Chapter 267: Given Them A Way Across

Jingwei waited until Qinghe had cleared the kitchen doorway before following him into the corridor.

Behind them, the shutters lowered over the windows, cutting off the gray morning light.

He knew they wouldn’t stop a falling building, but he wanted them closed before glass or smaller pieces of concrete reached the rooms.

Zhiyi stood beside Hanchuan near the communications room, her tablet held against her chest.

Jingwei touched her arm as he passed, then opened the door and let everyone through before closing it behind them.

The room had no windows.

Its long table stood against an inner wall, with chairs pushed beneath it and a half-empty cup beside the keyboard.

Jingwei pulled out a chair for Zhiyi, but she set her tablet on the table and stayed beside him while he brought up the exterior cameras.

The damaged building had moved again.

A dark line ran down its side, widening where two walls had begun pulling apart. Rain disappeared into the gap. Farther down, water washed through rooms that had been dry before breakfast.

"Which side is it going to hit?" Hanchuan asked, standing behind Shichen as he leaned over the screen.

"The corner below the kitchen, if it keeps falling this way," Shichen replied. He traced the building’s edge without touching the display. "It may break apart before it reaches us. I can’t tell from here."

Jingwei switched on the speakers in the public stairwells. The people below were still arguing around the cupboard, although several had turned toward the wall when another crack carried through the tower.

"Move away from the windows facing the damaged building," Jingwei told them. "Stay near the inner stairs and leave the doors clear. More debris is coming down."

The woman holding her child moved first.

She turned sideways to get past the cupboard, keeping his head beneath her chin while a man tried to stop her from entering the crowded landing. Jingwei watched her shoulder him aside without slowing.

A scraping sound rose through the room.

Zhiyi’s hand found his wrist, and Jingwei turned toward her as the floor shifted beneath his feet.

He caught the edge of the table with one hand and brought his other arm around her shoulders.

Across from them, Zeyu braced himself against the wall while Shichen’s chair rolled back and struck Hanchuan’s shin.

The impact drowned out the rain. Something broke beyond the closed door, followed by a series of smaller crashes that seemed to travel down the outside of the tower.

Jingwei held Zhiyi against him until the movement eased. She had one hand pressed to his chest, and when he looked down, she lifted her face before he could ask.

"I’m all right," Zhiyi told him, her voice close to his ear. "You caught me before I hit anything."

Jingwei checked her face anyway, then kissed her hair and loosened his arm enough for her to turn toward the screens. Two views had gone black. The third showed nothing but drifting gray dust.

"Is anyone hurt?" Qinghe asked, looking around the table. His hand rested on Zeyu’s shoulder, though Jingwei hadn’t seen him cross the room.

"My leg caught the chair," Hanchuan answered, already moving it out of the way. "It’s a bruise. Check Shichen."

Shichen shook his head before Qinghe reached him. "I’m fine. Give me a moment to see what we’ve lost."

Jingwei kept Zhiyi close while Shichen worked. The lights remained steady, and the air continued moving through the vent above the door.

Nothing had fallen from the shelves in this room. He made himself notice each of those things instead of imagining what waited outside.

On the surviving camera, the dust began thinning beneath the rain.

The neighboring building’s upper corner was gone.

Broken floors lay piled against Jinhai several levels below their home, with lengths of metal jutting out over the water.

A strip of exterior wall had been torn from the tower, exposing offices along the public floors.

Shichen leaned closer, switching between the damaged side and the readings beside it.

"Our floors are still level," Shichen said. "The outer rooms below took the hit. I need to check the walls around them before I can tell you more."

"You’re not going down there yet," Hanchuan replied. He rested a hand against the table beside Shichen. "Use what we can see until it stops falling."

Another piece of concrete dropped through the camera’s view. Shichen watched it disappear before sitting back.

"I wasn’t planning to stand underneath it," Shichen said, reaching for the next feed.

Jingwei checked the vehicle bay.

A storage bin had fallen from a workbench, but the mobile base and boats remained secured. Zeyu came beside him, studied the image, then enlarged the floor near the outer doors.

"No water," Zeyu said. "Leave that one open where I can see it."

From the public stairwell came a long, frightened cry.

Jingwei changed screens and found people pressed against the inner wall, their hands covering their heads.

Dust drifted through the open doorway behind them. The cupboard had tipped, spilling its shelves across the landing.

The woman with the child crouched beneath the stairs. A man knelt beside her, holding both of them while she gripped his wet shirt. Her husband had made it up.

Farther down, someone struck the wall and shouted for help.

Jingwei moved through the remaining cameras until he found a corridor with its far end open to the rain.

The broken neighboring building lay against it, close enough that he could see into a room across the wreckage.

A man appeared there, testing the debris with one foot.

"He’s trying to cross," Qinghe said, coming closer to the screen. "There are people behind him."

Jingwei watched the man lower himself onto his hands and knees.

He crawled across a slab, paused when something shifted beneath him, then reached for the torn edge of Jinhai’s wall. Someone inside the corridor caught his sleeve and hauled him through.

A second person followed before the first had stood.

Behind Jingwei, Shichen opened the lower stairwell views.

The people already sheltering in Jinhai had begun turning toward the sound of strangers arriving, and one of the men who had moved the cupboard bent to pick up a broken shelf.

Jingwei reached for the microphone as more figures emerged from the damaged building.

The wreckage had given them a way across, but at the far end of Jinhai’s corridor, the man with the shelf was calling others over to help him close the door.