He realized he had gone silent enough for Lina to come close and search his face. She did that now, as if expressions were another set of signs she was learning to read because language kept failing them.

"I was wrong about the order of it," he said.

Lina tilted her head. "About the tower?"

Elias looked back toward the tower. "About all of it. I thought the archive mattered because my machine matters. Because I need what was taken from me to be at the center. But the center may be the sorting itself. Memory, food, air, movement. Who gets to know. Who gets to forget."

Lina folded her bruised arm tighter against herself. "You say it like a cutting thing."

Elias's voice stayed flat. "It is."

She looked down the service lane toward one of the lower shafts hidden behind clipped hedges and polished stone. Her voice came small. "Then they made the soft people."

He started to object and stopped. Because yes, in part that was what the system had done. Not harmless by nature. Made harmless by design, kept that way with comfort, prompts, and the removal of hard continuity.

"They made conditions that reward softness," he said at last. "And fear of the rest."

Lina gave him a sidelong look. "That is a longer way to say it."

He gave her a tired glance. "I do have that fault."