The message waited where Eli had once waited for permission to die.
He did not recognize it at first. A volunteer had copied the words onto a slip and brought it from the public notice shelter near the river approach. Someone had asked that it reach the independent team checking evacuation routes. There was no seal, no signature that could be verified and no demand for secrecy on the outside.
Inside, Mira had named the shelter’s broken clock.
Eli felt the room recede. In his first life, an official notice beneath that clock had told temporary workers to remain at a collection point. He had obeyed it while the safer road closed. The memory carried the cold of the shelter rail against his palm and the embarrassment of asking twice whether the notice still applied.
Mira’s note used no language about a second life. It did not have to. The reference was exact enough to tell him whose attention it sought.
Rook’s survival will cost a city.
Below that sentence came directions for a dam service approach and a condition under which its outer gate could still be passed. A lookout would wait near the maintenance wall during a narrow contact window.
