The fog arrived at 6:31pm.
Eight minutes earlier than yesterday.
Lena was already at the window when it came — the community centre's north-facing glass, the one she'd been checking every evening since day three. She watched the fog roll in off the bay in the specific way it rolled — not drifting, arriving, the way it always had in Namiura too, like something that had been waiting just offshore for the signal.
Seventy-four people went through the ritual.
The dimming. The quieting. The movement toward interiors.
Better than the arcade, still. More practiced. The Arc 1 survivors had taught the others and the others had learned fast and Haru's eleven — most of them — had already known.
Most of them.
---
She counted heads at 6:35pm.
Habit. She'd been doing it every fog hour since the first night. A number in her head updated every few minutes. Not paranoia. Just data.
Seventy-three.
She counted again.
Seventy-three.
She looked around the room. The tables. The alcoves. The kitchen doorway. The side corridor leading to the bathrooms and the storage room and the small office Haru used.
Seventy-three people.
She stood up.
---
The side door was unlocked.
She knew because she checked it every evening before fog hour. It had been locked every evening before fog hour for six days.
Tonight the bolt was pulled back.
She stood at the door for a moment.
Then she opened it.
---
Outside, the fog was thick.
Not the gentle coastal mist of a clear night. The specific density of fog hour — grey-white, pressing, the kind that reduced visibility to three metres and made sound behave wrongly. Closer than it should be. Coming from the wrong direction.
She didn't go further than the doorway.
She listened.
Footsteps.
Not running. Not hurried.
The specific unhurried pace of someone going somewhere familiar.
"Hey," she said.
Not loud. The fog carried sound strangely and she didn't know what else was listening.
The footsteps stopped.
Silence.
Then: "Lena."
A voice she recognised.
Nadia.
---
She was six metres from the door.
Standing in the fog with her arms at her sides and her face toward the harbor. Not looking at Lena. Looking ahead. The specific orientation she'd been cataloguing for six days — north, toward the water, the body finding its direction before the mind caught up.
She looked — fine. Present. Her eyes clear when she turned to look at Lena.
That was the worst part.
She looked completely fine.
"What are you doing outside," Lena said. Keeping her voice flat. No alarm. No judgment. Data.
Nadia looked at her.
Then at the door behind her.
Then back.
"I don't—" She stopped. "I was going to check on something."
"What something."
A pause.
"I don't know," she said.
She said it the way Sato had said *fine* — without thinking about the answer. The words arriving before the consideration of them.
Lena stepped out of the doorway.
"Come inside," she said.
Nadia looked at the harbor direction one more time.
One second. Two.
Then she turned and walked back through the door.
Lena followed her in. Locked the bolt.
She stood with her back against the door and looked at Nadia in the community centre's dim generator light and thought: *that was close.*
Not close like danger.
Close like a door that had been open and was now shut.
For now.
---
She didn't tell Ren immediately.
She told him after the fog hour ended. After Nadia had sat down with a cup of water and looked at the floor for a while and then looked up and said *I don't remember going outside* in the flat voice of someone reporting a fact about someone else.
She told him because he needed to know.
And because keeping things from each other wasn't working anymore.
He listened. Hands in his lap. The line between his eyebrows.
When she finished he was quiet for a moment.
"Nadia," he said.
"Yes."
"She's been here six days. Same as us."
"Yes."
He looked at his hand. The numbers he'd written. She'd seen him add to them throughout the day — small additions, specific times, specific observations.
"She said she doesn't remember deciding to go outside," he said.
"No."
"Sato said the same thing."
"Yes."
He looked up. "How many of the six that Axel flagged—"
"I don't know yet." She sat down across from him. "But Nadia is not one of the six. Axel hasn't flagged her. She's been functional. Observant. She's been running medical for six days without any visible signs."
"And tonight she walked outside during fog hour."
"And tonight she walked outside during fog hour," Lena confirmed.
He was quiet.
She watched him process it. The specific quality of Ren's thinking — not her kind of calculation, not the forward-looking chess of contingencies and data points. Something more instinctive. He moved through information the way he moved through a collapsed city — by feel, by what the space required, arriving at conclusions through momentum rather than logic.
Usually he arrived at the right place.
"It's not the stage," he said. "It's not orientation. She skipped a stage."
Lena looked at him.
She hadn't thought of it that way.
She turned it over.
Daisuke — seven minutes at the harbor wall. Stage one. Orientation.
Sato — positioned at the northern wall. Stage one.
Goto — the four-second freeze. Stage one.
Nadia — outside during fog hour, moving toward the harbor, not remembering deciding to go.
Stage two.
Without going through stage one first.
"She's been here six days," Lena said slowly. "Same proximity as everyone else. Same fog hours. Same pulse."
"But she's a medic," Ren said. "She's been in physical contact with people since day one. Medical assessments. Taking pulses. Checking temperatures." He paused. "Physical contact."
Lena was very still.
"The infection transmits through contact," she said.
"Not full infection. But—"
"Accelerated exposure." She looked at her hands. "She's been touching people who are in stage one. Every day. For six days."
Silence.
"We need to tell her," he said.
"Not tonight." Lena looked at the room. At Nadia, across the space, still looking at the floor. "Tonight she needs to sit with water and not think about the harbor. Tomorrow I'll tell her."
"She'll want to keep working."
"I know."
"You can't let her."
"I know, Ren."
He looked at her.
"She's going to argue," he said.
"She's going to be right to argue," Lena said. "We need her. The town needs her. And stopping her from doing the work she's been doing for six days is—" She stopped. "It's the right call and it's going to cost something."
He didn't say anything.
She looked at Nadia across the room.
Then at the locked side door.
Then at the north-facing window — the fog pressing at it, the harbor invisible behind it, the pulse somewhere beneath all of it, rhythmic and patient.
The warm room, she thought.
That was what it was supposed to be.
Lit windows. Safe interior. The horror outside the glass.
Except the horror had found the side door.
And it had been wearing Nadia's face.
---
The fog hour ended at 8:44pm.
Seventy-three minutes.
She wrote it on the clipboard.
Then she went back and looked at the previous entries.
*Day 1 — 22 min*
*Day 2 — 31 min*
*Day 3 — 40 min*
*Day 4 — 47 min*
*Day 5 — 56 min*
*Day 6 — 62 min*
*Day 7 — 73 min*
She looked at the numbers for a long time.
Not doubling. Accelerating. The gap between each night getting larger.
She did the projection.
At this rate — not in eight days. In five.
Five days until the fog hour lasted all night.
They had seven and a half days of food.
She crossed out her previous projection and wrote the new number.
Then she put the clipboard down and went to find Ren.
He was already looking for her.
They met in the middle of the community centre, the room full of people moving through their evening routines, the generator humming, the summer festival noticeboard still on the wall.
He looked at her face.
"How long," he said.
"Five days," she said. "Not eight."
He absorbed that.
"So we don't have three days," he said.
"No."
"How long do we have."
She looked at the window. The fog retreating now, thinning, the harbor lights becoming visible again through the glass.
"Two," she said. "Maybe."
He nodded. Once.
"I'll tell Axel tonight," he said.
"I'll tell Marcus," she said.
"And Nadia—"
"Tomorrow morning. First thing."
He looked at her.
"Lena."
She looked back.
"We're going to be okay," he said.
Not a calculation. Not a contingency. Just — a statement. The specific certainty of someone who had gotten on a bus and crossed a dead city and was still here.
She looked at him for a moment.
At the certainty.
At the boy who walked the long route and never once asked to be thanked for it.
"I know," she said.
Not the same *I know* as before.
Something closer to *I believe you.*
The harbor lights were fully visible now. The fog gone for another night.
She looked at the side door.
The bolt still thrown.
For now.