Bó was left behind with the slowness of things that are left because they must be, not because anyone wants them to be.
The sentry on the wall watched the seven of them depart.
He said nothing—there was an unspoken protocol in Bó regarding who came and who went, a collective form of respect for the autonomy of those making choices everyone knew were dangerous.
To comment would be to acknowledge the danger aloud, and acknowledging danger aloud made it more real in a way no one needed.
The road to the northeast—back in the direction the Wilson brothers had come from, back toward territory the Hunter knew and the others would soon learn—was cold and clear, with the early morning sun performing the honest work of illuminating without yet having enough warmth to heat.
Seven people in motion had a different dynamic than two, different from three.
Morgan noticed it within the first few kilometers—the way the group naturally organized itself without instruction, like particles in a fluid finding the path of least resistance.
The Hunter in front, always.
Morgan immediately behind him, to the left, with Eliot at her side.
Dara behind them, watching the ground and the edges of the road with the attention of an engineer incapable of turning off structural assessment, even when the structure in question was a deteriorating gravel road.
Sung Woo beside Dara, far too quiet for a man whose nature was the opposite of silence—a stillness Morgan recognized as energy conservation, the behavior of someone who had learned that intensity consumed fuel and fuel was limited.
Ruth and Elisa at the rear, close without being together, their conversation intermittent and precise, an exchange of information between two people discovering that they thought differently enough for the combination to produce something neither could produce alone.
After the first hour, Sung Woo said to Dara:
“You don’t want to be here.”
Dara did not stop walking.
He did not look at him.
“Correct.”
“But you are.”
“Correct.”
“Because of Petrov Junior.”
“He’s ten years old,” Dara said.
“He spent the last two years measuring things with the span of his hand because his father taught him to, and his father is gone now.” Another pause.
“His father was a good engineer.
I read the data he published.”
Sung Woo was silent for a moment.
“You knew him personally?”
“No.
But I knew his work.” Dara finally glanced sideways at Sung Woo, briefly.
“Sometimes a person’s work says more than the person would.”
Sung Woo sat with that.
“That’s true,” he eventually said, with a quality in his voice that was not sadness but what remained after sadness had existed long enough to become something else.
They stopped at noon at the same rest area with the concrete picnic table they had passed on the way to Bó.
The symmetry was not comforting, but it was real—the world had a tendency to repeat its structures, and there was something about being back at the same place with a different purpose that Morgan felt but did not articulate.
They ate.
Efficient distribution—Ruth had managed the inventory of provisions with the same precision she managed everything else, every item calculated against the calories required for the journey, no waste, no excess.
Eliot ate and then walked to the roadside, where a cluster of stones had caught his interest.
Morgan watched him kneel, examine them, pull out the small notebook he had obtained from Bó’s library, and write something down.
Elisa followed him.
She stood beside him, looking at whatever the boy was studying.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Lichen,” Eliot said.
“But it’s growing toward the north when it should be growing toward the sunlight, which is south.” A pause. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“It’s the same thing as the wrong shadows, except with growth instead of light.”
Elisa looked at the lichen.
“Does that happen often?”
“The Hunter says it does in this region.
That the Thin Boundary affects plant phototropism.” Eliot wrote down something else.
“I’m recording every case.
It might be useful for mapping where the Boundary is thinnest without having to wait for nightfall.”
Elisa was silent for a moment.
“How old were you when Day 0 happened?”
“Five.”
“Do you remember it?”
“Some things.” The boy closed the notebook.
“I remember the sound.
And I remember my mother picking me up immediately when she heard it, before anything else.
Before looking out the window.
Before saying anything.” A pause.
“I think that’s what I remember most.
That she knew before she knew.”
Elisa sat in silence with that.
Morgan, who had overheard from where she was sitting, sat in silence with it too.
There had been things Clare had known before she knew.