Morning arrived quietly over the prison, though the peace it brought was only surface deep. The first rays of sunlight slipped through the narrow windows of Cell Block B, stretching pale strips across the concrete floor while the camp outside slowly came to life. A hammer struck metal in steady rhythm by the workshop. Engines coughed and turned over in the motor pool, one after another, a low mechanical heartbeat under everything else — the sound of a camp getting ready for war, whether it wanted to admit that to itself yet or not.
By the parking area, Michael crouched beside the open hood of the Silverado, checking the battery terminals while Daryl leaned against the truck bed, going through a crate of ammunition and sorting rounds by caliber.
"We're short on 5.56," Daryl said, not looking up. "Not by much, but enough that I want it in the front vehicle, not split between all three."
"Front vehicle gets the launcher too," Michael said, straightening up and wiping his hands on his jeans. "If this goes the way I want it to, we won't need to fire a shot past the first five minutes."
"And if it doesn't go the way you want it to?"
"Then we improvise. Same as always." Michael closed the hood with a solid thud and glanced toward the cell block, visible over the rooftops in the distance. "Rick handled it alright, you think?"
Daryl didn't answer right away. He set the crate down and crossed his arms. "Handled it about as well as a man can handle finding out his best friend might've fathered his kid. So, no. Not really."
Michael exhaled through his nose, something between a sigh and a laugh with no humor in it. "As long as he doesn't put a bullet in him before tonight."
"He won't." Daryl went back to the crate. "Rick's not that kind of stupid. Not yet, anyway."
Neither of them said anything else about it. There wasn't much left to say that the coming battle wouldn't answer on its own.
While Michael and Daryl buried themselves in preparations for the coming battle, another conversation was about to unfold elsewhere in the prison.
Lori stirred beneath her blanket and slowly opened her eyes. For one brief, merciful moment, everything felt ordinary. She reached toward the other side of the bed out of habit and found the mattress already cold.
"Rick...?"
No answer.
Lori sighed. She keeps forgetting that they haven't been sleeping together ever since the events that happened at the farm.
She sat up, rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes, unbothered at first. It wasn't unusual for Rick to be up before her on a day like today — she'd half expected to find him already out with Michael and Daryl, elbow-deep in engine grease or checking rifles. She swung her legs off the bed, reaching for her clothes, when a soft knock came from the open doorway.
Andrea stood there.
She wasn't holding her usual morning coffee. She wasn't smiling, either — and that, more than anything, was what made Lori's stomach draw tight before a single word had passed between them.
"Morning," Lori said carefully. "Everything alright?"
Andrea hesitated a beat too long. "Can I come in?"
"...Yeah."
Andrea stepped inside and eased the door most of the way shut behind her, leaving it just barely cracked. She glanced toward the upper bunk, where Carl still slept curled beneath his blanket, before turning back to Lori.
Andrea took a breath before saying. "Something happened last night. I don't want you hearing it secondhand from somebody in the yard."
Lori's brows drew together. "Andrea, you're scaring me."
"Daryl came back safe last night. He wasn't alone though." Andrea took a breath. "Merle was with him and.."
That alone was surprising enough that Lori almost missed the way Andrea's voice had dropped, the way she was choosing each word like she was walking across something that might not hold her weight.
"There's more," Lori said. It wasn't a question.
"They brought someone else back with them, too." Andrea held her gaze. "Shane."
For a long moment Lori just stared at her, the word landing somewhere her mind refused to fully catch it.
"No," she said. "That's not — he's gone. He left. I thought—"
"So did everyone."
Lori sank onto the edge of the bed without meaning to, memories she had spent months forcing into the darkest corners of her mind came rushing back one after another — Shane laughing beside Rick before any of this happened, Shane and her doing the deed. The look on Rick's face learning about the truth between them.
"Was he hurt? I didn't think he still had the face to come back here after what he'd done." she finally asked, which wasn't the question Andrea had braced for.
"No. Daryl says he saved Merle's life yesterday. It seems the Governor finally found out what Merle had been up to and tried to get rid of him. Shane happened to be in the area and stepped in to help." Andrea watched the disbelief cross Lori's face and let it sit there a moment before adding the rest, gently. "He asked about you. He wants to know if the baby's his."
Lori closed her eyes. She didn't answer.
"—Mom?"
Both women froze. Carl lifted his head from the pillow, blinking against the light, still half-asleep.
"What're you guys talking about?"
"Nothing important," Andrea said, too quickly, and immediately regretted how it sounded.
Carl frowned, studying them both. "You look weird. Both of you."
Lori forced a smile that took more effort than it should have. "We were just talking about today. It's a big day."
"Oh." Carl accepted that with the easy trust of a kid who hadn't learned yet to doubt his mother's face. He yawned. "Where's Dad?"
"Already out."
"Okay." He flopped back down, muttering something into his pillow, and within a minute his breathing had evened out into sleep again.
Only then did Lori rise, smoothing her shirt with hands that weren't quite steady. "I need to find Rick."
"At the holding cell." Andrea said. "Go, I'll stay with Carl."
Lori nodded, took one long breath, and walked out into the gray morning light — leaving Andrea alone with a sleeping boy and the quiet, uncomfortable certainty that whatever came next, keeping this from him wasn't going to last much longer than today.
By the time Glenn made it back across the yard, the news had already started to move on its own, the way it always did in a place this size no matter how tightly anyone tried to hold it.
"Hey — Glenn." Jill fell into step beside him near the garden, Amy and Beth trailing a few paces back. "What's going on? Cole said there's somebody new locked up in Block C, but he wouldn't say who."
"Somebody Daryl brought in," Glenn said, keeping his pace steady, his tone deliberately flat. "It's being handled."
"Handled how?" Mary asked, coming up on his other side with Gareth close behind her, curiosity plain on both their faces. Even Axel and Tom had drifted closer, pretending to check on the weapon crates stacked near the fence but clearly listening.
"By Rick. That's all I can say right now." Glenn offered them an apologetic look he didn't entirely feel. "I promise it'll make sense soon. Just — not today, alright? We've got a war to get ready for."
That, at least, was true enough to end the conversation. The group didn't push further, though Glenn could feel their eyes on his back as he peeled off toward the parking area, where Michael was crouched beside the truck and Daryl was still counting rounds into neat little stacks.
"Rick talked to him," Glenn said, low, once he was close enough that only the two of them would hear it.
Michael looked up. "And?"
"He held it together. Barely." Glenn rubbed the back of his neck. "Lori knows now too. Andrea told her."
Daryl let out a breath through his nose and went back to the ammunition without a word, like a man deciding there was nothing useful left to say about it.
Michael was quiet for a moment, gaze drifting toward the cell blocks, then toward the yard where a dozen conversations were quietly failing to be about anything else.
"Then let's make sure today goes right," he said finally. "Because God knows this camp doesn't need two wars happening at once."
"Get everything ready. We move out in three hours."
"Okay."