Chapter 118: A Name From The Book

Chapter 118: Chapter 118: A Name From The Book

"Might as well do this properly," Kai said, resting the axe head against the floor. "Beats standing around staring at each other like we’re about to fight over the last bunker."

"You say that like fighting over bunkers isn’t a legitimate concern," Ben muttered.

"It’s on the list. We’re just not there yet." Kai stuck a hand out toward Vanya, entirely unbothered by the sword still loose at her hip. "Kai Ryker. Resident axe enthusiast, occasional voice of reason, mostly decoration."

Vanya looked at the offered hand for a moment before accepting it, her grip firm, evaluating.

"Ben," Ben offered next, with a small nod rather than a handshake, the crowbar still resting easy in his grip. "I hit things with this. It’s less exciting than it sounds."

"It’s saved your life twice today," Kai said.

"Three times. You weren’t counting the maintenance closet."

"I don’t count things that happen off-camera."

Penelope stepped forward before the bit could run any further, sheathing the katana fully now that the immediate tension had eased into something closer to cautious familiarity. "Penelope. Penelope Wolfe."

Killian didn’t offer his hand at all, just a short nod, eyes still doing the quiet perimeter check he never seemed to fully stop running even in conversation. "Killian."

Last came Erik, who’d been holding back at the edge of the group the way he always did — not from wariness this time, Penelope noted, but something closer to deliberate patience, letting the others move first. He stepped forward now, pistol holstered properly at last.

"Erik Ryker." A beat. His eyes settled on Vanya’s face in a way that lingered just slightly past what politeness required — not predatory, not even fully conscious, just a flicker of something crossing behind his usually unreadable expression before he smoothed it away again. "We spoke through your door two nights ago."

Vanya inclined her head, unbothered. "Vanya Dexter."

"You were more polite than the circumstances warranted," she added.

"Would you have preferred less politeness?"

"I would have preferred a working phone line. The politeness was a close second."

The faintest curve touched the corner of Erik’s mouth — gone almost before it arrived, but Penelope caught it, and something about the sight of it made a strange, cold weight settle low in her stomach that had nothing to do with the zombies still wandering somewhere below them.

Harold, who’d been quiet through the whole exchange, cleared his throat and raised a hand awkwardly, like he was in a classroom. "Harold. Her cousin."

"Younger cousin," Vanya added.

"By two years."

"By enough that it matters."

Kai grinned at that, delighted. "See, this one gets it. Penny’s my—" he caught himself, glanced at Penelope, and amended smoothly, "—my sister. Older by a few months. We never let her forget it."

"I never let you forget it," Penelope corrected, though the words came out thinner than she meant them to, some of the usual bite missing from her voice.

Nobody noticed. Not yet.

"So," Kai continued, oblivious, turning back to Vanya and Harold, "what’s the story? You said your neighbor was sick, back when we talked through the door. That still—"

"She’s still with us," Vanya said, cutting in before he could finish. "In a manner of speaking. She’s been running a high fever since it started. Hasn’t woken."

"Fever, not bitten?" Erik asked, something sharpening in his voice.

"No wound. No infection that I could find." Vanya’s tone stayed clinical, precise, the way she delivered every fact since they’d met. "Whatever’s happening to her isn’t what’s happening to the ones outside."

Kai’s brow furrowed. "That’s new."

"Everything about this is new," Vanya said. "I’ve simply stopped being surprised by it."

Penelope, standing slightly apart from the rest of the group, felt something cold sharpen behind her ribs, though she couldn’t yet place why. She studied Vanya’s face — the pale gold hair pulled back, the sharp green eyes, the upturned nose, a composure that didn’t belong to someone who’d only just woken into this nightmare three days ago — and something in the back of her mind, some fragment left over from a life she’d only half-inherited, began assembling pieces she didn’t want assembled.

Vanya.

Vanya Dexter.

Blond hair. Green eyes. Ivory skin. Power — space and healing.

The original female lead.

The name from her notebook rose up out of memory with the force of something physical, a hand closing around her throat from the inside. Stay away from Erik and Vanya. Those two will be the reason why I die.

She’d written that on the second night after transmigrating, in a body that wasn’t hers, in a world that wasn’t hers, half-convinced the details would never matter because she’d already decided to build a different life than the one the novel had written for her. She had built a different life. A family. A home. A space full of gold and gemstones and a wolf pup curled at Erik’s feet and a baby named Aurora sleeping in a cradle twenty-five floors up.

She hadn’t accounted for the possibility that the story might simply be patient. That it might let her build all of it and still find a way to put the right two people back in the same hallway.

Erik was still looking at Vanya. Not intensely — nothing so obvious that anyone else would have caught it — just a small, unguarded attentiveness that Penelope had genuinely never seen him direct at a stranger in the entire time she’d known this body’s memories, let alone her own.

Her face must have done something, however briefly, because when she glanced up, two sets of eyes were already on her instead of on the conversation.

Killian’s, steady and quiet, the way he always watched her when something shifted that he couldn’t yet name.

And Vanya’s — sharper, more deliberate, the look of someone who had noticed the exact moment a stranger’s composure had cracked and filed it away without comment, the same instinct that had kept her alive through however many lifetimes she’d already lived.

Neither of them said anything.

Penelope forced her expression back into something neutral, something closer to the mild curiosity everyone else in the hallway was still wearing.

"We should keep moving," she said, and was faintly relieved to hear her voice come out steady. "Building’s not going to clear itself."

Kai, thankfully, had already moved on, gesturing Harold and Vanya toward the group like they’d been part of it for days instead of minutes. "You two heading down or up?"

"Down," Vanya said. "As far as it’s quiet enough to manage."

"Funny," Kai said. "Same plan. Guess we’re neighbors on this floor too, in spirit."

Erik said nothing, but he fell into step a half-pace closer to Vanya than strictly necessary as the group began moving again, and Penelope, walking several feet behind them all, felt the weight in her chest settle into something she recognized now for exactly what it was.

Not surprise.

Dread.