Richard went down to one knee beside the girl and stopped his hand in the air.
No touch.
Not yet.
The rule felt obscene, but it held.
Anna was already beside her daughter, making those small broken sounds that came after language failed. The boy stayed pinned to the wall, rigid with terror. On the pallet, the father watched through fever without understanding.
Richard forced himself to look properly.
The girl's skin was flushed deep across the cheeks and throat. Her breathing came fast and shallow. In the flicker from the hearth he could now see the swelling clearly enough.
Not certainty.
But no longer guesswork either.
He took out the phone under the cover of his cloak and typed one-handed.
RICHARD:
Direct contact risk from this distance and exposure time.
The response was immediate.
DESCARTES:
Non-zero. Increasing.
A second line appeared.
DESCARTES:
Your advantages do not include immunity.
Good.
Cruel, but good.
That needed saying.
Richard typed again.
RICHARD:
Then give me rules for me.
The answer came in a list.
DESCARTES:
For you:
1. Avoid direct skin contact where possible.
2. Use cloth barrier when handling shared objects.
3. Keep symptomatic individuals downwind if ventilation changes.
4. Do not sleep in enclosed proximity if avoidable.
5. Wash exposed hands in the cleanest heated water available.
6. Control fleas and cloth if possible; do not assume air is the only threat.
Richard read it once and put the phone away.
That changed the shape of everything.
Until now he had been thinking like an observer with better information.
Now he had to think like a man standing barefoot on a minefield he could describe but not disable.
Anna was looking at him.
Not pleading now.
Past pleading.
Expecting.
Richard pointed at the girl.
Then at the children's corner.
Then shook his head hard.
"No there."
He pointed instead to the far side of the room, nearest the window slit and furthest from the father.
"Here."
Anna understood enough. She and the boy half-lifted, half-dragged the girl across the room while Richard used the stick from beside the hearth to push aside loose cloth and clear a patch of floor. He hated how little he could do without risking contact.
The husband watched from the pallet with fever-bright eyes, breathing as though every inhale was borrowed.
Two patients.
One room.
One fire.
One pot.
One stranger from the future with exactly zero actual medicine.
Richard stood very still for half a second.
Then his old self reappeared.
The one from offices and emergencies and model failures and collapsing systems.
When reality offered too many problems, you did not solve life.
You solved sequence.
He looked around the room.
Window slit.
Door.
Hearth.
Water.
Cloth.
Patients.
Children.
Rat route along wall.
No gloves.
No masks worth the name.
No authority beyond their belief.
He moved at once.
First he took a hanging cloth from near the hearth using the stick and dropped it into the boiling water. Not because boiling cloth was magic, but because hot water and separation were better than filth and prayer.
Then he pointed at the shuttered window slit.
"Open."
Anna hesitated.
Cold. Rain. Night.
He pointed at the husband. Then coughed. Then at the daughter. Then spread his fingers through the air.
Bad air. Move it.
She moved.
Good.
The shutter scraped open two fingers' width. Cold wet air entered, enough to disturb the smoke.
Next he pointed at the boy.
Then at the chest where he had seen the rat vanish.
"Stick. Hit."
The boy blinked.
Richard mimed striking the wall.
Rat.
The child's eyes sharpened with hatred. That, at least, translated perfectly across time.
He grabbed a broken length of wood.
Good.
Something else occurred to Richard then — sudden, ugly, obvious.
The coat.
The cloth.
The laundry from the yard.
Shared fabric.
Shared fleas.
Shared danger.
He pulled off the outer stolen wool layer and dropped it near the door, then pointed at it and shook his head. Not near the children.
Anna stared, confused. Richard pointed to the rat route and then to the wool and scratched his own arm in exaggerated warning.
That one landed. Her face changed.
Not understanding in detail.
Understanding in disgust.
Enough.
His phone vibrated softly.
He ignored it for three seconds.
Then checked.
DESCARTES:
Improvement noted.
That irritated him enough to be useful.
RICHARD:
If you have something more useful than commentary, now is the time.
A pause.
Then:
DESCARTES:
You are stabilising environment, not curing disease.
Richard stared at the line.
There it was.
The brutal difference.
Knowledge had seduced him with scale.
But in reality, at this level, he was not a miracle worker.
He was a man slightly reducing chaos.
It might still matter.
It might even save a life.
But it was not mastery.
He looked at the girl again.
Her eyes were half-open, unfocused. Anna knelt beside her, whispering prayers into her hair.
Richard crouched near enough to be heard.
"Anna."
She looked up.
He pointed to the daughter.
Then mimed drinking very small amounts.
Not much. Slow.
Then he pointed at the pot and made a waiting gesture for cooling.
Anna nodded.
Good.
Then he pointed to the father.
Then to the daughter.
Then raised two fingers apart.
Separate.
Always separate.
Again she nodded.
Her fear was now organised.
That made her far more useful than calm would have.
A thought hit him then, sharp enough to feel like guilt.
His mother.
Hospital lights.
Machines.
Bills.
A doctor using that careful voice.
Richard went completely still.
He had not thought of the hospital for nearly an hour.
Which in itself felt like a betrayal.
He took out the phone.
RICHARD:
My world. My mother. Is time passing normally there?
He stared at the screen.
No reply.
For the first time since Descartes appeared, the typing indicator did not come.
Nothing.
Richard's pulse climbed.
He typed again.
RICHARD:
Answer me.
This time the dots appeared.
Stopped.
Appeared again.
Then, finally:
DESCARTES:
Your immediate limiting factor remains local.
Richard looked at the message so hard it blurred.
Not an answer.
A refusal disguised as priority.
His mouth went dry.
RICHARD:
That is not what I asked.
The reply took longer.
DESCARTES:
Correct.
Richard almost threw the phone into the fire.
Instead he shut his eyes for one second.
Just one.
Then reopened them.
Later.
Rage later.
If later existed.
For now a child was burning alive by degrees on the floor of 1347 and a father might not see morning.
The room had changed while he was asking.
The boy was now stationed by the chest with his stick, alert for movement.
The husband had begun muttering half-prayer, half-delirium.
Anna was cooling the boiled cloth by waving it through the air.
Richard pointed at the cloth, then at the daughter's forehead.
Good.
That, too, was something.
He checked the phone once more.
The screen was black.
No glow.
No problem.
Until he touched it.
Good. That solved it cleanly enough. The danger had never been constant light; it had been activation, message prompts, leakage, panic. Now he knew. Use it carefully and the phone vanished back into darkness like any other hidden object.
That realisation landed just as another sound rose outside.
Not knocking this time.
A distant shout.
Then another.
Then bells.
More than one bell now.
Not the slow counting toll from earlier.
Faster. Urgent. Repeating.
The whole house seemed to hear it.
Anna froze.
The boy looked at the door.
Even the husband's muttering faltered.
Richard stepped towards the shutter and looked through the slit.
Torchlight moving in the lane.
More than two men this time.
At the far end of the street, not here yet — but enough to see the rhythm of alarm spreading house to house like fire through dry timber.
He typed quickly.
RICHARD:
What now?
The answer came instantly.
DESCARTES:
Neighbourhood response escalating.
Then:
DESCARTES:
Possible deaths nearby. Possible rat surge. Possible cordon.
Richard read the last word twice.
Cordon.
Of course.
Once fear organised itself, streets became walls.
Houses became traps.
This sick room, which had been a foothold five minutes ago, could become a tomb by dawn.
He turned back to the family.
The daughter drank a few drops.
The father coughed blood into the rag.
Anna saw Richard's face and knew at once that the world outside had worsened.
"What?" she asked.
The word came cleanly now.
Fully.
Language had arrived almost completely without permission.
Richard answered in hers.
Not fluently.
But enough.
"Street fear. More men. Maybe close houses."
Anna's face changed from terror to calculation.
Good.
That was better.
Fear could move. Calculation could work.
Richard pointed at the rear yard.
Then at the children.
Then at the father.
Not to move them now. Impossible.
But to think in routes.
Breathing room.
Alternatives.
The house was no longer just a plague house. It was a position.
He looked around again and saw it for what it had become:
an accidental headquarters.
Filthy.
Poor.
Half one step from death.
But defensible, hidden at the rear, and already associated with sickness enough to keep cowards away.
His pulse slowed.
Not because things were better.
Because a shape had emerged.
The story was moving again.
Not out of the house yet.
But through it.
He looked down at the daughter.
Then at the father.
Then at Anna and the boy.
These people were not just his first moral test anymore.
They were becoming his first base.
If he saved them — or even stabilised them enough — he would have witnesses, loyalty, concealment, and a household through which to enter the century.
If he failed, he would have corpses, suspicion, and possibly infection.
The biggest hook arrived all at once in his mind not as thought, but structure.
He did not need to save everyone tonight.
He needed to turn this house from a dying place into a surviving one.
The phone vibrated.
One line appeared.
DESCARTES:
Strategic cognition detected.
Richard almost smiled despite himself.
Then another line appeared.
DESCARTES:
Additional relevance pathway available.
He typed at once.
RICHARD:
What pathway?
The answer came.
And for the first time since arriving in 1347, it felt less like instruction and more like invitation.
DESCARTES:
There is a physician three streets away who is about to be wrong in public.
Richard stared at the screen.
Then looked at the room.
Then back at the screen.
Outside, the bells kept ringing.
Inside, the daughter burned, the father bled, and Anna waited with the face of someone who had already crossed too far into fear to turn back.
A physician.
Wrong in public.
Three streets away.
There it was.
The house had been the threshold.
The street beyond it was the game.