The last extractive coupling was warm when Iven put his hand on its guard.
Three days earlier, the line had carried a demand nobody in the lower districts could afford simply to turn off. Heat, water preparation, clinical pressure, the familiar needs through which an injured body had been made to serve an inhabited city.
The wards were empty now.
Their patients had beds on the ground. The maintenance crews had isolated the human services in stages. The neighbors’ independent returns were on the board beside the temporary bypass, signed by the people keeping those services alive.
Each neighbor’s signed hourly return now confirmed at least twenty-four continuous hours at its independent minimum: Hearth’s clinical and water service, Vigil’s clean-air and water branches, Crown’s occupied heat and water preparation. Their local clinicians and duty operators had checked the result against actual fuel and replacement stocks. None needed Mercy’s extractive feed to maintain that floor. The confirmation was already completed work, not another trial waiting for someone here to approve it.
Sera read the last measure before allowing the coupling to be unloaded.
“Return first.”
Parn repeated it to the operator.
