By Day Seven, nobody pretended anymore.
Mercer wore the title of leader.
Zhao held the power.
And everyone else orbited whichever voice sounded safest that hour.
At sunrise, Ethan watched their camp from a distance while sharpening the metal-edged spearhead against stone.
"Something's changing," Lena said quietly beside him.
"It already changed," Ethan replied. "Now it's showing."
Around noon, shouting broke out across the beach.
One of Zhao's men accused the married couple of hiding food. The husband denied it. The wife stepped in. Voices rose. Mercer tried to mediate, but Zhao cut him off twice in under a minute.
The black-suited man stayed silent in the shade, observing like a man taking notes.
Lena frowned. "Should we intervene?"
Ethan shook his head. "No. Intervening means ownership. Ownership means target."
A few minutes later, Mercer walked toward Ethan's camp alone.
He looked exhausted—sunburned, underslept, and older than he had a week ago.
"We need structure," Mercer said without preamble. "Rotating tasks, ration controls, water assignment. They won't listen unless there's pressure."
Ethan didn't stand. "So apply pressure."
Mercer gave a humorless laugh. "Easy to say when your camp has two people and no politics."
Ethan studied him for a second.
"Wrong," he said. "We have politics. We just don't lie about them."
Mercer rubbed his forehead. "Zhao says you're withholding freshwater to control us."
"Zhao says whatever keeps him central."
"Is it true?"
Ethan looked toward the tree line. "There is freshwater. We worked for it. Marked routes. Secured containers. If your group wants water, they can work for information, not demand it."
Mercer's jaw tightened. "This is survival, not business."
Ethan finally stood.
"Everything is business now," he said. "Time, effort, risk, trust. You just haven't priced it yet."
Mercer stared at him for a long beat, then nodded once and walked away.
By late afternoon, Lena returned from gathering driftwood with bad news.
"Two women from their camp came over while you were inland. They asked about our supplies. Not directly—just fishing for details."
Ethan's expression hardened. "What did you tell them?"
"Nothing useful."
"Good."
That evening, after a small meal and water rationing, Ethan drew a crude map in the sand—shoreline, camp positions, stream route, boar zone, fallback paths.
Lena watched him mark circles and arrows.
"This is getting military," she said.
Ethan didn't look up. "Because they're no longer a random group."
He pointed toward Mercer's camp.
"They're fragmenting into factions."
Another mark.
"Mercer—authority without control."
Another mark.
"Zhao—control without accountability."
Another.
"Everyone else—fear looking for a winner."
He sat back and erased part of the map with his palm.
"When fault lines appear," he said, "people don't stay neutral. They slide."
Lena stared at the darkening horizon.
"Which side are we on?"
Ethan fed one last piece of wood into the fire.
"Ours."
Night fell hard and moonless.
Across the beach, voices rose again in Mercer's camp—this time lower, sharper, and harder to ignore.
No one had split yet.
But the crack was visible.
And cracks don't heal by themselves.