Chapter 219: Fifteen Flights Up

Chapter 219: Chapter 219: Fifteen Flights Up

Killian slept through the first hour of the ride home, folded against the gunwale with Hrimnir’s warm weight pinned against his legs. Nobody tried to wake him. The hull he had stretched for eight people sat low in the water, and every swell slapped it like a hand.

Erik took the tiller and kept them to the narrow side channels. Michelle sat in the middle with one palm against her stomach, her eyes on the dead windows sliding past. Danielle kept her arm over the hutch. Alex had not stopped looking at the water since they left the lake.

"It was a park," he said at last. "I used to run that route on Saturdays."

"I remember," Erik said.

"Now there’s a lake in it." He rubbed his wrist, where the gray vein had begun to fade. "I keep waiting to feel it. The wall. It’s like reaching for a limb and finding nothing."

"It’ll get easier."

"You don’t know that."

"No," Erik admitted. "But you’ll sleep tonight. That’s something."

Alex laughed, thin and short, and said nothing more.

Valerie sat in the bow beside Hrimnir and watched the buildings with the flat attention of someone counting exits. Twice she glanced back toward the lake, and Erik pretended not to see it. Nothing followed them. Jason’s dots weren’t here to confirm it, and the not-knowing sat in his chest like a stone.

The complex came out of the mist at dusk, tall and dark and streaked with rain. Kai cut the engine a block out and let them drift in on the current, the way they had every trip since the raiders came.

"That’s it?" Danielle said.

"That’s it."

"It’s huge." She craned her neck. "Who lives in it?"

"Some people," Kai said. "A lot of them aren’t friendly. Stay close, and don’t talk unless one of us asks you something."

The dock on the sixth floor was a plank platform bolted to the brickwork above the waterline. Erik had spent a day reinforcing it, and the bolts held. He tied off and looked up at the fire escape. It ran in switchbacks, rusted and slick, fifteen flights to the twentieth floor.

Michelle looked up too. Her face did something complicated.

"Erik," she said. "I’m eight months along."

"I know."

"That’s fifteen flights."

"I know." He had done this arithmetic in the boat. "We go slowly. A landing at a time. Kai and I will carry you if it comes to that."

"You will not," Michelle said, with a flash of the woman she’d been before the flood. "I’ll walk. I’ll just walk slowly."

"Then slowly."

Killian woke when the hull bumped the dock. He sat up with a grimace, pressed the heel of his hand to his eye, and said, "How bad is it?"

"You don’t need to carry anything," Erik said. "Just walk."

"I can manage that."

They climbed in a long line, Kai first, Erik last. Valerie walked at Michelle’s elbow, one hand pressed lightly at the small of her back, and at every landing she made her sit for a full minute and counted her pulse. Danielle hauled the hutch up one flight at a time and glared at anyone who offered to help. Alex went behind Michelle, so he’d be underneath if she slipped. The rain ticked on the steel.

On the ninth floor, Erik felt the hair lift on his neck.

A window to his left was dark, as the others were. But it had been dark a half second ago in a different way, and now a pale oval hung behind the glass where nothing had been. A face. It didn’t move. It watched the line climb past, counted it, and vanished.

Kai had seen it too. He didn’t turn his head. He only said, quietly and cheerfully, as if the conversation were about the weather, "Eight. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. We’re slow today."

"Keep moving," Erik said.

"Who was that?" Valerie murmured.

"A neighbor." Erik kept his voice flat. "Someone who’d like to know what we’re carrying. Don’t look."

She didn’t look. But her grip on Michelle’s arm tightened a little, and he noted it.

At the twelfth floor Michelle stopped on the landing with her hand pressed to her side, her breath coming short, and Valerie crouched in front of her and said, "Contraction?"

"Practice. It’s practice." Michelle laughed breathlessly. "I think."

"We’re stopping."

"Valerie, I’m fine."

"Four minutes," Valerie said, and she said it the way she must have said it to a hundred frightened animals. "Sit. Breathe. If they come regularly, we have a different problem."

They waited. The rain fell. Far below, the flood slapped against the foundations, and somewhere in the building a door slammed and a child began to cry. Erik stood at the rail and watched the stairwells above and below, one hand loose near his hip, and thought of everyone he could not carry.

Four minutes passed. Michelle stood. Nothing followed.

By the eighteenth floor Danielle had stopped complaining and started counting stairs under her breath. By the twentieth she could barely lift the hutch.

"Let me," Kai said.

"No."

"Danielle."

"They’re mine." Her voice cracked, and she lowered it. "I raised them. I’m not giving them to someone I met this morning."

Kai looked at her for a long second. Then he raised both hands. "Fine. But I’ll walk behind you."

"Fine."

The gate on the twenty-first floor stood where Killian had reinforced it, a wall of steel bars and welded plate that looked like it belonged in a bank. Behind it, in the white glow of a battery-powered lantern, a small figure was waiting.

Penelope stood with her arms folded loosely and her red hair pinned up, an ordinary young woman in a black jacket. She watched Alex come up the last flight, and something in the set of his shoulders tugged at her, a faint, unplaceable familiarity, like a song heard through a wall. She set it aside. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something she could say out loud.

"Ms. Wolfe," Alex said, with a polite nod. He kept a respectful distance on the landing. "It’s been a while."

"It has. Hello, Alex." Her smile was warm but measured. "Welcome home."

"Thank you. I appreciate it more than I can say." He glanced at the gate, the steel, the steady white glow of the lantern beyond. Nobody had that kind of light anymore. "I’m sorry to turn up on your doorstep like this."

"Don’t be. We have spare apartments, and you’ve had a long trip."

Kai got the latch open at last, and Alex stepped through. Penelope moved aside to let him pass, and her eyes followed him for a moment before she turned her attention to the others.

Her gaze found Michelle, then Valerie, then Danielle with the hutch, and her expression turned warm and steady, the way it did when she was deciding to like someone.

"Hi. I’m Penelope. Welcome. You can put the rabbits down now."

"They’re staying with me," Danielle said.

"Of course they are," Penelope said, without missing a beat. "But you can put the hutch down. Nobody’s taking it."

Danielle set it down very slowly, and held onto the wire a second longer than she needed to.

Behind Penelope, Ben had stepped out of the shadow of the doorway with a second battery lantern and a folded blanket.

"You have working batteries," Danielle said, staring at it.

"A few," Ben said. "We’re careful with them."

He gave Michelle the blanket and said gently, "There’s tea. A real bed. Whatever you need."

"Thank you," Michelle said, and began to cry.

Alex had stopped looking at the gate and was looking at the lantern. He had gone two months in the dark, feeding a wall of vines by feel. The light sat in his face like something he had forgotten how to believe in.

Then he looked around at the steel and the bare, solid hallway. "Where’s Aunt Mary?" he asked, with the wavering hope of a boy who’d eaten all her biscuits. "Erik said she was..."

"Resting," Erik said, as gently as he could. "You’ll see her soon. I promise. But not tonight. The floors above twenty-three are ours, so knock first."

Alex searched his face. Something in his expression closed quietly, like a door being shut with care. "Okay," he said. "I trust you."

"Thank you."

"I mean it. You haven’t given me a reason not to."

It was not a small thing to say, and Erik knew it. He nodded once, and Kai swung the gate shut behind them. It latched with a heavy clang. The steel bars slid home, and for the first time in two months Alex stood on the other side of a barrier he hadn’t had to build himself.

"One rule," Erik said, quietly, to all four of them. "You’re on the twenty-third floor, and you can go where you like above the gate. But nobody unlocks this one. Not for a neighbor, not for someone hurt, not for anyone who says they know us. If it opens, one of us opens it. That’s what keeps this floor safe, and that includes you."

Valerie held his gaze. "That’s a lot to ask of someone who doesn’t know why."

"It is."

"Is it for us, or for you?"

"Both," Erik said. "I’ll tell you more when I can."

She studied him a moment longer, then nodded once, the way a vet nods at a diagnosis she doesn’t like and means to treat anyway.

Penelope took Michelle’s arm to steady her toward the stairwell, and as the group began to move, she glanced back along the landing.

Killian had stopped at the top of the stairs with one hand on the railing. He hadn’t said a word since the dock. In the lantern light his face was the color of old paper, and a faint shine of sweat stood at his hairline.

Penelope let go of Michelle. "Ben, take them up. I’ll be right behind you."

Ben nodded and led the way. Alex looked back once, then followed his sister and Michelle into the stairwell. Danielle trailed last, gripping the hutch.

Penelope crossed to Killian and stopped just short of arm’s length. When she spoke, it was quiet and level, as if she were asking about the weather.

"You’re pale."

"I’m fine."

"You said that last time." She looked at his eyes, then at the hand on the rail, which wasn’t quite steady. "How much did the hull take?"

"All of it." His mouth twitched. "It was worth it."

"I’m sure it was." She reached out and touched two fingers to the inside of his wrist, brief and professional, as though checking a pulse. Her fingers stayed a heartbeat longer than they needed to. "Go up and sleep. I’ll send something to your door."

"Penelope."

"Humor me."

He studied her for a moment, and the corner of his mouth lifted. "Yes, ma’am."

She withdrew her hand and stepped back, and the distance between them went back to what a stranger would have seen: two people who happened to be standing near each other. Only Kai, lingering by the gate with his arms crossed, noticed. He looked up at the ceiling very carefully, and said nothing.

"Go on," Penelope said, and went after the others.

Erik stayed at the gate a moment longer, listening to the rain on the landing. Somewhere far below, on the ninth floor, a pale face was telling someone exactly how many people had come up.