She reads the documentation on Saturday morning, at home, with her coffee going cold beside her.

Not her work documentation — she doesn’t have the access level for Division 4’s ZVA files. The public documentation: the Accord’s own published protocols, available to any citizen who wishes to understand how the city is administered.

The language is careful. She is good at reading careful language. You learn, in verification, to parse the gap between what words mean and what they’re doing.

Zone Viability Assessment: a technical process undertaken by the Accord to evaluate the ongoing resource efficiency of infrastructure-designated zones. The process considers usage metrics, population density, economic productivity, infrastructure condition, and projected maintenance cost over a standard planning cycle.

Usage metrics, she thinks. Economic productivity.

She reads further.

Zones assessed below the standard viability threshold may be considered for Remediation and Repurposing, in accordance with Accord Resource Policy 7.3. Remediation processes are conducted in accordance with resident transition protocols and in consultation with affected stakeholders.

Resident transition protocols.

She looks up this term separately.

Resident Transition Protocol (RTP): the procedure governing the managed movement of residents from zones undergoing remediation. RTPs include notification periods, access to transitional housing funds (subject to district allocation), and case-by-case assessment for exceptional circumstances.

Subject to district allocation.

She already knows what Sector 9’s allocation is. She processed the notification herself. 0.31.

She closes her tablet. Drinks her coffee, which is cold.

Outside, the city moves past her window. A Saturday: slightly less efficient than a weekday, a slightly different quality of noise. She lives in a Tier A district. She has always lived in a Tier A district. She has never had to think about what it means to not live in one.

She thinks about it now.

She thinks about twelve hundred people and a rail yard and a man who knew what was coming and planted seeds anyway.

There is a word she keeps returning to: stakeholders. Consultation with affected stakeholders. She has read this phrase a hundred times without stopping at it.

She stops at it now.

She opens her tablet again.

She starts reading from the beginning.