Nithya flipped to a marked page and pointed at a table, then turned two pages to another. “According to these, it might be possible to design a pill to reverse Welga’s symptoms, but we would need funding to customize her treatment. If we can stimulate the progenitor cells, we can regrow the muscle tissue and innervate it. She’ll need therapy to retrain her body, but if she stopped using zips, she could be fine. It’s possible that Welga’s case is extreme—she uses these pills for every job. Others might never experience her problems. If this lawyer, Josephine Lee, is telling the truth, designers had indications of this flaw years ago. I wish we could find her. She’d know who’s responsible for this.”

“I can hack your emergency network.” Zeli spoke the words so softly that Nithya wasn’t sure she’d heard them.

“Come again?”

“It will take some time to get all that data through, but I could send an encrypted message to your sister-in-law. Tell her everything you said and let her find this lawyer. I’m sure Welga Ramírez knows how to make someone talk.”

Nithya digested Zeli’s implied threat. “How do you know this hack?”

Zeli tilted her head. “In the villages, people need to have many skills. Sometimes the emergency network is the only way for us along the front. The al-Muwahhidun love to keep us in the dark.”

Zeli uncurled her hand. Two yellow pills lay in her palm.

“Are those…?”

“Yes, the flow will help me do what I need. You write down the message. I’ll send it.”

Nithya place her hand over the girl’s and squeezed gently. “You don’t need to sacrifice these for a woman you’ve never met.”

“But that woman is working to save us from the Machinehood, yes?”

“I believe so.”

“Then it’s not a sacrifice.”

Zeli’s eyes glistened with determination. Nithya tapped her message onto a screen, then switched it off. No sense using up the battery until Zeli needed to read the note.

Zeli’s mother and Bhairavi Chitthi snored softly from across the room. Light from the full moon fell through the window and limned the prone bodies. Zeli’s sister lay on her back, her jaw slack as she slept. Nithya turned her attention back to the printed documents.

An hour later, Zeli grinned.

“Are you in?” Nithya whispered.

A nod. Dark fingers danced on the tabletop, faster than Nithya could interface, even on flow. No wonder Zeli designed so well.

Nithya stayed quiet. Better to let Zeli work than break her trance with more questions. Her own thoughts skipped like a frog on lily pads, from one worrisome matter to the next. She wished her husband had a friend who could hack the network, too, but only she was so lucky.