Transit nodes had always made Kael uncomfortable.
It was one thing to see HP bars in a hospital.
Seeing them mapped over a train line felt… invasive.
But tonight, invasiveness beat roulette.
[OBJECT: TRANSIT_EVAC_NODE_GRAY-3.][STATUS: ROUTE OPTIMIZER – WORTH_FUNCTION TIMEOUT.]
A glitch in the Root channel had hit mid-cycle.
Somewhere, an algorithm was trying to decide whether to delay a scheduled Tower-runner express to clear track space for a potential evac train from a neighboring district whose power grid was hiccuping.
Old baseline weighed "Hunter throughput" heavily.
Potential evac need: speculative, one step removed.
Timing desync had frozen that evaluation halfway.
[CURRENT: EXPRESS TRAIN – ON SCHEDULE.][POTENTIAL: EVAC TRAIN – QUEUED, LOW PRIORITY.]
Haneul's shard pricked like a conscience.
[FRAGMENT_VECTOR: "EVAC FIRST WHEN COST IS SMALL."]
Kael zoomed in.
"Express is half full," he said. "Mostly mid-high ranks running a standard shift. They'll be annoyed if we delay them ten minutes. Nobody dies."
"Evac?" Haneul asked.
He pulled up the neighboring district's power node.
[GRID_NODE EAST-2: STABILITY – 83% → 61%.][FORECAST: 30% CHANCE OF OUTAGE IN 20 MINUTES. HIGH-RISES AFFECTED.]
"In a bad case, people in high-rises get stuck in elevators with failing air filtration," he said. "Kids, elders, people with medical conditions."
"Delay the express," Haneul said immediately. "No contest."
He smiled.
"Funnily enough," he said, "my ethics vector agrees."
He grabbed the transit node's hung worth function and shoved.
[MANUAL OVERRIDE: ELEVATE EVAC TRAIN PRIORITY WHEN CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE AT RISK.]
The node accepted, glitched once, then rerouted.
[EXPRESS_TOWER_17 – DELAY: 8 MINUTES.][EVAC_EAST-2 – DEPARTING NOW.]
Somewhere, Hunters groaned at the delay.
Somewhere else, a transit worker blinked at the sudden clearance but didn't question it.
[PROJECTED_CIVILIAN_INJURIES: -?]
There was no neat number for "the panic that never happened in the dark."
Beta gave it one anyway.
[ESTIMATE: 0–3 SEVERE CASES AVOIDED.][QUALITATIVE: "GOOD CALL."]
"Look at you, improvising," Haneul said.
He snorted.
"You're literally updating a god's conscience from our couch," he said. "Don't pin all this on me."
Her shard hummed, pleased and tired.
Kael looked at the list again.
Hospital: temporarily stable.
Transit: rerouted.
City fire: simmering but under control—for now.
That left the Towers.