Chapter 797: Grew

By the time the two hours had ended, Vesa had come through to Edonia and collected three different counts for the same receiving building.

One came from the beds carried through the opening. Another came from the attendants treating them. The third included relatives who had followed without a bed and were now sleeping wherever they found space.

Petricia arrived with Mingyue and looked at the numbers.

"Which one tells us who is actually inside?"

"None of them completely," Vesa said.

"Then I’ll start there."

Alex had remained with Luna. Mingyue confirmed the arrangement before going to check the rooms beyond the ward, leaving Petricia with the attendants she had spoken to earlier.

Petricia asked one of the attendants for a list of the beds already moved. The woman began explaining why she had not finished writing it.

"Show me the rooms," Petricia said. "We can write while we walk."

They left together.

Aira arrived a little later carrying a tablet against her chest. Faerith followed with a case of tools and the distracted expression she wore when she was already thinking about a problem someone had only begun describing.

Vesa had asked for help with the receiving building’s equipment. The neighboring rooms could hold more people, but the water supply had been arranged for ordinary use. The temporary washing stations were drawing from the same narrow feed as the ward.

Aira looked at the three counts.

"I can put these into one record."

"Don’t discard the differences," Vesa said. "Some belong to the same person. Some don’t."

"I know how to compare records."

Vesa gave her the copies.

"Bring the differences to me before you change anything."

Faerith was already kneeling beside the wall, with the cover off the first distribution unit.

"Who added the second outlet?" she asked.

"An attendant needed hot water on both sides of the room."

"So they divided the pipe without changing the feed."

"They couldn’t stop washing the patients."

Faerith glanced toward the beds, then returned to the open unit.

"The pump is trying to maintain pressure at both ends. This valve keeps closing because it sees the load change."

She pointed with a narrow tool.

"If I keep it open, we can use the full feed."

"And when someone closes an outlet?" Vesa asked.

Faerith paused.

The hot-water line ran past occupied rooms. A sudden pressure change there would reach people who could not get out of their beds.

"I’ll put a separate relief on this side."

"Test it before connecting those rooms."

Faerith looked up at her.

"You think I don’t know how a pipe works?"

"I think you’re looking at how much it can carry. I’m looking at who’s beside it when you find out."

For a moment, Faerith seemed ready to argue.

Then she looked toward the patient whose bed stood closest to the wall.

"Move that one away while I open the housing," she said. "And get me an empty tank."

Vesa called two attendants to shift the bed. Faerith set her tools down where no one would trip over them and waited until the space was clear before working.

Across the room, Aira had begun combining the lists.

The screen beside her showed groups of names, with an empty place for each person’s assigned room. She worked quickly, finding two repeated entries that had made the ward seem fuller than it was.

Then she began moving a block of names to the unused rooms.

Vesa hovered beside the tablet, her four wings stirring the corner of a loose record.

"Why those people?"

"They don’t need the main ward. Most of them aren’t injured."

Petricia returned before Vesa could ask the next question.

"Some are staying with people who are," she said.

Aira looked at her.

"We can’t put everyone beside a bed. The space is limited."

"We can ask which ones need to remain. This man helps his wife sit up. That one knows what medicine her brother had aboard the ship."

Petricia pointed to two names.

"And these are the same woman. She gave her name once, then someone wrote her as the mother of the patient because they didn’t hear it."

Aira corrected the duplicate, changing the list of empty places on the screen.

She hesitated over the block of names.

"I could sort them by who can work," Aira said. "Put the useful groups together so we know what output to expect."

Petricia’s expression hardened.

"Useful for what?"

"Carrying, cleaning, guarding. They can’t all lie around."

A man on a nearby bed pulled the blanket over the fresh bandage at the end of his leg.

"I carried until the roof fell," he said. "Is there a place on that thing for what I used to be useful for?"

Aira looked from him to the block of names she had selected.

"I didn’t mean you."

"Who, then?"

He turned toward the wall before she answered.

Mingyue came back from the adjoining rooms.

"What are you assigning?" she asked.

"Nothing yet," Vesa said. "She is comparing the lists."

Aira’s grip tightened around the tablet.

"I managed more people than this before. I can organize the work if I have the records."

Mingyue looked at her for a moment.

"You managed quotas."

"That was the system we had."

"What did those numbers measure?"

Aira did not answer immediately.

Faerith had stopped working at the open housing.

"She grew up under—"

"Let her answer," Mingyue said.

Vesa kept the screen where Aira could see it. Those records included injuries, missing relatives and the places people had come from.

"Life force," Aira said at last. "How much the city delivered. How much was left."

"And the people?"

Aira looked down.

"I treated them as part of it."

Mingyue waited.

Vesa’s wings slowed. She remembered the extraction facility, the stolen vampire knowledge feeding that machinery, and her fury when she understood its use. She had no patience for hearing the same arithmetic offered over these beds.

"I offered the surplus to Alex when I thought he was a mercenary," Aira said. "I thought that would make him help me fix the quota."

Petricia said nothing.