The counting took the whole day, because honest numbers refuse to move quickly.
Lana's registry teams worked the Eastern Reach street by street with plain ink and no civic lines.
The count they built was the first unshared document in the city's recent history.
The dead first, because the dead get named before anyone gets to celebrate.
Eleven citizens had died across the four districts during the compulsory waves. Each name was read aloud in the square by someone who had loved them, on no schedule but their own breathing.
Then came the freed, four thousand one hundred six souls who had been occupied plus released. Each one was counted by hand, then asked, without the network listening, whether they wanted their own name spoken aloud.
Some of them did want their own names spoken aloud. Others asked for silence instead, plus the silence was granted, because the whole point of the day was that agreement was no longer compulsory.
