Eli drove the metal bar across the second creature’s path.
It caught the blow on its shoulder and slammed into the first animal. Rae lifted her shield, forcing both back into the narrow passage. Their claws scraped against the metal. One hooked the shield’s rim and pulled; she twisted it free before the creature could drag it down.
“Owen!” Eli shouted.
“Got it!”
Owen came back down the passage with Tessa’s medical bag in one hand. He had left the screwdriver in the maintenance panel and was bleeding from a cut along his wrist. He started toward the fire door, then stopped when he saw Rae holding the creatures.
“Go!” she said.
He went. Eli stepped sideways to let him pass, then lowered the bar between the two creatures. He was not trying to kill them. Their bodies filled most of the passage; if he could keep them tangled together for another few seconds, the door could close between them and the people outside.
Rae backed through the opening. Eli followed, keeping the bar in front of him. The first creature struck again, glancing off the frame. Eli caught the door’s edge and pulled.
It stuck halfway.
The bent track had not cleared completely. The lower corner scraped against the floor, leaving a gap wide enough for a creature to force its head through.
Rae jammed the shield into the opening. “Can you move it?”
Eli looked down. The loose metal strip Owen had removed lay beside the threshold. A piece of it had sprung back under the door. He hooked it with the bar and pulled. The strip slid out with a squeal.
The creature lunged. Rae braced, but the shield tilted under its weight. Eli dropped the bar, took the edge of the shield with both hands, and shoved with her. The animal’s head disappeared into the passage.
“Now.”
Rae pulled the shield free. Eli slammed the door. It did not close flush, but the latch caught. A heavy impact followed, then a second. The frame held for the moment. Eli retrieved the metal bar from the pavement beside the threshold before backing away.
Owen had stopped a few paces away, the medical bag pressed against his chest. Eli wanted to ask why he had gone back. There was no time, and the answer was already visible: Owen had seen something the group might need and could not bear to leave it.
Tessa was counting people near the van. Mara and Paul stood together with Ben between them. Leah sat on a low wall beside Mei, who had her husband and brother on either side. Daniel walked beside the green blanket as two responders carried Mrs. Larkin toward the street.
“Twelve,” Tessa said, then looked toward the fire door. “No. Eleven.”
“Owen,” Eli said.
Tessa turned. Owen came toward her and offered the bag. “We left it near the office doorway.”
She took it. “Are you hurt?”
He looked at his wrist as if noticing it for the first time. The cut was shallow, but blood had run into his palm.
“Just caught it on the panel.”
“Hold this against it.” She gave him a clean pad and resumed the count. “Daniel, Mrs. Larkin, Leah, Mara, Paul, Ben, Mei, Mr. Chao, Jun, Owen, Eli, and me. Twelve. Rae, is your colleague with the pry bar outside?”
“He went ahead with the blanket.”
A responder waved from the street. “We need everyone behind the line. The building’s still moving.”
The service court opened onto a side road. Volunteers had placed orange barriers across the entrance, and an ambulance stood beyond them with its rear doors open. Another vehicle had parked across the far end of the street to keep traffic away. People in ordinary clothes and borrowed protective vests moved between the barriers and a row of folding tables.
Tessa went directly to the ambulance. “Boy with an arm wound, ongoing bleeding. Woman with a suspected hip injury, unable to bear weight. Another with a splinted leg and a head injury. Leah has a leg wound and needs assessment.”
The medic at the rear listened, then pointed to two colleagues. “Bring the boy here. The hip injury to the stretcher. The woman with the head injury, over by the wall.”
Mara helped Ben climb into the ambulance. He looked back at the building as though he expected something to follow him out.
“Your father is right here,” Tessa told him.
Paul climbed in after him, carrying the bag he had brought upstairs. Mara stayed until the medic asked her to make room, then stood beside the open door where Ben could see her.
Daniel followed Mrs. Larkin to a stretcher. He tried to help lift the blanket, but a responder asked him to step back so the team could work. His mother caught his sleeve before he moved.
“Go with me,” she said.
“I will.”
“Not in front. You’ll get in their way.”
He gave a shaky laugh. “All right.”
Tessa wrote down the time they had applied Ben’s dressing and the changes she had noticed. She handed the note to the ambulance medic. For Mei, she explained what had struck her, what questions she had answered, and how the splint had been applied. She told the next medic which details were observations and which had come from Mei’s family.
Eli stood at the edge of the group, still holding the metal bar. Nobody asked him to put it down until a responder approached and said, “Sir, we need the route clear.”
He set it against the barrier. His hand had stiffened around it. The cut on his palm from the jammed door had reopened, and a thin line of blood ran toward his wrist.
The responder offered him gauze. Eli took it but did not wrap the cut. He was looking toward the building entrance, where two more workers in protective helmets were assembling a carry sheet.
“Darius Vale,” he said. “He was on the west stair landing. A responder was with him.”
The worker closest to him looked up. “What floor?”
“Between three and four. Claw wound to his side. He couldn’t stand.”
The worker wrote it on a pad. “When did you see him?”
Eli tried to estimate the time. It felt like hours since he had left Darius against the wall, but he had no clock for most of the rescue. “I went up to six, then brought a group down through the service passage. I don’t know exactly.”
“Was he conscious when you left?”
“He was. A responder had a carry sheet and was checking him.”
The worker looked at the entrance. “We have a team coming out of that stair now. I’ll give them the name and location.”
A woman stopped beside Eli before he could follow. Tomas’s sister held out his phone. “They got him down,” she said. “He wanted me to find you.” Eli took it, checking that the emergency call had ended, and thanked her. She hurried back toward the treatment tables.
Eli wanted to go with the recovery worker. He had been there. He could show the landing, the fallen railing, the place where Darius had sat. But the recovery worker was already speaking into a radio, and the entrance was crowded with people trained for the search. Another hunter with an F on his badge and a cut hand would be one more person to account for.
“His daughter is here,” Eli said. “Her name is Tessa.”
“We’ll let her know when we have something confirmed.”
The worker repeated Darius’s name into the radio and asked the team inside to check the landing. Eli watched him go. The damaged building rose above the street, its windows reflecting a sky that had begun to darken with smoke. People were still inside. Responders were still going in.
He had carried Darius’s badge upstairs. Tessa had taken it and put it in her pocket. Eli could still feel its weight in his hand.
A medic approached him. “Sit down, please.”
“I’m all right.”
“Your hand isn’t. Sit.”
He obeyed because there was a chair behind him and because the medic was already opening a dressing. She cleaned the cut, asked whether he could move his fingers, and wrapped the palm. Eli answered her questions while watching the entrance over her shoulder.
“Did you lose consciousness?” she asked.
“No.”
“Any difficulty breathing?”
“No.”
“Then keep that hand dry until someone checks it again.”
She moved on before he could thank her. A woman at the next table was calling a number repeatedly, ending the call each time it failed and trying again. Someone had brought water in cardboard cups. A boy younger than Ben was asleep against his father’s shoulder despite the noise.
Tessa came from the ambulance with her medical bag. Owen had retrieved it, but she had accepted fresh supplies from the responders and used those instead. The bag hung from her hand, its strap twisted around her fingers.
“Did you tell them where he was?” she asked.
“Yes. The worker with the yellow helmet sent a team to the west stair.”
Tessa looked toward the entrance. “I need to go in with them.”
“The structure’s unstable.”
“I know.” She took a breath. “I know where he was going. If they find the wrong landing—”
“I gave them the floor and the side he was on. They’ll call if they need anything else.”
She looked at him. “You were there.”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you anything else?”
Eli felt the answer waiting behind his teeth. Darius had asked him to tell her that he had tried to get back to her. He had said he did not leave. Eli could give her those words now. He could also tell her what the wound looked like, how Darius had pushed the badge away, and how little strength remained in his hand.
He looked toward the entrance again. The recovery worker was speaking with another responder, holding up the pad. No one had yet come out with Darius.
“He told me where to find you,” Eli said. “And he asked me to bring you out.”
Tessa waited. He had not answered all of her question.
A call came from the ambulance. Mara needed help telling the medic which dressing had been applied first. Tessa turned toward her, then stopped.
“Stay here,” she told Eli.
He nodded. She returned to the ambulance.
He could have followed her. He could have told her immediately that Darius was probably dead. But he had not seen the end. The responder had been with him, and another team had come in. Eli knew what he believed; he did not know how to separate that belief from the future he remembered.
In his first life, Eli had known Tessa only years later through raid work. She had mentioned losing her father during the first outbreaks, but he had not known where to find her family. He had entered this building to help trapped strangers and recognized Darius only after seeing his badge. Even now, that recognition did not make him a witness to what happened after he left the landing.
A tremor moved through the street. The nearest barrier rocked on its feet. Dust burst from an upper window, and the recovery worker shouted for everyone to clear the entrance.
Two responders emerged carrying a folded sheet between them. They moved quickly toward a waiting vehicle. Another pair followed with a covered stretcher.
Eli rose. The medic who had wrapped his hand called for him to stay behind the line. He stopped, though the instruction felt like a physical restraint.
The recovery worker met the stretcher team at the curb. He looked beneath the edge of the covering, spoke to one of the responders, then turned toward the tables. His eyes found Eli.
Eli knew before the man reached him. He still wanted to hear the words.
“We found Darius Vale,” the worker said. “The responder with him had brought him down from the landing. He died before they reached the exit.”
“Are you sure it’s him?”
“We have his identification, and the responder confirmed the location and the injury you described. His body has been recovered for identification.”
Eli looked toward the covered stretcher. “Can I see him?”
“Family will be given a chance to identify him. Right now we need to move everyone away from the entrance.”
“His daughter is over there.”
The worker followed his gaze. “Would you like me to tell her?”
Eli thought of the badge in Tessa’s pocket. He had taken it from Darius’s hand and carried it upstairs. Darius had made a request of him, not the worker who had found the body.
“I should tell her what I saw,” he said. “Can you stay nearby? She may have questions I can’t answer.”
“Yes.”
The worker introduced himself as Martin and gave Eli the name of the responder who had stayed with Darius. The responder was being treated for injuries, but Martin said he would be available later if he could speak.
Eli repeated the name to fix it in his memory. He did not know what the responder had seen after he left. He would not invent it for Tessa.
A whistle sounded from the entrance. The recovery teams moved back as a section of masonry fell into the street. The building’s front doors disappeared behind a cloud of dust. When it settled, workers extended the barrier and closed the approach. A supervisor announced that no one would reenter until the structure could be assessed.
Eli’s first impulse was to run to the ambulance and tell Tessa the entrance had closed. The news that mattered was not the closure. Darius was already out. There was no rescue to promise and no honest reason to ask her to wait for one.
Tessa emerged from the ambulance. She saw Martin beside Eli and stopped.
“Did they find him?”
Martin looked at Eli, giving him the opportunity he had requested. Eli’s mouth went dry.
“They did,” he said.
“Is he at the hospital?”
The question offered him an escape: he could say Darius was with the responders, that identification was underway, that Tessa should sit down first. Each statement would avoid the one she was asking for.
A responder called Tessa’s name from the table. “We need to confirm the count from the upper floor.”
Tessa half turned. Even now, her body responded to someone needing an answer. Eli recognized the habit from another life. He had relied on it then, and for the past hour he had relied on it again.
“I can do the count,” he told the responder.
The woman hesitated. “You were with them?”
“All the way down. Twelve of us reached the court, including Paul, who joined us on the stairs. Rae and your colleague brought us out.”
Tessa looked at him. “Eli.”
He gave the responder the names as he remembered them, asking her to check with Owen if she needed the apartment numbers. She took the list and moved away.
Tessa’s hand closed around the badge in her pocket. “What happened to my father?”
The street was loud. A family argued near the barrier; a siren sounded at the far intersection; the ambulance doors shut behind Ben. Eli could tell her here, surrounded by people who needed her attention and people who might overhear.
Martin indicated a space beside a supply tent, a few steps from the ambulance but out of the main path. “We can talk there. I’ll stay close if you need me.”
Tessa looked at the tent, then at Eli. “Are you coming?”
“Yes.”
She walked ahead of him. Eli followed, carrying the memory of the landing and the words Darius had asked him to deliver. He could not make the news kinder by delaying it. He could only tell her the truth he had and leave room for the questions he could not answer.