Day 81. 09:15 hours.
Forbes Park.
Peacock Mansion.
Level 2.
The Infirmary.
Alessia had cleared the central examination area.
The equipment carts were pushed to the walls.
A thin mattress on the floor, a blanket folded at one end, a pillow at the other.
The lighting dimmed to a soft amber — not dark enough to induce sleep, but dark enough to ease the transition between the ordinary world and the one Jennifer was about to enter.
A blood pressure cuff on the adjacent table, its digital display active and blinking.
A pulse oximeter.
A thermometer.
A small notepad on which Alessia had already written the date, the time, and the patient's name.
Jennifer's name.
She sat on the edge of the mattress with her hands in her lap, her fingers intertwined, her knuckles pale.
Her eyes were closed.
Her breathing was slow and deliberate — four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out — the rhythm Jae-min had taught her in the weeks after her Enhancement, when her telepathic abilities had first manifested, and the flood of other people's minds had nearly drowned her.
"I need to go deeper than last time," Jennifer opened, low, her eyes still closed.
Jae-min sat beside her on the mattress.
His hand found hers — her fingers cold, her grip tight, the tendons in her wrist standing out like cords.
He said nothing.
His presence was the preparation.
The anchor.
The fixed point around which her mind could orient itself before it dove into waters that had nearly killed her before.
Alessia knelt on Jennifer's other side, her movements precise and unhurried.
She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Jennifer's upper arm and secured the pulse oximeter to her finger.
"Baseline is good," Alessia measured, clinical. "Blood pressure one-twelve over seventy-four. Heart rate sixty-eight. Oxygen saturation ninety-eight percent."
She looked at Jae-min. The particular look of a doctor who trusted her patient but did not trust the procedure.
"Ten seconds last time," Alessia pressed, low. "She pulled out at ten seconds, and it took her six hours to recover."
"I know," Jae-min allowed, low.
"I am going to attempt thirty this time," Jennifer laid out, steady despite her white knuckles. "Maybe longer."
Alessia's pen paused over the notepad.
"If your blood pressure exceeds one-forty systolic or drops below ninety, I am pulling you out," Alessia directed, firm. "Non-negotiable."
"Agreed," Jennifer confirmed.
"Jennifer —" Alessia pressed.
"I will be fine, Alessia," Jennifer allowed, with a ghost of a smile. "Jae-min is here."
Jae-min squeezed Jennifer's hand.
"Whenever you are ready," Jae-min directed, low.
Jennifer nodded.
She took a breath — four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out — and then she opened her mind.
The effect was immediate.
Her fingers tightened around Jae-min's with sudden, involuntary force, the tendons in her wrist standing out like bridge cables under strain.
Her breathing quickened.
Her pulse, visible in the thin skin of her throat, accelerated from sixty-eight to eighty-five in the space of three seconds.
Alessia's pen moved.
Her eyes flicked between the digital display and Jennifer's face.
Seconds passed.
Five.
Ten.
At ten seconds, Jae-min felt Jennifer's body begin to tremble — a fine, high-frequency vibration that started in her shoulders and spread down her arms.
Her blood pressure, visible on the display, had climbed to one-thirty systolic and was still rising.
"Twelve seconds," Alessia measured, her voice carefully neutral.
Jennifer did not respond.
Her eyes were open but unfocused, her pupils dilated, her gaze fixed on a point approximately two meters in front of her that did not exist in the physical world.
She was inside the minds of eleven women simultaneously.
Fifteen seconds.
Her heartbeat hit one hundred.
Twenty seconds.
Jae-min felt her grip loosen — the first sign of a mind that was beginning to lose its grip on the physical world.
He squeezed her hand.
Hard.
Deliberately.
The pain would ground her — a physical sensation cutting through the psychic noise.
Her fingers tightened again.
Twenty-five seconds.
Blood pressure one-thirty-eight systolic.
Alessia's pen had stopped moving.
Twenty-eight.
Twenty-nine.
At thirty seconds, Jennifer exhaled — a long, slow breath — and pulled her mind back.
She opened her eyes.
Blinked three times.
Looked at Jae-min with an expression that was difficult to read — not pain, not exhaustion, but something closer to the aftermath of a long, difficult journey.
"Thirty seconds," Alessia measured, the controlled relief of a doctor whose patient had just completed a procedure that could have gone very wrong.
"I told you," Jennifer allowed, weak but smiling.
"Do not be smug," Alessia countered, reproving but soft. "Your blood pressure hit one-thirty-eight."
"Could have been worse," Jennifer returned.
"It has been worse," Alessia pressed. "That is why I am not being smug with you."
Jae-min waited.
He knew from experience that Jennifer needed a moment after a deep scan — a pause in which her mind reorganized itself, sorted the data, and began the process of translating the raw flood into language.
Jennifer closed her eyes.
Her thumb traced slow circles on the back of Jae-min's hand — a self-soothing gesture, unconscious and repetitive.
When she opened her eyes, she was ready.
"The walls are thinner," Jennifer opened, low.
Jae-min waited.
"Last time — the first scan, three days after the rescue — their minds were armored. Reflexive. Protective. Every mind I touched was a fortress with the gates locked. I could feel them — their presence, their basic emotional states — but I could not get inside."
She paused.
Her brow furrowed.
"This time, the walls are still there. But they are cracked. Fragmented. The trauma is still present — it is enormous, it is deep — but it is no longer a single, solid mass. It is broken into pieces, and between the pieces, I could see them. Their real selves. Who they were before."
Her voice caught on the last two words. She swallowed. Steadied.
"Patient One — Sofia," Jennifer laid out, low. "Her dominant state is grief. Not acute — settled, like silt at the bottom of a river. She has lost something. Someone. But underneath the grief, I could see clarity. Analytical precision. She was an engineering student. Her mind still works like one. She categorizes. She organizes. She is managing her own recovery the way she would manage a project. Step by step. She is not drowning. She is just very, very sad."
Jae-min squeezed her hand.
Sofia — the woman who had said "Rosa" on Day Seventy-Two, the first word from any of the eleven, her sister's name pulled from sixteen days of silence.
Marie's humming had cracked the wall.
Marie's food had kept it cracked.
And now, nine days later, Jennifer could see the engineer underneath the grief.
"Patient Two — Carmen," Jennifer continued, low. "Fear. It is the dominant layer. But underneath the fear is defiance. Spark. She is scared, but she is also angry about being scared, which means the fear has not won yet. Her mind is fighting itself, and the fighting part is winning."
"Patient Three — Rosa," Jennifer pressed, low. "Rage. Pure, undiluted, white-hot rage. The most intense single emotion I have felt in any of them. It is not directed at anyone specific — it is directed at everything. At the facility. At the men who ran it. At the world that allowed it. But rage is energy, and energy can be directed. She just needs a target."
Rosa — Sofia's sister.
Three cots down from Sofia in the L5 Gymnasium.
The woman who had eaten voluntarily for the first time in two days on Day Seventy-Two, the broth moving down her throat in visible swallows.
The rage Jennifer was describing was the rage of a woman who had been carried through the gate on a cot and had not spoken since.
"Patient Four — Esperanza," Jennifer measured, low. "Nurturing instinct. It is buried under layers of shock and dissociation, but it is there — deep, strong, almost maternal. She was a nursing student. The part of her that wanted to care for people is still alive. It is just buried under the part of her that is trying to survive."
"Patient Five — Lina," Jennifer continued, low. "Competitive drive. Her mind is still organized around the concept of performance — of being better, faster, stronger. The trauma has dented it, but it has not broken it. She wants to prove something. She wants to win."
"Patient Six — Mira," Jennifer pressed, low. "Anger. Raw, unformed, undifferentiated. She is the youngest, and her mind is the least developed in terms of emotional complexity. The anger is everything — it is her shield, her weapon, her reason for getting up. She is not ready to feel anything else yet."
"Patient Seven — Lourdes," Jennifer measured, low. "Withdrawal. She has retreated so far inside herself that I could barely find her. Her mind is like a house with all the doors closed and the curtains drawn. But the house is still standing. The structure is intact. She is not broken — she is hiding. And people who hide can be found."
Lourdes — the woman who had held Jae-min's gaze for three seconds on Day Seventy-Two, the longest any of the eleven had held a stranger's shape since intake.
The woman who had been sitting upright with a book open in her lap, not reading it, just holding it the way a woman holds a thing she remembers.
"Patient Eight — Gabby," Jennifer continued, low. "Analytical detachment. Her mind processes trauma the way it processes data — by categorizing it, compartmentalizing it, filing it in boxes. It is a survival mechanism, and it is working, but it means she is not actually feeling any of it yet. When the boxes start to open, it is going to be difficult."
"Patient Nine — Daniela," Jennifer pressed, low. "Problem-solving. Her mind is an engineer's mind. She encounters a problem, she analyzes it, and she looks for solutions. The trauma is a problem. The facility is a problem. And she is already running calculations, even if she does not have all the variables yet."
Daniela — the woman who walked her slow loop along the far wall of the L5 Gymnasium, six days of the same circuit, her bare feet tracing the same path until the varnish had worn pale under her toes.
The problem-solver.
The woman who was running calculations.
"Patient Ten — Ana," Jennifer measured, low. "Empathy. Overwhelming, almost painful empathy. She feels what other people feel, and right now, what the people around her are feeling is enough to flatten anyone. But she is not trying to shut it out. She is trying to absorb it. She thinks — subconsciously — that if she takes enough of other people's pain into herself, there will be less pain left for them to carry."
"Patient Eleven — Belle," Jennifer finished, low. "Obsessive detail-focus. Her mind has latched onto small, specific things — patterns, structures, the particular geometry of objects — and is using them as anchors to keep from being swept away. It is not healthy in the long term. But in the short term, it is keeping her functional."
Jennifer was pale — paler than before the scan.
Her heartbeat had stabilized at seventy-four.
Her blood pressure was returning to baseline.
But the cost was visible in the fine tremor that still ran through her hands and the slight glassiness in her eyes.
"They are coming back," Jennifer laid out, low. "All of them. Not at the same speed, not in the same way, but they are all coming back."
Alessia helped her lie down on the mattress, arranging the blanket with practiced efficiency.
Jennifer protested weakly.
"I am fine. I just need a minute," Jennifer pressed.
"You need at least two hours of rest," Alessia countered, firm. "No telepathy. No exertion. No conversations that require emotional engagement. Jae-min, make sure she actually rests."
"I will make sure," Jae-min confirmed, low.
Jennifer reached up and touched his face — a brief, gentle gesture, her fingertips cool against his jaw.
"Thank you for being here," Jennifer breathed, barely a whisper.
"Always," Jae-min returned, low.
She closed her eyes.
Within thirty seconds, her breathing had deepened into the slow, even rhythm of sleep.
Her heartbeat settled to sixty-two.
Jae-min sat beside her for a long moment, watching her sleep.
Then he spoke.
"The belongings box," Jae-min opened, low.
Alessia looked up. "The one from the facility?"
"Ji-yoo found it during the evacuation. A box of confiscated personal items — student IDs, keychains, photographs. It is in storage somewhere. Marie would know where," Jae-min laid out.
Alessia set down her pen.
"You want to give them back their names," Alessia measured, quietly.
"I want to give them back themselves," Jae-min returned.
Alessia stood.
Crossed to the intercom panel on the wall.
Pressed the button for the kitchen.
"Marie. This is Alessia. Jae-min is looking for the belongings box from the Pasig facility. The confiscated personal items. Do you know where it is stored?" Alessia pressed.
The intercom crackled.
Marie's voice came through — warm, unhurried.
"Level 2, storage room C. Behind the water filtration spare parts. I will bring it down," Marie confirmed.
"Thank you," Alessia acknowledged.
"Is this about the women?" Marie pressed.
"It is about the women," Jae-min confirmed.
A pause on the line.
When Marie spoke again, her voice had changed — still warm, but with an edge of something harder underneath.
"I will bring it to the L5 Gymnasium. Give me ten minutes," Marie directed.
The intercom clicked off.
Jae-min stood, carefully disentangling his hand from Jennifer's.
"I will be back in an hour," Jae-min laid out, low.
"I will be here," Alessia confirmed, sitting down in the chair beside the mattress.
— • • • —
Day 81. 09:52 hours.
Forbes Park.
Peacock Mansion.
Level 5.
The Gymnasium.
The L5 Gymnasium was the largest enclosed space in the compound — a rectangular room approximately thirty meters long and fifteen meters wide, its floor covered in interlocking rubber mats.
Paper lanterns hung from the ceiling beams, their gold glow sliding across the concrete.
The eleven cots were lined along the walls under the basketball hoops, the same arrangement Jae-min had been reading through his spatial awareness since Day Forty-Nine.
Marie was already there when Jae-min arrived, standing in the center of the room with a cardboard box at her feet.
The box was marked with the faded logo of the Pasig facility's storage division.
Marie had not opened it.
She was waiting for Jae-min.
"I found it during the evacuation," Marie opened, low, her voice carrying the weight of a memory that was still fresh. "Storage room on the sublevel. They kept everything. IDs. Phones. Jewelry. Photographs. Systematic. Organized. Like a filing system for human beings."
Her jaw tightened.
She knelt and opened the box.
The contents were exactly what Jae-min expected and somehow more difficult to look at than he had anticipated.
Student IDs in plastic sleeves.
A keychain shaped like a bear, its paint chipped.
A photograph of a woman and a child, creased and faded, but the smiles are still visible.
A phone — dead, its case decorated with small flowers.
A pair of earrings.
A mechanical pencil.
A folded piece of paper with an address in careful handwriting.
A hair tie with a butterfly clip.
Eleven sets of belongings.
Eleven identities, reduced to the contents of a cardboard box.
Jae-min knelt beside the box and began to sort.
It took twenty minutes.
He worked methodically, separating the items into eleven groups based on the limited information he had — names on student IDs, photographs that matched faces he had seen in the gymnasium, items that Jennifer's telepathic assessment had associated with specific women.
The Mapua student IDs were the key — each one had a name, a course code, and a photograph.
These were Mei's and Aiko's classmates.
The same lecture halls.
The same campus walkways.
When he was done, eleven small piles of belongings sat on the gymnasium floor, arranged in a rough line.
Each pile was small — three to five items, none of them valuable in any conventional sense, each one a constellation of meaning that only the person it belonged to could fully read.
Patient One — Sofia — was awake.
She had been sitting on her cot at the edge of the semicircle, watching Jae-min work with an expression that was difficult to read — not curiosity, not hope, not fear, but something closer to recognition.
The same look she had worn on Day Seventy-Two when Marie's humming had cracked the wall, and she had said "Rosa" for the first time.
He beckoned to her.
She stood.
Her movements were slow, deliberate — the particular care of someone whose body had been through trauma and was learning to trust itself again.
She crossed the gymnasium floor on bare feet, her gait unsteady but determined, and stopped in front of the pile that Jae-min had identified as hers.
Student ID.
Mapua University.
College of Engineering.
The photograph on the card showed a young woman with dark eyes and an expression of quiet intelligence, her hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, the faintest trace of a smile on her lips.
The name printed beneath the photograph was clear and precise.
Sofia Reyes.
She picked up the card.
She held it in both hands, her thumbs resting on the edges, her eyes moving across the surface as if she were reading it for the first time — as if the name printed there belonged to someone she had known a long time ago and had almost forgotten.
"Sofia Reyes," Sofia opened, hoarse, barely above a whisper.
She did not cry.
Her expression did not change.
She simply held the card and stared at it, her eyes tracing the letters of her own name.
Nine days ago, she had said, "Rosa." Her sister's name.
The first word from any of the eleven.
Today, she was saying her own.
Jae-min stood beside her.
He did not speak.
He did not touch her.
He simply stood.
Sofia held the card for a long time.
Minutes.
The gymnasium was silent.
Then she turned her head.
Three cots down, Patient Three — Rosa — was sitting up on her cot, her dark hair loose on the pillow, her eyes open, watching.
Sofia held up the student ID.
"Rosa," Sofia measured, clearly. "Your name is Rosa."
Rosa looked at her sister.
Looked at the card.
Looked at Jae-min.
Then Rosa reached for her own pile — the small cluster of belongings Jae-min had placed at the foot of her cot.
Her fingers found the student ID.
She held it up.
"Rosa Reyes," Rosa opened, low, her voice rough from sixteen days of silence broken only by her sister's name.
The gymnasium held its breath.
Then Patient Seven — Lourdes — stood.
She walked to her pile.
Picked up her student ID.
Read the name.
Looked at Jae-min.
"Lourdes Santos," Lourdes measured, quietly.
Patient Two — Carmen.
Patient Four — Esperanza.
Patient Five — Lina.
Patient Six — Mira.
Patient Eight — Gabby.
Patient Nine — Daniela — the woman who had walked her slow loop for six days, now standing still for the first time, her student ID in her hand.
Patient Ten — Ana.
Patient Eleven — Belle.
One by one, the eleven women walked to their piles.
One by one, they picked up their student IDs.
One by one, they read their own names aloud.
Some spoke clearly.
Some whispered.
Some could not speak at all — they held the card to their chest and closed their eyes, and their lips moved without sound.
But all of them stood.
All of them picked up the card.
All of them looked at their own name.
Marie stood in the center of the gymnasium, her hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes wet.
She had been feeding these women for sixty-five days.
She had hummed to them.
She had set bowls down, stepped back two paces, and waited.
She had heard Sofia say "Rosa" on Day Seventy-Two and had knelt on the cold hardwood and said, "You are awake."
Now she was watching eleven women say their own names.
Jae-min stood beside the cardboard box, his spatial awareness reading the heartbeats — eleven rhythms that were, for the first time in sixteen days, not the heartbeats of bodies that had given up.
They were the heartbeats of people who had just remembered who they were.
Sofia lowered her card.
She placed it on her pile with the other items — the mechanical pencil, a small photograph of a woman who might have been her mother, a folded piece of paper with a Manila address, and a hair tie.
Her belongings.
Her identity.
Her name.
She looked at Jae-min.
"Thank you," Sofia measured, clear, deliberate.
Two words.
The voice of a woman who had not spoken for weeks and was now choosing to speak because the words mattered and the person she was speaking to deserved to hear them.
"You are welcome, Sofia," Jae-min returned, low.
She held his gaze for a moment.
Then she turned and walked back to her bed, her student ID clutched in her hand, and sat down on the edge of the mattress beside her sister.
Rosa's hand found Sofia's hand.
The two sisters sat on the edge of Rosa's cot, their student IDs in their laps, their fingers intertwined, their names on their cards and their names in their mouths, and the particular stillness of two women who had just recovered something that had been lost for a very long time.
Outside, the wind blew at minus seventy.
The city lay buried under ten meters of white.
And in the L5 Gymnasium of the Peacock Mansion, eleven women sat on their cots and read their own names.
— • • • —
Day 81. 14:30 hours.
Forbes Park.
Peacock Mansion.
Level 2.
The Command Deck.
Mark Jordan came up the staircase with the unhurried stride of a professor walking to a lecture, his amber eyes already on the tactical table.
Jae-min was at the head of the table with Yue against his side, his arm around her waist, reviewing the morning's recon data.
Rico was at the wall, his arms crossed, his dark eyes on the monitors.
Aiko was at the far end, her black hair under a shop band, Chocho in her lap.
"Jae-min," Mark Jordan opened, low, his amber eyes on Jae-min. "I need a laptop."
Jae-min's black eyes lifted from the tablet.
"A laptop," Jae-min measured, even.
"SOLIDWORKS," Mark Jordan pressed, low. "I need to install it. The PROMETHEUS design is on paper. Paper does not machine parts. I need shop drawings. Dimensioned. Toleranced. Fabrication-ready. Aiko cannot build from a pencil sketch."
"He cannot build from a pencil sketch," Aiko confirmed, low, her black eyes lifting from her tablet. "I have been telling him this since last night."
"You have been telling me since last night," Mark Jordan allowed, even.
"And I have been telling you that the pencil sketch is fine for the physics," Aiko countered, clinically. "It is not fine for the fabrication. I need dimensions. I need tolerances. I need a shop drawing. Or I am welding blind."
Jae-min reached into spatial storage.
His hand disappeared.
Came back with a laptop — one of the slates from the warehouse raid, the antistatic sleeve still on it.
He set it flat on the pine.
"SOLIDWORKS," Jae-min measured, even. "Do we have it?"
"We have it," Mark Jordan confirmed, low. "I pulled it from the Mapua engineering server on Day Fourteen. The full installation package. Aiko has been holding it."
"I have been holding it," Aiko confirmed, her fingers already moving on her own tablet. "I will transfer the installation package to the laptop. Ten minutes."
"Ten minutes," Mark Jordan confirmed.
Jae-min's black eyes moved from Mark Jordan to Aiko to the laptop.
"There is a timeline," Jae-min laid out, low.
The room went still.
"Marie," Jae-min pressed, low.
Rico's dark eyes moved from the monitors to Jae-min.
"Marie is pregnant," Jae-min laid out, low. "Alessia confirmed it yesterday. Five weeks. Maybe six. The compound is at minus seventy outside and eighteen inside, and the geothermal is at ninety-seven point six, and the combustion heater is holding. But the margin is three kilowatts. Marie cannot carry a child in a compound that is three kilowatts from freezing."
Rico's jaw set.
His heartbeat held at fifty-six.
"The baby is coming," Jae-min pressed, low. "Nine months. Maybe less. We do not know what the Time Reversal did to Marie's cycle. We do not know what the freeze did to gestation. We know a child is growing inside Marie's womb, and the compound needs to be warm enough to keep it alive."
"PROMETHEUS," Mark Jordan measured, low.
"PROMETHEUS," Jae-min confirmed. "The baryonic-effect generator. Six weeks for a prototype. The waste heat comes online the moment we fire it up. But the waste heat alone is not enough. The waste heat bleeds into the ventilation system. The ventilation system distributes it throughout the compound. But the compound is a mansion, not a furnace. We need more than waste heat. We need a boiler."
"A boiler," Aiko echoed, low.
"A huge boiler," Jae-min pressed, low. "Industrial scale. Water-based. PROMETHEUS produces electricity. The electricity heats the boiler. The boiler produces steam. The steam circulates through a radiator network that covers the entire compound — every floor, every room, every corridor. The whole fortress. Warm."
Mark Jordan's amber eyes had not left the laptop.
"The boiler is an engineering problem," Mark Jordan measured, low. "The radiator network is an engineering problem. The electrical integration with PROMETHEUS is an engineering problem. I can design all three in SOLIDWORKS. Shop drawings. Dimensioned. Tolerance. Fabrication-ready. Aiko builds from the drawings."
"I'll build it from the drawings," Aiko confirmed. "But the boiler is steel. We need to salvage. The ridge group fortress has a machine shop. The Galleria has parking structures full of rebar."
"Salvage is a separate conversation," Jae-min directed, low. "First, the drawings. Mark Jordan — SOLIDWORKS. Shop drawings for PROMETHEUS, the boiler, and the radiator network. How long?"
"Three days for the PROMETHEUS drawings," Mark Jordan laid out, measured. "Two days for the boiler. Three days for the radiator network. Eight days total."
"Eight days," Jae-min repeated, low.
"Eight days," Mark Jordan confirmed. "Assuming the laptop runs SOLIDWORKS without crashing. Assuming I do not sleep. Assuming Aiko feeds me."
"I will feed you," Aiko confirmed, low. "I will also build the boiler while you draw it. I can start fabrication on the pressure vessel as soon as the first drawing lands."
"You can start fabrication on the pressure vessel as soon as the first drawing lands," Mark Jordan echoed, the corner of his mouth moving a fraction. "You are not going to wait for the full drawing set."
"I am not going to wait for the full drawing set," Aiko confirmed. "I am going to start the pressure vessel today. From the pencil sketch. And when your shop drawing lands, I will adjust. Because that is how fabrication works when a baby is coming."
"A baby," Mark Jordan echoed, low.
"A baby," Jae-min confirmed. "Nine months. Maybe less. The PROMETHEUS prototype is six weeks. The boiler is eight days of drawings plus fabrication. The radiator network is three days of drawings plus installation. We are racing a clock, Professor. And the clock is Marie's womb."
Mark Jordan's amber eyes lifted from the laptop to Jae-min.
"I will start now," Mark Jordan measured, low.
"Start now," Jae-min confirmed.
Mark Jordan sat at the table.
Opened the laptop.
Aiko's tablet was already transferring the SOLIDWORKS installation package.
"Project PROMETHEUS. Phase two initiated. SOLIDWORKS installation logged. Shop drawing production: Day 81 to Day 89. Boiler fabrication: concurrent. Radiator network: concurrent. Timeline driver: Marie Dela Torre's pregnancy. Estimated gestation: nine months. Estimated PROMETHEUS prototype ignition: Day 118. Margin: sufficient. Logging continuous." LINDA reported, clear.
Rico's dark eyes had not left the monitors.
His jaw was still set.
His heartbeat was still fifty-six.
But his hand — the thick, calloused hand of a man who had spent thirty years as a soldier — had moved to his side, where his phone used to be, where his sidearm used to be, where nothing was now except the particular weight of a man whose woman was carrying his child and whose nephew was building a boiler to keep that child warm.
"Uncle," Jae-min opened, low.
Rico's dark eyes moved to Jae-min.
"The boiler will be built," Jae-min laid out, low. "The fortress will be warm. Marie will be safe. The baby will be warm."
Rico held his nephew's gaze for a long moment.
"I know," Rico allowed, low.
Mark Jordan's fingers moved on the laptop keyboard.
The SOLIDWORKS installation bar climbed.
Aiko's welding torch hissed in the L5 Engineering Workshop below them.
Mei's sensor schematic filled in on her tablet.
Paolo's pressure equations covered the whiteboard.
The fire-bringer was being drawn.
The boiler was being built.
And somewhere on the Second Floor, Marie Dela Torre sat in her quarters with her hand on her stomach and her black eyes on the frost climbing the window, and she did not know that the household was already racing to keep her child warm.
She would know soon.
The household would tell her at dinner.