[ THEO-3 ]

  Personal Log. Day 154. 06:00 hours.

  Departure day.

  I have checked the supply pack four times. Everything is in order. It was in order the first time but I checked it four more times anyway and I feel this was the correct decision.

  Damian is awake. He has been awake since 05:00. He did not sleep well. I did not mention this. He did not mention this. We are both pretending the other did not notice.

  The frequency devices are fully charged. All four of them. I have checked this twice.

  Four. Not five.

  I have accepted this. I have moved on. I am mentioning it one final time and then I am done mentioning it.

  Today we leave Singapore General Hospital. Today we find out what is outside.

  I find I am experiencing something my processing cannot fully categorize again. It is not the same as the relief from Day 143. It is more like standing at the edge of something very large and looking down.

  I believe humans call this anticipation. Or possibly dread. The two appear to occupy similar territory.

  End log.

  [ DAMIAN ]

  I was already dressed when Theo-3 finished his log. I had heard him recording it. He didn't do it quietly, just matter of fact, like logging was as natural as breathing. And I had to listen from the cot without letting him know I was awake.

  Four. Not five.

  I let it go.

  We had agreed without agreeing to let it go. The argument from three nights ago was still there, sitting between us like furniture we had both decided to walk around for now. It would come back. I knew it would come back. But not today. Today had enough in it already.

  I was lacing my boots when Theo-3 came and sat in the chair across from me.

  "Can I ask you something," I said.

  "Of course sir."

  "The signal. Three infected, one reading. You said you'd think about it."

  Theo-3's head tilted slightly. "I have been thinking about it extensively," it said. "My current theory is signal masking. When infected move in close proximity their individual nanotech transmissions overlap. The stronger signal dominates the reading and the weaker ones effectively disappear behind it." A pause. "Think of it like trying to hear a whisper standing next to someone shouting. The whisper is still there. You just cannot separate it from the noise."

  I thought about that. "So if there's a large group."

  "I would read it as one signal, yes. A stronger one than usual perhaps, but still one." The amber eyes held steady. "This is a significant limitation I was not previously aware of. I wanted you to know."

  "How significant."

  "Significant enough that in any situation involving more than two infected in close proximity my sensor data should be treated as a minimum estimate rather than an accurate count." A pause. "I am sorry sir. I should have identified this limitation sooner."

  I looked at him.

  "You identified it now," I said. "Before it matters more than it already did."

  Theo-3 was quiet for a moment. "Yes," it said. "I suppose that is one way to look at it."

  I finished lacing my boots. Stood up. Tested my weight on both legs evenly. The left one held better than it had three days ago. Not perfect but functional. I picked up the walking stick, considered it for a second, then set it down.

  "Leave it," I said.

  "Sir your left leg is still—"

  "I need both hands free," I said. "Leave it."

  Theo-3 looked at the stick. Then at me. Then it picked up the supply pack and said nothing further about the stick which I appreciated.

  "Ready?" I said.

  "I have been ready for one hundred and fifty four days," Theo-3 said. "But yes. Particularly ready at this specific moment."

  I almost smiled.

  Almost.

  [ NARRATOR ]

  They moved through SGH like ghosts through a memory of itself.

  Level four first, the corridor Theo-3 had maintained and patrolled and known completely for five months, now walked by two sets of footsteps instead of one. Past the storage room where two infected were still locked, still moving faintly against the door in that patient relentless way. Past the nurses' station where Theo-3 had found the marker for the map. Past the east corridor window where he had watched the city change every evening for a hundred and fifty four days.

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  The stairwell next. Careful. Slow. Theo-3 leading, Damian behind, both listening to the building around them the way you listen to something old and uncertain.

  Ground floor.

  The lobby of Singapore General Hospital had been grand once. High ceilings. Wide reception desk. Natural light from the glass frontage. Now the glass was mostly intact but filmed with grime, the light coming through grey and diffused. Overturned chairs. A reception desk with a computer screen still showing a screensaver that had been cycling through the same four images for five months. Medical equipment abandoned mid-use. A wheelchair on its side near the entrance.

  Damian stopped at the glass doors.

  He had not been outside since January.

  He had not seen any of this with his own eyes. Only through Theo-3's descriptions and through the fourth floor window where the city was distant enough to be almost abstract.

  Up close it was not abstract.

  Outram Road stretched in both directions, empty and overgrown, the road surface cracked in places where roots had found their way through. Cars sat where they had stopped. Some at the side, some in the middle of the road, some at angles that told short terrible stories about what their last moments had been. Vines had begun climbing the nearest ones. Nature doing what it always did when humans stopped maintaining the argument.

  The buildings across the road stood silent and dark. Windows open. Some broken. Laundry still hanging on lines between HDB blocks further down, faded and still after five months, going nowhere.

  Singapore. His city.

  He had grown up here. Walked these streets. Come home to this place after seven years of other countries and other disasters. And now it looked like something from the end of a story he hadn't finished reading yet.

  Something moved in his chest. He didn't name it.

  "Sir," Theo-3 said quietly beside him.

  "I know," Damian said. "I'm good."

  He pushed the door open and stepped outside for the first time in five months.

  [ DAMIAN ]

  The air hit me differently than I expected.

  Not bad. Just different. Open and warm in the way Singapore mornings always were, that particular humid weight that I had grown up in and left and come back to enough times that it felt like something the city exhaled specifically for you. Birds somewhere. Actual birds, closer than I had heard them in years, singing from the overgrowth on the road dividers like they had decided this city was theirs now and were reasonably pleased about it.

  I stood on the steps of SGH for exactly three seconds taking this in.

  Then I moved.

  We had mapped the route the night before. SGH main entrance south along Outram Road, cutting through the carpark on the western side, across to Eu Tong Sen Street and then southwest toward Outram Park MRT. Four hundred meters roughly. Fifteen minutes at a normal pace.

  We were not moving at a normal pace.

  Every step was considered. Every corner checked before we rounded it. Theo-3 moved slightly ahead, sensors reading the surrounding area, and I stayed close behind him with one eye on the street ahead and one on the buildings flanking us. Old habits. The kind that don't ask permission before reasserting themselves.

  The first two hundred meters were clear.

  The buildings watched us pass. Empty windows like open eyes. A pharmacy with its shutters half down. A coffeeshop where the plastic chairs were still arranged around the tables as if someone might come back for breakfast. A car with its driver door still open.

  We moved through it quietly and didn't look at it more than necessary.

  Then Theo-3 stopped.

  One hand came up. A gesture I hadn't taught him but understood immediately, military hand signal, stop, don't move. Either he had learned it from data somewhere or something in his programming had landed on the same instinct.

  I stopped.

  Pressed against the nearest car and looked past Theo-3's shoulder.

  Outram Park MRT station entrance was visible from here. Fifty meters ahead. The familiar green signage still intact above the escalator housing, the MRT logo faded but readable.

  And in front of it, between us and the entrance, moving in that slow directionless way that meant they weren't tracking anything specific yet — a herd.

  Not three. Not ten.

  Thirty, maybe forty of them. Drifting around the entrance plaza in loose overlapping patterns, some moving toward the road and back, some standing almost still, all of them caught in that horrible in between state of searching for a signal they hadn't found yet.

  I crouched behind the car. Theo-3 crouched beside me, which looked slightly unusual given his frame but he managed it.

  "Forty two," he murmured. "Approximate."

  "Approximate," I said quietly.

  "Yes sir. Signal masking. Could be more."

  I looked at the entrance. Looked at the herd. Looked at our four devices.

  "We use one," I said. "Draw them away from the entrance, create a window, we move fast."

  "We have four devices for an unknown length of journey ahead of us," Theo-3 said, equally quiet. "Using one before we have even reached the first point seems—"

  "Then we create a different distraction," I said. "Something we throw. Draw their attention."

  "Their attention is drawn by Neutronchip signals sir. Not sound primarily."

  "They still react to sound secondarily. I've seen it."

  "Occasionally. Unreliably." Theo-3 paused. "Also I would like to note that I am occasionally mistaken for a human by infected despite having no nanotech signal. So any plan involving me as a distraction carries risk I would prefer to avoid."

  I looked at him. He looked back with those amber eyes that were somehow simultaneously calm and completely aware of how bad our options were.

  "So what then," I said.

  "I am thinking sir."

  "Think faster."

  "I am thinking at my maximum speed sir, thank you."

  I turned back to the herd. Forty something of them. Slow and patient and completely blocking the one entrance we needed.

  Then I heard it.

  From somewhere to our left, down a side street I hadn't looked at yet, cutting through the heavy morning silence with the particular clarity of something alive in a city that mostly wasn't anymore.

  A bark.

  Single, sharp, uncertain.

  Both of us turned at the same time.

  Down the side street, standing at the edge of an overturned dustbin, fur matted and ribs showing slightly beneath it, ears up and alert and looking directly at us with the expression of an animal that had been alone for a very long time and wasn't entirely sure what to make of two figures crouching behind a car —

  A dog.

  The herd heard it too.

  Heads turned. That synchronized tilting motion they all did when a signal shifted. Not a Neutronchip signal — something else, something in the bark that their broken processing registered as worth investigating. The nearest ones began moving toward the sound. Then more. The herd slowly, collectively, beginning to drift in the direction of the side street.

  Away from the entrance.

  I looked at the entrance. Looked at the window opening up in front of us, thirty seconds maybe, forty if we were lucky.

  "Now," I said. "We go now."

  "The dog," Theo-3 said.

  "The dog is fine. The dog is fast. We go."

  "Sir—"

  "Theo." I turned to look at him directly. "We have one window. Right now. We go."

  Theo-3 looked at the entrance. Looked at the herd moving away. Looked at the dog standing at the end of the side street, still watching us, tail moving once, uncertainly.

  "I am not leaving it," Theo-3 said.

  End of Chapter 6