Sector 17 - Early WinterThe first snow fell earlier than anyone had predicted, a silent bnket of white descending overnight to cover Sector 17's patchwork buildings. Children woke to the rare sight of pristine whiteness, their excited voices echoing through the settlement as they rushed outside to experience the novelty before their daily duties began.

  Lyra stood apart, nine years old now and increasingly serious as the weight of the community's expectations shaped her behavior. She wasn't building snow figures like the others; instead, she was examining the settlement's heating units, calcuting efficiency losses from the unexpected temperature drop.

  "Lyra! Come py!" Mira called, her face flushed with excitement and cold. At her side was a lopsided snow creation that vaguely resembled a person.

  "I'm checking the thermal regution systems," Lyra replied, not looking up from the heating unit. "The northwestern units are operating at only seventy-eight percent efficiency. If the temperature drops another five degrees, we'll lose heating in the outer dwellings."

  Mira's smile faltered. "You always work now."

  This made Lyra pause and finally look at her friend. Mira's face was thinner than it had been a year ago—like everyone else's in Sector 17 except Lyra's own. The resource reallocation had continued, with Lyra receiving preferential nutrition, education materials, and medical attention. The gap between them had widened in more ways than one.

  "Just for a few minutes," Lyra conceded, setting down her diagnostic tool.

  As they pyed in the snow, Lyra noticed Mira's occasional cough—a small, dry sound that seemed insignificant at the time. By nightfall, five other children were coughing too.

  Community Medical Space - Three Days Later"It's in their lungs," Councilor Maren expined to the hastily assembled leadership council. The community's medical space—once a storage facility now lined with makeshift beds—was filled with the sounds of coughing and bored breathing. "Started as a simple virus, but it's developing into bacterial pneumonia. Without antibiotics..."

  She didn't need to finish the sentence. The implications were clear on everyone's faces.

  "How many?" Councilor Jace asked, his voice low.

  "Twenty-seven showing symptoms," Maren replied. "Fourteen with severe respiratory distress. Eight of those are children."

  Tel's eyes immediately found Mira among the children, her small chest rising and falling with visible effort, dark circles forming beneath her eyes.

  "The antibiotics," Tel said, "what do we have?"

  Maren's expression tightened. "Two bottles. At proper dosages, enough to treat four people fully. Maybe six if we stretch it—but that reduces effectiveness."

  "And we need to prioritize," Councilor Dren added, his clinical tone belying the gravity of what he was suggesting.

  A painful silence fell over the group.

  "You mean choose who lives," Jace said finally.

  Dren didn't flinch. "I mean maximize survival probability across the community. Based on symptom progression, age, and prior health status."

  From her position near the door, Lyra listened, unnoticed by the adults. She understood the mathematics perfectly. Four full treatments. Twenty-seven sick. Probability distributions. Survival maximization.

  Her eyes found Mira's struggling form, then moved to the small cabinet where she knew her own medical supplies were stored—supplements and preventatives allocated specifically for her neural development. Not antibiotics, but other medications that could be traded with neighboring sectors. Resources that might make a difference.

  Tel's Quarters - That Night"We have to use my supplies," Lyra insisted, standing in the center of their small living space, her thin frame rigid with determination. "The neural supplements can be traded with Sector 23—their leader's daughter has central nervous system damage. They'd exchange antibiotics for it."

  Tel looked up from the heating unit she was adjusting, her face lined with exhaustion and worry. "It's not that simple, Lyra. Your supplements are specifically—"

  "Specifically allocated for my development," Lyra finished. "I know. But people are dying, Tel. Mira is dying."

  Tel crossed the room and knelt before Lyra, taking the girl's small hands in her own. "Listen to me. The council already had this discussion while you were checking the eastern heating units. We've sent traders to Sectors 23 and 19 offering everything we can spare. But the illness isn't just here—it's spreading through all the outer sectors."

  "Then use the supplements for something else," Lyra pressed. "There must be some medical application—"

  "There isn't. We've checked." Tel's voice caught. "Lyra, we're doing everything possible."

  "But it's not enough!" Lyra pulled her hands away. "You're all saving me and letting others die. How is that right?"

  "It's not about right," Tel said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "It's about survival. Not just now, but in the future. Your development, your abilities—they're an investment in everyone's survival."

  "What good is my development if my friend dies because I got medicine she needed?" Lyra's voice cracked, tears welling in her eyes—a rare dispy of emotion from a child who had grown increasingly stoic under the burden of expectation.

  Tel had no answer.

  Community Medical Space - One Week LaterThe silence in the medical space was worse than the coughing had been. Mira y still on her small cot, her breathing so shallow that the rise and fall of her chest was barely perceptible. The fever had spiked during the night, and now her skin had taken on a gray pallor that everyone recognized as a final sign.

  Lyra sat beside the cot, holding Mira's hot, limp hand. She had barely slept in three days, dividing her time between tending to the sick and working frantically to improve the community's heating systems to prevent further illness. Neither effort seemed to be making enough difference.

  "She was looking for you," murmured an older boy from a nearby cot. His own condition had stabilized, one of the few success stories. "Before the fever got bad. Said she wanted to show you something she found."

  Lyra nodded, unable to speak. In Mira's fever dreams, she had been collecting treasures again—bits of pre-colpse technology and colorful pstics that she and Lyra used to trade between themselves.

  "Ly...ra." The sound was so faint that Lyra might have imagined it, but Mira's eyes had fluttered open, unfocused and gzed with fever.

  "I'm here," Lyra said, squeezing her friend's hand gently. "I'm right here."

  "Did you...fix it?" Mira whispered.

  "Fix what?" Lyra leaned closer.

  "The...world." A ghost of a smile touched Mira's cracked lips. "You always...fix things."

  Lyra felt something break inside her chest. "I'm trying," she whispered back. "I'm trying so hard."

  Mira's eyes drifted closed again. "Good. You'll...do it."

  Those were the st words Mira spoke. She slipped away quietly an hour ter, her hand still held tightly in Lyra's. Around the medical space, simir scenes pyed out as the epidemic cimed its victims despite the community's desperate efforts.

  Councilor Maren's Report - Two Weeks Later"Final casualty count stands at eleven," Maren reported to the solemn council. "Seven adults and four children. Another sixteen recovered fully, and five are still showing respiratory complications that may be permanent."

  The council members sat in silence, the weight of their losses heavy in the small meeting room. Outside, the winter had deepened, temperatures dropping to record lows that strained their already taxed heating systems.

  "The antibiotics we received from the Sector 23 trade saved at least eight lives," Maren continued. "Without that exchange..."

  Tel looked down at her hands. The trade had been successful but insufficient—Sector 23 had their own sick to treat and could spare only one bottle of antibiotics in exchange for half of Lyra's neural supplements. Not enough. Never enough.

  "And Lyra?" Councilor Jace asked quietly.

  "She hasn't spoken since the funeral," Tel replied. "She works constantly. Heating systems, water purification, structural reinforcement. She's barely sleeping."

  "The development supplements?" Dren inquired.

  "She won't take them. Says others need resources more." Tel's voice was hollow. "I've tried expining that her development benefits everyone in the long term, but..."

  "She's nine years old," Maren said gently. "She just watched her friend die. Abstract future benefits don't mean much against that."

  "What do we do?" Jace asked, looking around the table.

  "We give her time," Tel said. "And we don't waste the sacrifices that were made."

  Community Memorial Site - One Month After the First DeathThe memorial site stood on a small rise at the edge of Sector 17, sheltered by the remains of a pre-colpse stone wall. Simple markers identified each community member lost—not just to the recent epidemic, but to all the harsh realities of Unaligned existence: corporate raids, resource shortages, accidents, and illness.

  Eleven new markers had been added in the past month, each carved with care from salvaged materials. Fourth from the left in the newest row was Mira's marker, decorated with small colorful pstic pieces she had collected throughout her short life.

  Lyra stood alone before it, her breath forming clouds in the bitter cold. The community's funeral service had been held weeks ago, a somber gathering where each lost member was remembered with stories and songs. But Lyra had been unable to speak then, the words frozen inside her chest alongside a cold determination that was still taking shape.

  Now, in the privacy of dawn with only the markers as witnesses, she finally spoke.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered to Mira's marker. "I'm sorry I couldn't fix it in time."

  The rising sun cast long shadows across the memorial ground, the light catching on the colorful pstics adorning Mira's marker and sending small rainbows dancing across the snow.

  "They give me more than the others," Lyra continued, her words forming clouds that dissipated in the morning air. "More food. More medicine. More knowledge. They think I'm special—that I can save them." Her small hands clenched inside worn gloves. "I don't know if they're right. But I promise I'll try."

  She reached into her pocket and withdrew a small gear—one of Mira's treasures that she had given to Lyra months ago. She pced it carefully atop the marker.

  "I'm going to take everything they give me," Lyra said, her voice stronger now, "and I'm going to use it. I'll learn everything, fix everything, build whatever I need to build. And I'll make it mean something."

  She stood a moment longer, watching as the sun rose fully above the memorial site, casting the shadows of the markers across the snow-covered ground—eleven new shadows among dozens from years past. Then she turned and walked back toward the settlement, her small form straight-backed and determined.

  By the time she reached the first buildings, she had already begun calcuting improvements to the heating system that might prevent simir losses next winter. By midday, she would accept the neural supplements she had been refusing, understanding now that her development was not for herself alone. By nightfall, she would begin the first designs for a water recmation system that would improve the community's resilience.

  The weight of expectation had transformed into something else—a driving purpose founded in loss. Mira had asked if she would fix the world. Lyra didn't know if that was possible, but she knew with absolute certainty that she would try until her st breath.

  Because some debts could never be repaid, only honored through action. And Sector 17 had paid a terrible price for their investment in her future—a price measured in eleven fresh markers on a snow-covered hill.