Chapter 130: Sealing the Floor

Chapter 130: Chapter 130: Sealing the Floor

The construction supply store two blocks over hadn’t been touched, as far as Vanya could tell — no broken windows, no forced entry, just a metal roll-down gate over the entrance that had clearly deterred whoever else had passed it by in the last three days.

"This one’s locked properly," Harold observed, testing the gate’s edge. "Not like the pharmacy."

"Good. That means it’s ours." Vanya studied the mechanism for a moment before glancing at him. "This is what we’re here for. Not looting supplies from a hardware aisle someone already picked through. This."

Harold understood immediately, some of the exhaustion from earlier burning off under new focus. "You want me to open it."

"I want you to practice opening it. There’s a difference, and the difference matters." She stepped back, giving him room. "It’s metal. That’s your whole world now. Focus on the lock itself, not the gate around it."

Harold approached the padlock securing the gate’s base, closing his eyes the way she’d taught him hours earlier, breathing through the count before reaching for whatever quiet, patient version of the ability lived underneath the panic-driven one. His fingers hovered an inch from the metal.

Nothing, for several seconds.

Then the shackle of the padlock began to soften under some pull only he could feel, bending slowly out of shape until the mechanism simply gave, no longer capable of holding its own line.

Harold opened his eyes, staring at the ruined lock with the same startled satisfaction from the market. "That was cleaner than the cart."

"It was." Vanya allowed herself a small nod of approval. "Smaller target, contained focus. You’re already improving."

Inside, the store was a maze of shelving stacked with lumber, hardware, and — toward the back, exactly what Vanya had come for — a section of heavy-duty security gates and reinforced steel doors meant for storefronts and warehouses, the kind of stock most residential survivors would never think to look for.

"We’re taking one of these?" Harold asked, eyeing a folded accordion security gate leaning against the wall.

"We’re taking several. One for the stairwell entrance to our floor. One for the elevator." Vanya ran her hands along the nearest gate’s frame, assessing its weight, its mounting hardware. "If something gets loose in this building, I want our floor to be the hardest place in it to reach."

Harold glanced toward her hand as she rested it flat against the gate, already anticipating what came next. "You’re just going to take it, aren’t you."

"Obviously." The gate vanished from beneath her palm without ceremony, folded away into whatever quiet, unseen place she kept things now. A second gate followed, then a bag of mounting hardware, a battery-powered drill, and a heavy box of bolts. "There’s no reason to carry any of this the hard way."

Harold huffed something close to a laugh, shaking his head. "I keep forgetting you can just do that."

"Good. Forgetting means you trust it enough not to think about it constantly. That’s useful." She scanned the remaining shelves briefly before turning back toward the entrance. "We have what we need."

They made the walk back in under fifteen minutes, unburdened, Vanya’s pace steady and unhurried now that the heaviest part of the errand had been reduced to nothing more than the memory of having touched it.

Back on their own floor, they worked through the installation together — Vanya pulling each piece from the space as it was needed, directing the placement, while Harold provided the precision work, softening bolts and brackets into place along the metal frame with small, controlled applications of his ability that made the job go faster than any drill could have managed alone. By the time they finished, the stairwell entrance to their floor was sealed behind an accordion gate bolted directly into the surrounding concrete, and the elevator landing wore a second, smaller barrier that would keep anything from stepping directly into the hallway even if the elevator itself somehow still ran.

Harold stepped back, wiping sweat from his forehead, surveying the work with open satisfaction. "That’s actually really solid."

"It’s good work," Vanya agreed. "Yours as much as mine."

He looked pleased by that in a way he tried, unsuccessfully, to hide.

Only once the gates were secured did Vanya turn toward Persephone’s door, key already in hand from the last visit — except this time, when she tried it, the lock resisted.

She frowned, testing it again. "It’s changed."

"Changed how?"

"The key doesn’t fit the same way it did two days ago." Vanya crouched, examining the mechanism more closely in the dim hallway light. "Either the lock’s warped, or someone’s changed it."

Harold’s hand tightened around the crowbar out of instinct before he consciously registered the reaction. "Someone’s been in there?"

"I don’t know yet." Vanya kept her voice even, though her posture had shifted into something more alert. "Open it. Carefully. If something’s different inside, I want to know before we’re standing in the doorway."

Harold nodded, pressing his palm to the lock, focusing past the adrenaline the way she’d spent the whole night teaching him to. The mechanism gave with a soft click, cleaner this time than either of his earlier attempts, and the door swung open under Vanya’s hand.

Inside, nothing had changed. The woman lay exactly where they’d left her, breathing slow and even, the room undisturbed.

Vanya exhaled, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. "The lock must have simply swelled. Humidity, temperature changes — buildings do strange things when nobody’s maintaining them."

Harold looked relieved but not entirely convinced. "You sure?"

"No," Vanya admitted. "But there’s nothing here to suggest otherwise, and I’d rather not spend the last of tonight’s energy being paranoid about a warped lock." She crossed to the bed anyway, pressing the back of her hand lightly against the woman’s forehead.

Cool. Steady breath. Color returning to her skin.

"Astrid."

Online.

"Confirm status."

Scanning. A brief pause. Vitals remain stable and improved from the previous check. Fever has not returned. I estimate continued recovery on the same trajectory as before — full consciousness within the next twelve to twenty-four hours.

"No irregularities?"

None of concern.

Vanya nodded, satisfied, and drew the blanket a little higher over the woman’s shoulder before turning back toward the door. It occurred to her, briefly, that she still didn’t actually know her name beyond the one word — Persephone — offered once in an elevator days ago, before any of this had started. Something to ask, eventually, once there was someone conscious enough to answer.

Harold lingered a moment, looking back at the sleeping woman. "We should probably check the lock again tomorrow. Just to be safe."

"We will." Vanya glanced toward the newly installed gates visible at the end of the hallway, the small, solid comfort of a floor that was, for tonight at least, harder to reach than it had been that morning. "We’ll check everything tomorrow. Tonight, we’ve done enough."