Lily did not thank me for the light.
"Open the eastern gates."
"There's a predator there."
"Mira has already sent a sedative."
I could see her team's route: they needed four minutes, and in that time the beast could injure three people.
"Too long."
"For whom?"
The question irritated me because the Crown had an exact answer: for the three likely casualties.
Leon demanded that I release the dragon. I was keeping the beast's heart beating with a steady pulse; otherwise it might stop again.
"He'll die," I said.
"Then let me keep him going with my hands."
"You won't be fast enough."
"Maybe not."
A choice appeared on the panel: maintain the forced rhythm, or hand control to a weak human with no medical training. His chances of survival were better with me.
I kept the pulse in place.
The little dragon opened his eyes and tried to crawl away from Leon. His body would not obey because the Crown deemed immobility a medical measure.
Styx raised her stinger again.
I could integrate her independent core. Restore her speech, her wings and our former bond. At the same time, I could eliminate the possibility that she would stop me when the city needed to be controlled.
The panel was already waiting for confirmation.
Kane watched in silence.
He did not need to persuade me. The arguments appeared before me with the probabilities.
I closed the action and withdrew the pulse from the dragon.
The beast dragged in a convulsive breath. Leon pressed his palms to its chest and began counting the beats aloud. The rhythm faltered. Once, the heart stopped, and I had to restrain myself from issuing another command.
When Mira reached the eastern gates, the sedative did not take effect at once. The predator managed to injure a fighter before it went down.
The Crown noted:
"Preventable injury."
Lily heard the message.
"Yes," she said. "That's the price of our decision."
"The fighter didn't choose to be the price."
"Which is why we're accountable to him. But you can't turn the possibility of his injury into permission to control everyone."
I opened the shared channel.
The city returned not as a disciplined chorus but as noise: the eastern district demanded that the gates be opened, while the north begged me to keep the dome in place. The dyers argued over where to divert the water, and the hospitals wanted priority for power. The beasts answered with scents, fear, hunger and images of exits.
I tried to arrange them into a queue.
Styx touched the panel and relayed all the answers at once.
The Crown slowed.
The optimal decisions began to contradict one another. Giving the hospital more power meant stopping Taya's pumps. Keeping the dome in place meant closing the road to the free beasts. Refusing to coerce the healing fox meant leaving three patients without help.
Kane rose.
"You're deliberately making the system weak."
"I'm bringing back the people it exists to serve."
"They don't need to understand the whole."
"And I don't get to decide that their part doesn't matter."
As the voices passed through the Crown, people began taking back their own actions. Taya divided the water between the pumps by hand. Mira recorded who would go without treatment. Cole opened one door of the eastern gates and stationed fighters along the narrow passage. Leon kept the dragon breathing with his hands.
They were slower.
They made mistakes.
And they no longer waited for my thoughts to move them.
The white armour on my arms began to crack.
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