Her flatmate is named Celia. She is a logistics coordinator for the Accord’s supply chain division, which means she is competent and organised and has opinions about the most efficient route to anywhere in the city. She is not unpleasant to live with. They have been sharing the apartment for four years and have achieved a functional warmth — meals occasionally, an ease about the shared spaces, the specific consideration of people who have learned each other without quite meaning to.

On Thursday evening, Celia is in the kitchen when Mara gets home. She is making rice, which she always makes efficiently, measuring precisely.

“You’re late,” Celia says.

“Site review,” Mara says.

Celia looks at her over the partition. She has an analyst’s eyes — she misses things, but not many.

“You’ve had a lot of those,” she says.

“It’s a big site.”

Celia turns back to the rice. “Sector 9?”

Mara sets her bag down. “Yes.”

“I’ve seen flagging on it. Strategic.”

This is not a surprise. Celia handles logistics; she would see supply chain implications of any zone reclassification. “What have you seen?”

“Not much. Preliminary modelling.” Celia stirs. “It’s a standard ZVA. Most of them come to nothing.”

“Most,” Mara says.

“Most.” A pause. “This one’s got Division 4 running it, which means someone up the chain is interested. Division 4 doesn’t run ZVAs that come to nothing.”

Mara takes her coat off. Hangs it by the door.

“Do you know what’s there?” Celia asks. “In Sector 9?”

“People,” Mara says. “About twelve hundred, according to the last census. Mostly low-income, long-term residents. Some warehousing. Decommissioned rail.”

“And the ZVA score?”

Mara thinks about the allocation data. The maintenance deferral notices. The cycle 14 infrastructure report. “I’d guess 0.2 or below by the time they run the secondary review.”

Celia serves the rice. Sets a bowl on Mara’s side of the table.

“Then it’ll probably move,” she says. Not cruelly. Just efficiently.

Mara sits. Looks at the rice.

“Move,” she says. “The people.”

Celia sits across from her. Meets her eyes.

“When have they not?” she says.

They eat. The apartment is quiet. The building makes its usual sounds around them — pipes, ventilation, a door somewhere below.

Mara eats her rice.

She thinks about a man standing in a yard in a dying district, tending things he did not plant for their usefulness, making something from ground that the system has already decided is empty.

She thinks: he already knows.

She thinks: he’s been knowing for seven years.

She thinks about what it costs to know and stay anyway.