Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to suicide and depictions of violence.

Niema Mandripilias talks with Abi, the AI voice that exists in the thoughts of everyone on the island. Abi tells her that if she keeps her secrets buried then no one will die. Niema tells Abi to start the countdown because she knows that she must try to save the world.

Niema sits in a rowboat with a group of children at the barrier of the island. Niema shows the children the carcasses of dead fish and tells them that the fog on the other side of the barrier kills anything it touches and that it covers the earth beyond the island.

Magdalene sits on the pier watching the boats with the children. Her son, Sherko, is on one of the boats and she worries about him. Magdalene finds Emory with her grandfather, Matis, in the exercise yard that the villagers have transformed into a park. Matis is 60 years old, the oldest man in the village, and everyone knows that he will die the next day.