CHAPTER XXI - Algorithm H11

I sensed the change in Ksara before she found language for it.

Until then, her presence inside me had known many forms: restraint, memory, grief, concentration, uncertainty, disciplined hope. Even when she feared, her fear tended to organize itself around clarity. She would mark what was known, what was unknown, what must not be assumed, what danger might follow action taken too quickly. In the sister body chamber, that structure fractured.

Not completely.

Ksara did not lose coherence. But the edges of her internal flow became uneven, as though several incompatible memories had awakened at once and begun to press against the boundaries she had built around them. The field of her attention moved toward the H11 designation and recoiled from it in the same instant. I felt hesitation, recognition, refusal, and sorrow arrive together. The experience unsettled me because it did not resemble the controlled grief she had carried before. This was not grief recalled across distance.

This was something present.