JESSI.
She didn't hear him come in.
Boris had that way about him — heavy shoulders, soft steps. Like he could take up space without ever making a sound. She didn't look at him right away, still staring out the now-uncovered window.
"I didn't tell you to come," she said quietly.
"Didn't wait for permission," he replied, lowering himself to sit beside her.
He didn't ask what she was doing.
Didn't lecture. Didn't try to soften it.
Just sat there, their backs against the same cold wall, looking out at the same fractured skyline.
For a while, there was only Luna's soft breathing, and the low grumble of thunder rolling in from the lake.
Then:
"You remind me of my mother," Boris said.
Jessi blinked at him, caught off-guard.
"She had that same look. The one you get when something feels wrong, but you're still trying to solve it anyway. She used to say the world had enough survivors. What it needed was witnesses. People who remembered how to care."
Jessi swallowed.
"What happened to her?"
"Sympathy," Boris said flatly. "That's what happened."
She turned to face him fully now.
"You never told me—"
"Because it wasn't a noble death," he interrupted. "There were five of us crossing. Through forest, by foot. My father paid for passage. My mother helped a woman who'd fallen behind — an older woman. Slower. Couldn't keep up."
"What happened?"
"They circled back. The smugglers. Killed the old woman. Then they shot my mother when she screamed."
He didn't raise his voice. Didn't tremble. Just said it like it had been catalogued and folded away a long time ago.
"We were close enough to the border. My father and I made it. The others didn't."
"You think helping that woman got her killed."
"I know it did."
He looked at her then — really looked.
"I don't tell you this to harden you. I tell you because the choice is real. You open that door for one child, and you may live. Or they may bring twenty others behind them. And then we all die with full hearts and empty hands."
Jessi's voice was barely a whisper.
"She did the right thing."
"She did," he said. "And it cost everything."
They sat in silence again.
Jessi didn't cry. She didn't argue. But something in her went still.
"That's what we're up against," Boris said softly, standing. "Not bad people. Not monsters. Just hunger… and hope. And the fact that sometimes they look exactly the same."
He didn't say goodbye.
He left her with the rain pressing gently against the glass, and the weight of love sharpened into warning.
--
JOSH.
The control room was quiet — too quiet.
The kind of quiet that doesn't feel earned, only borrowed.
I hadn't slept.
I'd been staring at the perimeter feeds for hours, watching bodies come and go from the edge of the camera's field. Stragglers. Survivors. Shadows.
Most of them were just people.
But not all.
It was Cam 2B that caught my eye again — the one by the north fire exit. For a long time it had been empty. Then it wasn't.
A figure stepped into frame.
Too casual. Too clean.
Rosie.
Hair damp from rain. Hoodie clinging to her like static. She stopped just inside the outer boundary and looked up, straight at the camera — even though she couldn't possibly see it.
She smiled.
Not big. Not mocking. Just knowing.
Behind her, a second figure emerged from the shadows.
Brent.
Then Eric.
No pounding. No shouting. Just quiet pressure. Calm presence. The way predators wait outside the burrow of something already trembling.
"You've made it clear," I muttered under my breath. "You're not going away."
Still, they didn't move.
They just stood there, watching the tower, like they could smell the uncertainty bleeding through the walls.
I toggled the interior feed.
Jessi's lounge camera was offline.
Only hers.
"Shit."
I stood fast, knocking over a mug in the process. Coffee soaked across the blueprint Jules had left on the table, curling the edges. I didn't stop.
"Jules," I said into the intercom, voice low but firm. "We've got movement. External and possibly internal. Jessi's off-grid."
There was a crackle, then her voice.
"I'm already looking."
I tapped in a bypass code and overrode the camera blackout on Jessi's level. The lens flared, then flickered on.
Jessi was seated by the window.
Staring out.
At the child still curled up outside the front entrance.
At the others starting to gather again — not loud, not wild, just waiting.
"Don't do it," I whispered, but it wasn't to her.
It was to myself.
Because I wasn't sure how many more knocks it would take before one of us did.