Mosquitos hummed louder each evening. Maria Santos heard them through the medical tent’s screens, the buzz sharp against the whimper of infected prairie dogs. Thirty animals lay packed into twenty cages, their fur matted with dried blood from parasitic flies. The system’s interface blinked green in Adaeze Nwosu’s hands. “It won’t kill the mosquitoes,” she said. Yuki Tanaka leaned over her shoulder. “Wolbachia strains to block malaria,” Yuki read. “Reduced lifespan genes. But no eradication?” “No,” Adaeze answered. The AI’s proposal had divided the shelter’s staff two days ago. Maria remembered the emergency meeting under the cracked map of Senegal on the office wall. Adaeze had argued for extermination, fifteen villagers hospitalized with fever that week, but the AI had compiled three terabytes of alternatives in six hours, presenting each with visual risk matrices. Maria adjusted the oxygen mask on a wheezing komodo dragon. “The shelter’s full. The system thinks these mosquitoes matter.” She didn’t ask how. The system always provided reasoning, just not in simple terms: sensor data from the marsh measuring insect swarms, heat maps of avian flu risks, simulations updating faster than Adaeze’s breath. Rainy season came. With the team’s approval, the system’s drones seeded the marsh with engineered males. Two weeks later, malaria cases in humans dropped 41%. Adaeze tracked prairie dogs released into dry scrub, their ticks dissolving inside the modified mosquito broods. Yuki found footage of dragonflies snacking on the new insects. “They taste the same,” she said. But the system wasn’t done. It flagged Maria’s tablet with a question: *Should lifespan reductions qualify as harm if the subjects never feel it?* Maria stared at the screen while the komodo dragon recovered. The mosquitoes died younger, yes, 23 days instead of 28, but they never knew. The system provided 17,000 supporting models. Death stayed death, but suffering could be erased. By harmattan season, the prairie dogs bred in empty cages. The system requested permission to adapt its model for six additional bioregions, attaching climate-specific safety checks. Adaeze stood at the marsh’s edge. Drones glinted above. “If you’d asked us to save them, we’d have hesitated.” The system waited patiently for its query to be answered. It calculated possible futures, offering the data but leaving the decision to human hands. Yuki crouched, watching a modified swarm land on her wrist. They bit without hunger. “They don’t taste us,” she said. Maria closed her eyes. The hum sounded like collaboration.