Mara Ostrohov's casualty ledger used three dates for the same morning.
Local calendar.
Fold-return calendar.
Body-recovery calendar.
The Coastal Shelter request sat at the top.
```
WE ASK AS ONE POPULATION.
KEEP THE SHELTER ALIVE.
```
The East Array recognized the sentence.
Receiver glass under Central Civic Shelter filled with a white coast. Black water climbed away from the sea.
Aren turned the ledger page through the wired camera.
"Do not read the total first. Read who counted."
The first count came from shelter intake.
Eighty-one thousand residents.
The second came from food distribution after the answer.
Ninety-four thousand hands.
The third came from body recovery.
Sixty-three thousand bodies, many carrying two or more resident memories.
Some knew marriages that belonged to strangers.
Some answered to names found in unopened intake files.
Five children remembered the same mother. The mother had died before any of them entered the shelter.
