The resource scarcity in Seattle is practical and thematic simultaneously. Ellie counts bullets because she has to, because survival in this city requires knowing exactly what you have. But the counting is also a measure of what the world took. The stars she used to count were a practice of abundance — there is always another star, the sky does not run out. Bullets run out. The scarcity has replaced the abundance as the rhythm of how she orients herself.

The Seattle sections are built on accumulation — of enemies, of moral weight, of small decisions that compound into something that cannot be undone. This session is deep enough into the city that the counting has become second nature, which is to say the person who counted stars is already a different person than the one moving through these corridors.