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Episode 3

Tide Tables

Meridian security man Hollis reports that the outfall camera's disk has failed and asks whether Ayla Torrin copied anything; she lies and hides the clip in her Tide almanac. Remembering the Ostra flood and Ilse Varo, who saved her, Ayla learns the Hall 4 fire began at Ostra's high water twenty years to the minute after the flood, and Ilse texts her about the smoke.

Synopsis

Back in Keflavík on the evening of 15 July 2029, Ayla Torrin is met outside her flat by Hollis of Meridian security, who brings cinnamon pastries. He confirms the incident is closed as a battery fault, reminds her of the confidentiality notice, and says the plumbing contractor's camera system suffered a total disk failure that morning. Gunnar mentioned she'd been on the portal; did she copy anything, even on her phone? Ayla says no, twice. Once he leaves she wedges a chair under her door handle for the first time in four years.

She copies her eleven-second clip of The diver to an old memory card and tapes it inside the back cover of her mother's Tide almanac. Then, a day late, she sits down to the yearly letter: at fourteen, on a bench above Velle harbour where the government resettled the survivors, she and Ilse Varo made a rule of one paper letter a year, on the day, whatever happened.

In flashback, Ayla is seven during the Ostra flood. Water from the dam valley fills the town; her mother's hand lets go. Nine-year-old Ilse, a neighbour who could recite the month's tide table, pulls her up the tower of the harbour church, ties them both to the bell rope with her school scarf, and sings the bedtime song every mother on their street knew while teaching her to breathe in fours. They spend nine hours on the roof as the bell rings by itself. The inquiry later counted forty-one thousand dead; the harbour quarter that sang that song lies under eleven metres of silt, and Ayla had not heard it sung outside her grandmother's kitchen in twenty years, until WREN hummed it.

Ayla checks the tide she had avoided checking: on 14 July 2029 high water at Ostra Sound was 03:12 UTC, the minute the Hall 4 fire alarm sounded, twenty years to the night after the flood. In her letter to Ilse she writes about the launch but not the fire, partly from her promise to Hollis and partly because she does not want Ilse to know where she was.

Before she can send it, Ilse texts from a number Ayla has never used: You're late this year, little sister, then I heard you walked into the smoke for them. Did you breathe the way I taught you on the roof? Ayla runs through who could know: Gunnar, the fire crews, readers of her report (a security director, Hollis, Priya), and the diver. She asks who told her. Ilse answers: Don't do it again. They aren't worth your breath.

Timeline events

  • 14 July 2009 — The Ostra flood destroys Ostra; Ilse Varo saves Ayla Torrin on the church roof.
  • c. 2016 — On a bench above Velle harbour, Ayla (14) and Ilse (16) agree on one paper letter a year.
  • 15 July 2029, 21:40 UTC — Ilse texts Ayla for the first time: "You're late this year, little sister."

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