Chapter 185: What the Pipes No Longer Carry

Chapter 185: Chapter 185: What the Pipes No Longer Carry

It was Ben who noticed first, turning the bathroom faucet and getting nothing but a dry, rattling groan from the pipes for his trouble.

"That’s new," he said, trying it again, then the shower, then the kitchen sink, all three producing the exact same hollow, useless sound.

"What’s new?" Aunt Lucy called from the kitchen.

"No water. None of the taps are working."

Aunt Mary appeared in the doorway a moment later, Aurora balanced on her hip, frowning as she tried the kitchen faucet herself and found the same dry silence waiting. "That’s strange. We had pressure yesterday."

"We had pressure this morning," Penelope said, emerging from her own room, already sensing the shift in the household’s energy. "I showered before the supply run."

Erik crossed the penthouse in quick, purposeful strides, trying every tap he passed along the way — bathroom, kitchen, the small utility sink near the laundry — all of them yielding nothing.

"It’s out completely," he said, something grim settling into his expression. "Not low pressure. Gone."

"The flooding," Killian said quietly, already working through the implications with the same methodical focus he brought to everything. "Water pumps for a building this size would be located low — basement, ground floor, somewhere near the other mechanical systems. If the flood’s reached that deep—"

"Then the pumps are underwater," Erik finished. "Destroyed, probably, same as everything else down there."

The room went quiet, the weight of it settling slowly over all of them.

"That means no running water anywhere in the building," Penelope said. "Not just us. Everyone."

"Every floor," Killian confirmed. "Twenty-five stories, and not a single working tap left among any of them."

Aunt Lucy’s hand went to her mouth. "Oh, those poor families. All those people who don’t have—" She stopped herself, glancing toward Penelope with sudden, dawning realization. "We have the spring."

"We have the spring," Penelope confirmed, though the relief of it sat uncomfortably alongside the knowledge of everyone else in the building who didn’t.

"What about sanitation?" Ben asked. "Toilets, everything—"

"Also gone," Killian said. "Same pumps, most likely, or dependent on the same electrical systems that just failed completely with the water pressure. Every bathroom in this building just became nonfunctional, all at once."

Kai, who’d been quiet through most of the conversation, finally spoke, something uncharacteristically serious in his voice. "So what happens now? To everyone who doesn’t have a magic space to retreat into?"

Nobody had an easy answer for that.

"We should check the rest of our own floor first," Erik said finally, already moving toward the door. "Confirm it’s building-wide and not something isolated to our unit specifically."

They split up quickly, checking every tap on their sealed floor, and within twenty minutes the picture had confirmed itself entirely — dry pipes throughout, the building’s entire water system having failed sometime in the last several hours without a single warning sign beyond the pressure Penelope had used that very morning.

"We need to figure out what this means practically," Erik said, once they’d regrouped in the kitchen. "For us, first."

"We have the spring," Penelope said again. "Clean water, essentially unlimited, inside the space. We can drink there, wash there, whatever we need. That solves it for our own family."

"It doesn’t solve it for two dozen floors of people who don’t have that," Killian pointed out.

"No," Penelope admitted. "It doesn’t."

"So we do nothing," Kai said, something bitter in his voice despite his usual easy tone.

"We protect what we’ve built," Erik said, firm. "That’s not nothing. That’s the only reason any of us are still standing here at all."

"There are children down there," Aunt Lucy said quietly. "Families. People who’ve done nothing except run out of luck."

"I know," Erik said, and something in his voice made clear the words cost him. "I know exactly what’s about to happen to them. But the moment we start handing out clean water in a building where people are already murdering each other over supplies, we don’t just help a few families — we announce to everyone left that we have something worth killing for. We’d be inviting the exact violence downstairs straight through our own gate."

"He’s right," Killian said, quiet but certain. "Generosity in a world like this doesn’t stay generosity for long. It becomes expectation, and then it becomes a target painted on every person in this room, including Aurora."

Penelope’s jaw tightened, some old, familiar ache settling behind her ribs — the same one she’d carried every time this family had driven past someone begging for help, every time the arithmetic of survival had demanded they choose their own over everyone else’s. She hated it. She’d hated it for weeks now. And she still understood, completely, why it was the only choice that kept them alive.

"We’re not saviors," she said finally, quiet, the words settling heavy in the room. "We never have been. Not since the first night. We help who we can reach without risking everything we’ve built to do it. This isn’t that."

"So that’s the answer," Kai said, still visibly unsettled, though he didn’t argue further. "We just let it happen."

"We let it happen to people we can’t save without destroying ourselves in the process," Erik said. "That’s different from choosing it. I don’t like it any more than you do."

Killian leaned against the counter, arms crossed, already turning the practical shape of the problem over. "There’s something else we need to talk about. Water’s not just a humanitarian problem down there. It’s about to change how everyone in this building behaves."

Erik nodded slowly, following the thought. "People will fight over it. Harder than they’ve fought over anything yet."

"Food, people ration," Killian said. "Water, they panic over. It’s faster, it’s more visible, and there’s no substitute for it. Whatever’s left in bottles or containers in this building right now just became worth more than most of the supplies we’ve been running for."

"Which means our runs get more dangerous," Penelope said, the shape of it settling cold in her chest.

"Considerably," Killian agreed. "Anyone desperate enough was already a risk. Now they’ll be desperate and thirsty, and thirst makes people reckless in a way hunger takes longer to produce."

"We should assume every run from here forward is a contested one," Erik said. "No more treating supply trips like routine errands. Full readiness, every time, no exceptions."

"What about our own gate?" Ben asked. "If people start realizing floors are going without water and others aren’t—"

"They’ll notice eventually," Aunt Mary said quietly. "People always do."

"Then we tighten everything," Erik said. "No one crosses that gate who isn’t already contracted. No exceptions, not for someone crying, not for someone who seems harmless. We already know how badly that instinct can be used against people, even with good intentions behind it."

Something flickered behind Penelope’s expression at that — an old, uneasy thought she didn’t voice, thinking of a woman soaked through and trembling at their gate only nights earlier. She said nothing, filing it away the same careful way she’d been filing away most things about that particular encounter.

"We should also assume this makes the murders worse," Killian said. "Whoever’s doing it clearly isn’t motivated by hunger. But everyone around them is about to get more desperate, more paranoid, more willing to turn on each other. That’s exactly the kind of chaos a patient killer could use as cover."

"That’s a cheerful thought," Kai muttered.

"It’s an accurate one," Killian said. "Better we plan for it than get caught assuming things will stay as contained as they’ve been."

Erik straightened, some of the earlier heaviness folding itself into the sharper, more decisive posture he wore whenever a problem shifted from something to grieve into something to act on. "New rules, starting today. Every supply run goes out fully armed, minimum three people, no exceptions. Gate stays sealed to anyone outside the family, full stop. And we assume, from here forward, that anyone we encounter outside these walls is operating from real desperation, not just inconvenience. That changes how we read every interaction."

"Even people who seem harmless," Penelope said, echoing his own words back at him from moments earlier.

"Especially those," Erik said. "Desperate people learn fast which faces make others lower their guard."

Aunt Lucy shifted, something troubled still sitting behind her eyes despite the practical turn the conversation had taken. "It just feels like we’re building higher walls every single day. I understand why. I hate that I understand why."

"So do I," Erik said, quieter now. "But the alternative is walls that don’t hold, and I’m not willing to find out what happens after that."

The kitchen settled into a different kind of silence than before — not resigned exactly, but resolved, the particular quiet of people who’d stopped debating a hard truth and started preparing for it instead.

"I’ll set up the new rotation for runs," Erik said. "Everyone gets briefed before tomorrow. And starting tonight, gate watch doubles. No exceptions, no matter how quiet things seem."

Nobody argued. Kai’s jaw had unclenched slightly, some of his earlier frustration folding into grim acceptance. Ben nodded once, already turning toward the stairwell to check the reinforced gate himself, testing its integrity with fresh, careful attention.

Outside, the rain continued its relentless assault against the windows, and twenty-five floors below, an entire building full of people who’d just lost their last basic resource began, in ways none of them could yet see, the slow and dangerous work of deciding exactly how far they were willing to go to survive it.