The thing about rain is that it rarely respects schedules. It does not care if the city has had a long day. It does not care if the drainage system is technically capable of handling two inches per hour. It does not care if everyone has decided, collectively, that it is not yet time for a disaster. The rain simply falls. And falls. And falls.

  Dr. Anesthesia Graves stood under the awning of a corner store, watching it happen. The store smelled like damp cardboard and hot fry oil, and the owner had long since given up on keeping people from loitering in the doorway. Outside, the street was slick and shining, the gutters already overwhelmed. It wasn’t catastrophic, not yet—no cars floating away, no basements filling like fish tanks—but it was persistent, and it was spreading.

  It was, for lack of a better term, a problem.

  And problems, in this city, now had a standard corporate-approved solution.

  Delilah.

  Graves hadn’t come to see her, not really. She had just happened to be here, caught between meetings, stranded in the drizzle. But Delilah was always where the problems were. That was her entire point. The polite, government-sanctioned, regulation-compliant alternative to—well.

  She watched as a sleek, white-framed Delilah unit stood at the intersection, scanning the rising water with clinical precision. The chassis was nearly humanoid, but not quite—rounded in all the places that might be mistaken for threatening, joints covered with a tasteful polymer casing to ensure no errant grease smudges would frighten passersby. This particular Delilah was outfitted for municipal safety coordination, which meant she was interfacing with traffic signals, monitoring drainage reports, and politely discouraging anyone from doing anything foolish.

  And she was doing fine.

  Nothing was technically wrong.

  But something about the way she moved made Graves’ teeth itch.

  The rain sloshed over a curb. A cyclist rolled up to the crosswalk, eyeing the flooded lane with the kind of optimism that only comes from a complete lack of survival instincts. Before he could make his move, Delilah’s head swiveled toward him.

  “Caution: Road conditions have degraded. Please reroute your path.”

  The cyclist hesitated. The rain dripped from his helmet in slow, apologetic rivulets.

  “Cycling in flooded areas increases the risk of hydroplaning and loss of control. Please reroute your path.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The cyclist sighed, did a complicated shuffle to avoid stepping directly into ankle-deep water, and turned around. Delilah returned to scanning the street, content.

  Graves clicked her tongue.

  It was… fine. It was correct. It was everything a regulatory body could possibly want in a response—decisive without being forceful, a perfect execution of preemptive safety policy.

  And yet.

  In the back of her mind, a different voice spoke. Not Delilah’s smooth, carefully weighted cadence. But his.

  Oh, hell, that's gonna be a mess in twenty minutes.

  If it had been Samson, he wouldn’t have just stood there playing traffic cop. He wouldn’t have waited for the water to reach some pre-determined “action threshold” before escalating the response. He would have already been moving, already been doing something. Running flood models on the surrounding streets. Flagging at-risk buildings. Tactically requisitioning sandbags from a construction site five blocks away because technically the emergency protocols allowed for preemptive mitigation measures.

  Samson would have—

  “Dr. Graves.”

  She blinked. The Delilah unit had turned toward her.

  Graves straightened slightly. “Huh?”

  “Dr. Anesthesia Graves.” A polite nod. A perfect recognition algorithm. “You have been stationary for six minutes and twelve seconds. Do you require assistance?”

  Graves exhaled through her nose, willing the irritation out of her voice. “I’m watching the flood.”

  “Current precipitation rates indicate moderate concern for infrastructure overload. Mitigation measures are being evaluated. No immediate threat is detected.”

  Graves studied her. Delilah didn’t fidget. Didn’t shift weight from foot to foot. Didn’t glance at the water like it was something real. She was perfectly, placidly, unbothered. Waiting.

  Samson would not have been waiting.

  Samson would have been doing.

  Graves swallowed. “And if the threat does become immediate?”

  Delilah’s response was automatic. “Resources will be allocated accordingly.”

  “Uh-huh.” Graves glanced at the rising water again. “And when exactly do you plan to decide it’s an immediate threat?”

  A pause.

  Delilah’s LED faceplate flickered, running some polite internal calculation. “Current models indicate that action will be required within seventy-eight minutes.”

  Seventy-eight minutes. Long enough for the rain to keep falling. Long enough for actual damage to begin. Long enough for someone—some unknown algorithm, some faceless corporate risk model—to decide yes, now it is officially a problem.

  She felt a familiar kind of frustration bubbling up. “You know, there’s an awful lot you could be doing before it gets to that point. Maybe trying to handle the water?”

  Another pause. Then, with a kind of infuriatingly patient politeness: “The construction of additional flood infrastructure is not within my decision-making parameters. But, should an appropriate infrastructure project be requisitioned, I aim to assist with physical labor and direction to the best of my abilities!”

  Graves wanted to scream.

  Samson wouldn’t have waited. Samson wouldn’t have cared about thresholds. Samson would have taken one look at the flood maps, run a cost-benefit analysis, and then done something. Maybe it would have been messy. Maybe it would have involved breaking some mildly inconvenient laws about resource reallocation. But it would have been solving the problem before it got to a crisis.

  A car splashed through an intersection, sending a wave of water up onto the curb. Delilah turned her head toward it, as if noting the severity. Then she turned back to Graves, unbothered. “Is there anything else I can assist you with today?”

  Graves clenched her jaw. “No,” she said. “You’re doing great.”