The route to the freight yard crossed a neighborhood Eli remembered for its bakery, a narrow park, and a gate that should not open until the afternoon.
He bought a pair of work gloves from a hardware shop on the way. The owner had moved a radio onto the counter, where an announcer was reading a list of road closures over a bed of static. The gloves cost more than Eli wanted to spend, but he remembered the recovery story describing the crystal as sharp-edged. He bought a roll of tape and a small first-aid kit too, then counted the money left in his wallet.
If the story had been accurate, the core would cover months of rent. Even if its price was half what the later articles claimed, he could buy equipment, pay for training, and refuse any guild contract that looked wrong. He could find an advocate before Aegis had ten years to bury its records.
He clipped the temporary permit to his vest where responders could see his name and F rank. The fresh stamp was still slightly damp.
Outside, two children were trying to make a pebble float. One held her hands beneath it while the other stood ready with a cardboard box. The pebble rose an inch, fell, and bounced off the sidewalk. They cheered anyway.
A man waiting for the bus watched them. “You get one?” he asked Eli.
“A talent?”
“Everyone’s asking.” The man lifted his own hand. A faint light glowed beneath his fingernails. “No idea what mine does. My daughter says I should charge people to find their keys.”
Eli thought of the notice in the corridor. He had tried to open it again while walking, but it offered only the same new designation.
“Mine identifies the dead,” he said.
The man’s expression shifted. “Oh.”
“It’s useful.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” He closed his fingers around the light. “Sorry. I was expecting something else.”
“So was I.”
The bus arrived too full to take more passengers. Eli checked the time and continued on foot. He passed the park and turned onto the street leading toward the freight yard. A row of apartment buildings stood on one side, small shops on the other. Several shopkeepers had closed early, but the bakery’s door remained open. The smell of fresh bread reached the sidewalk.
The gate disaster he remembered had happened farther down this block. In his first life, the first reports had described a breach in an apartment lobby, followed by a fire and a confused evacuation. He had read about it afterward, one of dozens of incidents in a day when every channel seemed to show another impossible thing.
There had been names in the reports. He could not remember most of them.
He slowed near the bakery window. The freight yard was another fifteen minutes away if he kept walking. The disaster, according to his memory, was hours off. He could reach the recovery first, then return with money or equipment or a warning.
A siren sounded behind him.
He checked the time. It was much too early.
The siren grew louder. A response vehicle turned onto the street, its lights flashing against the shop windows. People stepped off the sidewalk to let it pass. Eli followed it with his eyes until it stopped outside an apartment building halfway down the block.
A thin line of pale light showed through the lobby doors.
“No,” he said.
Someone near him heard. “What’s happening?”
Eli started toward the building. The lobby doors bowed outward. One shattered, sending glass across the entrance. A creature burst through, low to the ground, its body covered in dark plates. It struck a parked bicycle, knocked it into the street, and skidded on the scattered glass.
People ran in opposite directions. A woman fell near the curb. Eli pulled her up by the arm and directed her toward the bakery doorway. The creature turned at the movement, then lunged after a man who had dropped a shopping bag. Fruit rolled across the pavement.
A responder swung a metal barrier into its path. The creature hit the barrier and drove him backward. A second responder pulled the man away. Someone inside the building shouted that people were trapped upstairs.
Eli looked toward the street to the freight yard. If he went now, he could still reach it. The responders were here. They had equipment and a vehicle; he had a pair of gloves, tape, and an F-rank talent that told him nothing about living monsters.
In his first life, he had read casualty counts from this block. Perhaps one of the people who died here would become important to the future. Perhaps a survivor would know something about the early gates. The thought arrived as a calculation, the kind he had spent years making around people whose names appeared on forms.
The woman he had helped stood in the bakery doorway, looking back toward the building.
“My brother’s inside,” she said. “He can’t take the stairs alone.”
Eli looked at her. She was holding one shoe in her hand. He had not noticed her lose it.
“Which apartment?”
“Third floor. Three-oh-eight. His name’s Tomas.”
The responder with the barrier shouted for everyone to clear the entrance. The creature struck again. A third responder approached with a length of pipe and drove it between the plates of its shoulder. It recoiled, dragging the pipe out of his hands, then darted toward an alley.
The responders pursued it as far as the corner. One returned to the building, breathing hard, and called into a radio. The others secured the street.
Eli could still leave. The woman had given him a name, and somebody else might be able to help Tomas. He thought of the sister at the Aegis terminal, waiting for a direction to an office. He had pointed her toward a desk and never asked what happened after.
“Is there another entrance?” he asked.
“The side door. It sticks.”
He handed her his phone. “Call emergency services and tell them about Tomas. Tell them I’m going in through the side.”
“Who are you?”
“Eli. I’m registered.” He showed her the edge of his temporary permit without pretending it made him a trained rescuer. “I don’t know if I can reach him. Tell them anyway.”
She took the phone. “I’ll call.”
He pulled on the gloves and ran toward the side of the building.
A yellow-vested volunteer was there ahead of him, trying to direct residents away from the door. The man’s sleeve was dark with blood, and he held a length of pipe in one hand. He told a family to cross the street and stay clear of the lobby. When a voice called from inside, he turned back toward it.
“The stairs are blocked,” a resident said. “There’s someone on the landing.”
The volunteer tested the side door. It opened a few inches, then caught against debris. Eli joined him and put his shoulder to the metal.
“On three,” the volunteer said.
They pushed. The door moved far enough for a woman to squeeze through with a child. She stumbled into Eli, who caught her before she fell.
“More people?” the volunteer asked.
“A man on three. He can’t get down.”
“Tomas,” Eli said. “Three-oh-eight.”
The woman nodded rapidly. “And people on the sixth floor. I heard them.”
The volunteer looked toward the responders at the front. One was treating a person on the pavement. Another was following the creature’s path into the alley. The radio at the volunteer’s belt crackled, but the message was lost in noise.
“I’m going up,” he said.
Eli held the door while the woman and child crossed the street. He could see smoke inside, thin but thickening near the ceiling. His memory offered a rough picture of the building: a stairwell, a lobby, a fire that spread after the gate opened. He had never been inside it before. The details he remembered from reports were no substitute for a floor plan.
“I’ll come,” he said.
The volunteer looked at the gloves and the permit card still in Eli’s hand. “Can you carry someone?”
“With help.”
“Good. If I tell you to leave, leave.”
They entered. Eli pushed the door shut behind them, leaving it unlatched so people could get out. A broken cabinet had fallen across the hall. The volunteer lifted one end while Eli pulled the other toward the wall. The cabinet caught on a mat and tipped, spilling papers and a child’s shoe. They moved it far enough to clear a narrow path.
A man appeared from an apartment holding a pet carrier. “My mother can’t get out of bed.”
“Which floor?” the volunteer asked.
“Second. Two-twelve.”
“Take the carrier outside and tell the responders. We’ll start upstairs.”
The man looked at the smoke. “I’m not leaving her.”
“Then help us move this cabinet the rest of the way. We need a clear path for her.”
Together they dragged it against the wall. The man ran back toward the stairs. Eli followed with the volunteer, who checked the first landing before calling for anyone above to come down.
A woman answered from the second floor. The volunteer sent her toward the side exit and asked whether she had seen the resident in two-twelve. She had not. Eli and the man with the pet carrier reached the apartment together. Its door was open; an older woman sat on the edge of a bed, trying to fit her feet into slippers.
“We have to go,” her son said.
“I can’t find my coat.”
“I’ll get it later.”
“It’s cold outside.”
Eli found a blanket at the foot of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She accepted that after inspecting him with considerable suspicion. Between them, he and her son helped her to the stairs. The volunteer met them at the landing and took her other arm while the son carried the pet carrier.
At the first floor, the son thanked Eli and continued toward the door. The older woman called back that the blanket belonged to her neighbor. Eli promised to tell the neighbor where it had gone if he saw her.
The volunteer listened to the radio again. “They’re sending more people. We need to keep the stairs open until they arrive.”
A heavy impact sounded from somewhere above. The building trembled. Dust sifted down from the ceiling, and a door slammed on the third floor.
“Tomas,” Eli said.
The volunteer nodded. They climbed. On the third-floor landing, a metal shelving unit lay across the stairs, its contents scattered. Eli lifted one end, but the far side was wedged beneath a railing.
“Don’t force it,” the volunteer said. “We’ll bend the rail into the stairs.”
He examined the shelves, found a removable crossbar, and pulled it loose. With the tension gone, they tilted the unit onto its side. It still blocked part of the landing but left enough room for a person to pass.
A man in an open apartment doorway called for help. Tomas was seated on the floor inside, one leg extended. A wheelchair lay on its side near him, one wheel bent.
“I tried to get him up,” the man said. “The chair caught when the building shook.”
Tomas looked from Eli to the volunteer. “My sister?”
“Outside,” Eli said. “She called for help.”
The volunteer knelt beside him. “Can you put weight on either leg?”
“One. The other doesn’t cooperate.”
“Any pain from the fall?”
“My pride.” Tomas lifted a hand. “And my elbow. Don’t make me explain that to a doctor until we’re out.”
They checked the elbow for obvious injury. The volunteer asked Tomas how he usually transferred from the chair, then followed his instructions instead of lifting him without warning. Eli took the other side. They helped Tomas down one floor, while the neighbor brought the damaged wheelchair behind them. On the second-floor landing, a responder met them and offered to take over.
“You two should come down,” the responder said. “We haven’t secured the upper floors.”
“There are people on six,” the volunteer answered.
“We’re sending a team.”
“Do you know when?”
The responder looked at the stairs above them. Another distant impact sounded. “Not yet.”
The volunteer handed him the pipe. “Use this for the side door if it sticks again.” He took a shorter piece of metal from the fallen shelving unit and tested its weight. “We’ll check the next landing. If it isn’t clear, we come back.”
The responder did not look satisfied, but Tomas needed help getting down. He guided the neighbor toward the stairs. Tomas caught Eli’s sleeve before they left.
“My sister worries,” he said. “Tell her I didn’t wait around on purpose.”
“You can tell her yourself.”
“I intend to.”
Eli and the volunteer climbed again. The air grew warmer. Back on the third floor, a door stood open to an apartment filled with smoke. A pan smoldered on a stove; the volunteer shut off the heat while Eli checked the rooms for occupants. He found no one, but a window had been left open. He closed the kitchen door behind them to slow the smoke spreading into the hall.
The volunteer looked up the next flight. “You know the building?”
“No.”
“Then stay where I can see you.”
They passed a family coming down from four. The father carried a sleeping infant against his chest, though the noise and movement made Eli doubt the child could remain asleep. The mother held two bags and was trying to persuade a boy to leave a toy truck on the stairs.
The volunteer took one bag, carried it to the landing below, and returned. Eli picked up the truck and handed it to the boy.
“Now you can walk,” he said.
The boy accepted the bargain.
Above them, metal groaned. The volunteer hurried up the next flight. Eli followed, the wood of the handrail warm beneath his glove. He could hear people calling on the landing, and behind their voices a hard, repeated thud.
The volunteer rounded the next flight ahead of him. Eli heard a door scrape across the floor, followed by a heavy blow and a frightened voice. He climbed toward the landing, looking for anything he could use to help.