In a modest apartment on the other side of the district, someone else woke up with a headache and a glowing UI they hadn't seen before.
A young paramedic named Seori blinked blearily at her vision.
[NEW PERMISSION: EVALUATE_LIFE_NODE()][ROLE: PENDING.]
She sat up.
"What?" she whispered.
Her shift wasn't for another two hours.
She hadn't set any training flags.
Why was the System offering her partial manual access to a life-support node?
Her tablet buzzed.
Neighborhood EMS channel.
"…unusual Root desync last night… audits adjusting… potential emergence of new Evaluators…"
She rubbed her face.
"No," she said. "No thank you. I did not sign up to be a System Evaluator. I fix people, I don't judge worth."
The System pulsed.
Not aggressively.
Not even insistently.
Just a quiet invitation.
[IDENTIFIED PATTERN: CONSISTENT LIFE-PRESERVATION BIAS.][SUGGESTED ROLE: 'CITY EVALUATOR.']
Seori swore under her breath.
"This is what I get for saving that kid last week," she muttered.
Her next breath hitched.
"Wait," she whispered. "This is… the same pattern as those Executor anomalies."
She didn't know Kael's name.
Didn't know Haneul existed.
Didn't know Unknown_3's shard would classify her as "soft vector."
But Beta knew.
And the System knew.
And shards—sleeping in their hosts—stirred slightly at the faint new signal.
Another spark.
Another human who could reach in and steady the wheel when the machine failed.