The transit hub was a patchwork of old stone and new holo-panels, built long before Towers and retrofitted after. Commuters flowed in and out in thick streams: office workers, tired nurses, low-tier Hunters heading home, a street musician trying to coax credits out of a battered guitar.
Kael stood on the second-level balcony, hood up, hands in pockets.
He wasn't supposed to intervene.
He was very bad at that.
[LOCATION: GRAY-3 CENTRAL TRANSIT.]
[EVENT STATUS: NORMAL.]
Mira's voice came through his earpiece, low and clipped.
"Glitch-hound emergence window in the next five to ten minutes," she said. "We're tapped into the city event node. Dr. Cho is with Haneul. Her shard activity is baseline for now."
"Copy," Kael murmured.
Joon leaned on the railing next to him, chewing gum like this was just another day.
"So we're… monster-watching?" Joon asked. "No stabbing?"
"Observation only," Kael said. "You're here in case things go sideways."
"Sideways like 'oops, the god-bit decided everyone here is worth zero?'" Joon said.
"Helpful," Kael said.
He opened Debug Sense.
The hub lit up with tags.
Transit kiosks. Guard patrol routes. CCTV nodes. The city's event manager node floated above it all like a translucent spider, threads going out to everything.
He hooked into it carefully.
[OBJECT: CITY_EVENT_NODE_3 – GRAY-3.]
[FUNCTION: ASSIGN RESPONSE TO MINOR INCIDENTS.]
[PENDING: GLITCH-HOUND ANOMALY EVENT.]
[EVAL_FUNCTION: WORTH(user/community) VS RISK VS RESOURCE_COST.]
Deep in its logic, a familiar structure pulsed: the worth evaluation function Root had once owned, now running on autopilot.
A faint new note colored it.
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK_CHANNELS: MULTIPLE – LOW LEVEL.]
[STATUS: IGNORED.]
He swallowed.
"Mira," he said softly. "You seeing these channels?"
"We are," she said. "Looks like half a dozen shards in other hosts have a weak connection here. Most are just static. One… has a signature similar to Haneul's."
Haneul's voice came fuzzily over the line, weaker but present.
"That one would be me," she said. "Feels like sticking my hand near a live wire."
"Do not poke the wire," Mira said automatically.
"I'm not," Haneul said. "Yet. This thing is… busy."
Kael watched the function spool up as the event triggered.
A warning flashed over the node.
[EVENT: GLITCH-HOUND SPAWN (MINOR).]
[LOCATION: PLATFORM B – TRACK 3.]
[DANGER LEVEL: LOW-MODERATE.]
[RESPONSE TIME TARGET: ≤ 180 SEC.]
The function began assigning numbers.
Nearby guard patrol:
[PATROL_A – COMPOSITION: 3 GUARDS (LV 6–8).]
[DISTANCE: 120M.]
[CURRENT ROLE: TOWER PERIMETER SUPPORT.]
[REMOVAL IMPACT ON TOWER_RISK: +0.03.]
[REMOVAL IMPACT ON CIVILIAN_RISK: -0.20.]
Another patrol, deeper into the district:
[PATROL_B – COMPOSITION: 2 GUARDS (LV 4–5).]
[DISTANCE: 60M.]
[CURRENT ROLE: SHOPPING DISTRICT.]
[REMOVAL IMPACT ON TOWER_RISK: +0.01.]
[REMOVAL IMPACT ON CIVILIAN_RISK: -0.08.]
The function weighed them.
[GOAL: MINIMIZE (TOWER_RISK_WEIGHT * ΔTOWER_RISK + CIVILIAN_RISK_WEIGHT * ΔCIVILIAN_RISK).]
[TOWER_RISK_WEIGHT: 5.0]
[CIVILIAN_RISK_WEIGHT: 1.0]
Kael exhaled.
"Of course," he said. "Five-to-one on Towers over people."
Joon frowned.
"English?" he asked.
"It cares five times more about Tower perimeter gaps than transit hub casualties," Kael said. "Even for a small event."
Haneul's voice tightened in his ear.
"Shard is… having Opinions," she said.
He checked.
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK (RYU_HANEUL_SHARD): SUGGESTED_WEIGHTS – TOWER=2.0, CIVILIAN=1.5.]
[DELTA: SIGNIFICANT.]
[ACTION: IGNORED.]
Other shards chimed in with tiny nudges—some pushing Tower weight even higher, some lowering both.
The System plowed through them, unbothered.
[SELECTED RESPONSE: PATROL_B.]
[JUSTIFICATION: MINIMAL IMPACT ON TOWER_RISK.]
A guards' UI pinged as they changed direction below.
"So it's sending the weaker patrol," Kael said. "Closer, but less equipped. Because losing them is cheaper than pulling Tower backup."
"Standard practice," Mira said. "Guard guilds hate it. The System considers low-tier guards… expendable."
"Worth category: 'acceptable loss,'" Haneul murmured. "I can feel it. Like someone is stamping it on them."
Kael watched the worth function as it labeled the patrol.
[PATROL_B_WORTH_TO_SYSTEM: FUNGIBLE.]
[WORTH_TO_ROOT_INTENT: MODIFIERS PENDING.]
He grimaced.
"Fungible," he said. "That's worse than 'low.'"
"Shard doesn't like it either," Haneul said.
Her shard's feedback line flared brighter.
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK (RYU_HANEUL_SHARD): TERM 'FUNGIBLE' FLAGS: NEGATIVE.]
[SUGGESTED LABEL: 'VULNERABLE.']
[ACTION: IGNORED.]
Kael latched onto that.
"Vulnerable," he repeated. "Not 'expendable.' Not 'cheap.' Vulnerable."
He leaned harder into the link.
"Hey," he thought at the shard, echoing the earlier Node test. "Don't just complain about labels. What do you think their worth is here?"
The shard's attention brushed his mind, prickling.
[QUERY: WORTH_TO_WHOM?]
He thought of the guards' families. Of the commuters. Of the Tower, even; how a demoralized guard force would affect it long term.
"To themselves," he thought. "To the people waiting for them. To the system we have to live in after this event is over."
The shard pulsed.
[FRAGMENT_INTERNAL_EVAL: PATROL_B_WORTH > CURRENT_SYSTEM_ESTIMATE.]
[PROPOSED_ADJUSTMENT: CIVILIAN_RISK_WEIGHT: 1.5, TOWER_RISK_WEIGHT: 3.0.]
[CONFIDENCE: LOW-MODERATE.]
The worth function hiccuped.
For a heartbeat, the weights flickered.
[TOWER_RISK_WEIGHT: 5.0 → 4.2 → 5.0]
[CIVILIAN_RISK_WEIGHT: 1.0 → 1.1 → 1.0]
The System reasserted itself, pinning them back to default.
[CONFLICT: WORTH_EVAL_FUNCTION.]
[RESOLUTION: BASELINE PRIORITIZED.]
Mira swore quietly in his ear.
"It tried," she said. "Did you see—"
"I saw," Kael said.
Patrol B was already moving, jogging toward Platform B. Patrol A stayed near the Tower perimeter, oblivious to the math that had weighed them.
"Can we do anything without editing?" he asked softly. "No flag changes. Just… commentary. The same way we did at the Node."
"If you push too hard, the System may mark the shard 'hostile' and damp it," Mira said. "Or mark you."
Haneul's voice cut through, strained.
"It's already trying," she said. "I can feel it pushing against something thick and dumb. Like arguing with a wall that thinks in spreadsheets."
Kael watched the worth labels tick.
[PATROL_B_WORTH_TO_SYSTEM: FUNGIBLE.]
[WORTH_TO_ROOT_INTENT_SHARD: 'VULNERABLE / VALUABLE LOCALLY.']
He took a risk.
He didn't touch the function.
He touched the log.
Specifically, the label.
[FLAG: PATROL_B_LABEL]
[CURRENT: FUNGIBLE.]
[SCOPE: NON-CRITICAL METADATA.]
[EDITABLE: YES.]
He opened EDIT_FLAG, keeping it strictly in the commentary layer—no numbers, no routing, no weights.
"Just words," he thought. "Minimum change."
He set it to VULNERABLE.
[APPLYING CHANGE…]
[SCOPE: DESCRIPTIVE ONLY.]
[NO DOWNSTREAM CALCULATION TIES DETECTED.]
The System accepted it with a puzzled flicker.
[PATROL_B_LABEL: VULNERABLE.]
Something loosened in the shard's presence.
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK: APPROVES LABEL CHANGE.]
[INTERNAL TENSION: -0.01.]
"Did you touch the route?" Mira demanded.
"No," Kael said quickly. "Just the label. Definition of them. Might not do anything. But if the shard's going to keep arguing with the function, at least it's not screaming at the word 'fungible' anymore."
"That's… almost literally semantics," Haneul said faintly. "But it feels a little better."
Kael watched the function's next steps.
It still chose Patrol B. The same path. The same timers.
But in the logs, one line was different.
[NOTE: PATROL_B CLASS: VULNERABLE UNITS.]
[RECOMMENDATION (LOG ONLY): HIGHER VALUE PLACED ON THEIR SURVIVAL IN FUTURE CALIBRATIONS.]
The shard had piggybacked on his label change to sneak in a note.
Not a change.
A recommendation.
Mira exhaled.
"Okay," she said quietly. "That's new."
"Is it enough to matter?" Kael asked.
"Not today," she said. "Maybe not for weeks. But calibration routines read these notes. If enough events stack where 'vulnerable' units keep getting thrown into the fire, those recommendations might weight future patches."
"So we're… writing angry comments in the System's code review," Haneul said.
"Pretty much," Kael said.
Below, a glitch-hound phased into existence near Track 3—a smaller variant than the Tower ones, eyes static, texture stuttering. Commuters screamed and scattered. Patrol B moved in, shields up.
Kael's fingers twitched with the urge to patch something—damage multipliers, friction, anything. He forced himself to stay still.
Observation only.
Patrol B was sloppy but competent. One guard took a shallow bite; the others pinned the hound, spears and stun-fields driving it back. After a frantic thirty seconds, the System tagged it as neutralized.
[EVENT: RESOLVED.]
[CASUALTIES: 0.]
[INJURIES: MINOR (1).]
No one died.
Patrol B's HP dipped, then stabilized as a medic kiosk pinged a nearby healer.
The worth function logged the incident.
[POST-EVENT ANALYSIS:]
– RESPONSE TIME: WITHIN TARGET.
– CIVILIAN DISRUPTION: ACCEPTABLE.
– UNIT LOSS: 0.
– UPDATE: PATROL_B_LABEL = VULNERABLE.
– ROOT_FRAGMENT_NOTE: 'PRESERVE WHEN POSSIBLE.'
Kael let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"Okay," he said. "We didn't break the city. Shard got to scribble in the margins. No flags changed. I call that a win."
Joon popped his gum.
"Plus, I didn't have to stab anything in front of police," he said. "Personal win."
Haneul sounded exhausted.
"I feel like I argued with ten moderators at once," she said. "But… it's quieter now. Like the shard got to say something and is sulking less."
"You need rest," Mira said. "We'll keep an eye on downstream calibrations."
Kael nodded.
He glanced back at the transit hub.
People were already drifting back to normal—checking schedules, complaining about delays, laughing nervously about "that weird dog thing."
None of them knew a dead admin's ethics routine and a glitch-labeled E-rank support had just changed a single word in a log about their lives.
Semantics.
He hoped semantics would be enough, for now.