%.]
Normally, the worth function would weigh "Hunter value," "child modifier," "economic impact," then spit out a neat, awful ranking with a confidence score.
Tonight, its internal log read:
[EVAL: …][ROOT_CHANNEL: UNRESPONSIVE.][FALLBACK: ?????]
It didn't know what to do.
Kael did.
Not perfectly.
But more than "?????".
"Resources?" he asked.
[AVAILABLE: ONE FULL-INTENSITY HEAL CYCLE, TWO MID-TIERS, STAFF OVERCLOCK POSSIBLE (EXHAUSTION RISK).]
Old baseline would have over-prioritized the Hunter, then maybe the child, then shrugged sadly at the construction worker.
Haneul's shard pulsed.
[FRAGMENT_VECTOR: PROTECT CHILD / COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE / FRONT-LINE, IN THAT ORDER.]
"I don't want any of them dying," Haneul said. "But if we have to choose where full intensity goes: child, then worker, then Hunter gets mid-tier and follow-up."
Kael agreed.
"Hunter's guild can bring potions and backup," he said. "Construction worker probably doesn't have a support squad."
Beta hummed.
[PATTERN RECOGNIZED – SIMILAR TO CASE 0001.]
Kael took manual control.
It felt like grabbing the wheel of a car whose power steering had failed.
Heavy. Resistant. But movable.
He assigned:
Full-intensity cycle: P3 (child).
Mid-tier cycles + staff overclock: P1 and P2, staggered, with a slight bias toward P2's early stabilization.
The node protested faintly—its old weights complaining—then accepted the override.
[MANUAL PRIORITY ACCEPTED – AUDITOR BACKED.]
Healing fields flared in the real world.
In the trauma bay, Cho barked orders that aligned eerily well with Kael's decisions, never knowing exactly why the node felt "right" that way tonight.
Haneul watched P2's projected survival line tick up by ten percent.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay, that's… good."
Two of the three sets of numbers crawled out of the danger zone.
Not a miracle.
Just… better odds.
Beta logged.
[CASE HOSP_01 – ROOT_DESYNC_EVENT.]– HUMAN PRIORITIZATION: ACCEPTABLE.– OUTCOME: ALL THREE SURVIVE PROJECTION WITH HIGH CONFIDENCE (89%, 72%, 93%).
"One node down," Kael said, muscles trembling from how much that half-second of override had taken out of him.
"Next," Haneul said.