Chapter 156: A Pull With No Explanation

Chapter 156: Chapter 156: A Pull With No Explanation

The flooding crisis on the lower floors had settled, for now, into something manageable — Jason’s father resting, William and Edward’s floor secured, the immediate panic below finally beginning to ebb into exhausted quiet rather than active chaos. Erik had stayed longer than strictly necessary, making sure Jason’s family had what they needed before finally heading back toward the stairwell, Kai and Ben trailing behind him.

He should have gone straight back to the twenty-first floor. That was the plan, the sensible plan, the one that didn’t require any further justification.

Instead, he found himself pausing at the landing for the twentieth floor, one hand resting against the reinforced gate blocking the stairwell entrance, some old, insistent pull tightening low in his chest for reasons he still couldn’t fully name.

"You good?" Kai asked, noticing the hesitation.

"I want to check on this floor," Erik said. "Make sure the flooding hasn’t compromised anything down here too."

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It just wasn’t the whole truth either, and Erik was uncomfortably aware of the distinction even as he said it.

Kai studied him for a moment, something faintly curious behind his expression, though he didn’t push. "Sure. We’ll head back up, let Penny know you’re doing a sweep."

Erik nodded, and once Kai and Ben had continued upward, he approached the metal gate alone, knuckles rapping twice against the reinforced surface.

A pause, then the sound of footsteps on the other side, careful and measured. "Who is it?"

"Erik. Checking the floor for flood damage."

Another pause, longer this time, before the mechanism gave and the gate swung open — Harold on the other side, crowbar loosely in hand, relaxing visibly once he registered who it actually was.

"Oh. Hey." Harold stepped back to let him through. "We’re fine down here, if that’s what you’re checking on. No water, power’s out same as everywhere else, but nothing structural."

"Good to hear." Erik’s eyes moved past him, down the hallway, toward a door he recognized without needing to check the number.

Harold caught the direction of his gaze. "You want me to get Nya?"

Erik hesitated, some part of him aware that the question had exposed more than he’d intended to reveal. "If she’s available."

Harold disappeared down the hall, and a moment later, Vanya emerged, one eyebrow already raised slightly at finding him standing in her floor’s entrance.

"Erik." Something careful crossed her expression — not unwelcoming, just assessing, the same efficient read she gave everything. "Is something wrong?"

"Checking on the floor," he said. "The flooding’s caused problems below. Wanted to make sure it hadn’t reached this level."

"It hasn’t." She studied him a moment longer, something faintly amused threading through her composed expression now. "Though I notice Harold already told you that, and you’re still standing here."

Erik didn’t have a ready answer for that.

"Would you like to come in," Vanya said, when he didn’t immediately respond, "or are you planning to stand in this hallway processing whatever that expression means?"

"I have somewhere to be," Erik said, which was true, and also, he suspected, a retreat he wasn’t proud of.

"Of course." Something almost like understanding flickered behind her eyes, though she didn’t push further. "Stay safe upstairs, Erik."

"You too."

He turned and left before either of them could examine the exchange any further, the sound of the gate locking back into place behind him carrying an unexpected weight, like a door closing on something he hadn’t finished saying.

Behind that gate, Vanya remained standing in the hallway a moment longer than she needed to, Harold watching her with poorly disguised curiosity from where he’d retreated a few steps away.

"You didn’t let him in," Harold observed.

"There was no reason to."

"You could have made one up. You’re good at that when you want to be."

Vanya didn’t answer immediately, some old, careful part of her mind turning the encounter over the same way she turned over every piece of intelligence that didn’t quite fit the pattern she expected. Erik Ryker had come down two flights of stairs, past a locked security gate, for a flooding inspection he could have delegated to literally anyone else in his group, or skipped entirely given that Harold had already confirmed the floor was undamaged before Erik had even asked.

Astrid.

Online.

Run a check on elevated stress-response markers. I want to know if what I’m reading in someone’s behavior is deliberate or involuntary.

Specify the subject.

Erik Ryker.

A brief pause. Insufficient data for a conclusive answer. Based on limited prior observation, however, his behavioral pattern is consistent with unconscious motivation rather than calculated approach. He does not appear to be aware of his own reasoning.

Vanya considered that for a long moment, something unreadable settling behind her composed expression.

"Nya?" Harold prompted, still watching her.

"It’s nothing," she said, though even to her own ears, the words didn’t sound entirely convincing. "Let’s go check the rest of the floor. I want to be certain before I trust anyone else’s assessment of it."

Harold didn’t push, though something in his expression suggested he’d noted the deflection for exactly what it was, filing it away the same patient way he filed most things about his cousin these days.

Penelope was in the kitchen when Erik returned, helping Aunt Mary sort through the medical supplies Killian had brought back two nights earlier, and she glanced up the moment he stepped through the gate.

"Kai said you went to check on the twentieth floor," she said, something carefully neutral in her tone that immediately put Erik on alert.

"Flooding precaution," he said.

"Right." Penelope set down the box of bandages she’d been organizing, following him with her eyes as he crossed toward the window to check the rain’s progress. "Did you actually get past their gate, or did you just stand there until someone came to check?"

Erik went very still.

He turned slowly, meeting her gaze, and something in her expression told him she already suspected the answer before he’d said anything at all — not accusing, just quietly, uncomfortably certain.

"It’s not intentional," he said, which was, he recognized even as he said it, a poor attempt at deflection.

"I believe you." And she did, genuinely — that was the strange part, the part that made the whole conversation harder rather than easier. She knew Erik well enough to recognize when something was pulling at him against his own better judgment, the same way she recognized every other tell he rarely let show. "I just don’t fully understand it either."

Something in her tone made Erik study her more closely. "You look uncomfortable."

"I am, a little," Penelope admitted, setting the bandages aside fully now, giving him her full attention. "Not because of you. Because of me." She hesitated, some old awkwardness clearly working through her before she continued. "I reacted badly, the first time we met her. In the stairwell. I don’t think I ever properly explained why, and now, watching you gravitate toward her the way you have been, I keep thinking about how strange my own reaction was, and I don’t know how to bring it up without it sounding—"

"Without it sounding like what?"

Penelope pressed her lips together, clearly weighing how much to say. "Like I have some reason to be wary of her that I’ve never actually explained. Which I do. I just don’t know how to explain it without opening up an entirely different conversation neither of us has really had yet."

Erik crossed the kitchen slowly, leaning against the counter across from her, patient in the particular way he always was when he sensed someone needed room to arrive at something on their own terms. "You don’t have to explain it today."

"I know." She managed a small, tired smile. "I appreciate that. I just — I want you to know that whatever I felt that day wasn’t about her, exactly. Not in the way it probably looked."

"Then what was it about?"

Penelope hesitated a moment longer, old fear and old relief both sitting close together behind her expression now — the same complicated tangle she’d been carrying since the night in the cave, since Oddy’s severed sentence, since everything Erik already partially understood without needing the full explanation yet.

"Something I’m still working through," she said finally. "I promise I’ll tell you properly, eventually. Just not today."

Erik studied her for a long moment, something quietly accepting settling into his expression — the same patient trust he extended to everyone he cared about, the same willingness to wait as long as it took rather than force something before someone was ready to give it.

"Okay," he said simply.

He didn’t push further. He rarely did, not with her, and Penelope was grateful for it in a way she didn’t fully articulate, though something in her expression softened slightly all the same.

Aunt Mary, who had been quietly sorting supplies through the entire exchange with the particular studied focus of someone deliberately not inserting herself into a conversation that wasn’t hers to join, finally glanced up.

"For what it’s worth," she said, mild, "whatever’s happening between the two of you and that floor — the pulling toward it, the wariness about it — sounds like something that’s been building longer than either of you have been talking about it out loud."

Erik and Penelope both looked at her.

"I’m not accusing anyone of anything," Aunt Mary added, entirely unbothered. "I’ve just lived long enough to recognize when two people are circling the edges of something without naming it. Might save you both some trouble if you stopped circling quite so carefully."

"Duly noted," Erik said, dry, though something almost like a smile tugged briefly at his mouth.

"For what it’s worth," Penelope added, quieter now, "whatever’s pulling you toward her — I don’t think it’s something you need to be afraid of. I just think it’s something neither of us understands yet."

Erik considered that, turning the words over with the same careful attention he gave every unsolved problem, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he believed her.

"Neither of us understands a lot right now," he said finally.

"No," Penelope agreed, something almost like a real smile finding its way onto her face despite everything. "We really don’t."

The kitchen settled into a comfortable, unresolved quiet after that, both of them turning back to the supplies still needing sorting, Aunt Mary humming something tuneless under her breath as she worked. The rain still fell steadily beyond the windows, and somewhere several floors below them, a pull neither Erik nor Vanya could explain remained exactly as unresolved as it had been an hour earlier — patient, persistent, and entirely unbothered by either of their attempts to understand it, or by the quiet, watchful patience of the people around them who’d already started noticing what neither of them had said out loud yet.