Page 139 of Pocket Wife

I stare at the empty space where the man’s face had been.

Helix has lost the water.

But now it has heard the valley’s hidden arteries speak.

CHAPTER 39

LUCY

The clinic had water.

Helix had heard it.

I stand beside the east gate with mud on my boots and the live slate trembling in the schoolteacher’s hands. The pipe below the channel keeps singing, low and steady, carrying water toward the lower tower, toward the clinic, toward Nara’s sleeping son.

For one beautiful second, that should be enough.

Then Torren says it again, the same flat words: the relay pushed our water data to the ships.

The words travel through the feed into the meeting hall, to the tribunal, to every remote witness still watching.

I crouch over the Helix coupling half-buried beside the feeder channel. Its tiny status bead sits dark now, innocent as a closed eye.

“What can they do with that?” I ask.

Torren does not answer quickly enough.

That is answer enough.

Rethan’s voice returns over the tribunal feed, controlled and formal. “A pressure-response profile alone is incomplete.”

Sen seizes on it. “Then the concern is speculative.”

Rethan continues as if she has not spoken. “Combined with old survey data, modern topographical scans, and Helix’s unauthorized resonance pulse from the north cistern, it may allow reconstruction of active hidden water routes.”

The field worker beside me whispers a prayer.

I do not.

Prayer can come later.

“Can we stop the transmission?” I ask.

Kaun’s seal flashes. “Authority has issued a preservation freeze to Helix orbital relay.”

Reviewer Noll adds, “Central Commerce has ordered all related data preserved and no operational use pending review.”

Torren gives a flat laugh. “Wonderful. I am sure the people who hid a feeder coupling under fake charity will feel very corrected.”

“Mr. Ashby,” Noll says.

“I withdraw nothing.”

I crouch beside the coupling without touching it. The soil around it is fresh, the grass cut and replaced badly. Eighteen days ago, Helix knelt here with tools and permits and patient hands. They prepared the shelter. Prepared the boundary. Prepared the water theft.

Prepared my panic.

I stand.