Morning tasted like tal and powdered egg.
They ate standing at the counter: thin tomato slices, a shake of salt, and eggs reconstituted into sothing that pretended to be breakfast. Sera had no idea where they even found the powered eggs, but that didn’t really phase her at all.
She was more impressed with the fact that her creature was actually letting her eat human food again... and she was pretty sure that it had sothing to do with the n in the kitchen more so than the food itself.
Elias laid out the improvised "sunglasses" — rectangles of smoked plastic with cord through the corners, and the movent pulled her out of her thoughts. He started to say "snow blindness prevention," stopped, and corrected himself.
"Shades," he said, and pushed one toward each of them.
Lachlan tipped his fork in a salute. "Look at you, being human and all."
Sera looped hers around her neck. She didn’t need them; that wasn’t the point. Alexei saw and smirked like he’d scored an argunt he hadn’t had to make.
Zubair didn’t sit. He checked buckles, gloves, the rope coil. "Wind’s down," he said. "Not safe. Enough to see the south landing and co back."
"On a scale of frozen eyebrows to missing nose?" Lachlan asked, cocking his head to the side.
"On a scale of we go down three floors and we don’t freelance," Zubair said. It wasn’t a joke and they didn’t treat it like one.
They layered up.
Paracord cinched at their waists, rope threaded through with practiced hands, knots checked twice. Sera shrugged into her coat and stepped from the greenhouse-warm living room into the colder hall.
Alexei drifted to her right, hand appearing without fuss as the floor changed under her feet. She set her palm on his for a breath — not because she needed balance, but because he’d offered it.
"Field trip," Lachlan sang behind them. "Everyone hold hands."
Elias shoved an MRE bar into a pocket and didn’t bother pretending that wasn’t exactly what they were doing.
The stairwell door sighed open. Cold fell like a blanket dropped from a height. Frost had crawled the concrete steps in rough skins at the edges; the tal rail wore a white cuff.
Wind found the seam above the door and sang in a high, needling note until Zubair wedged a rag into the gap and killed the sound.
"Two landings," he said. "We go slow. We don’t improvise."
"Perish the thought," Lachlan murmured, but his shoulders settled.
They moved how they moved now: Zubair first, palm to wall, listening the way he listened to ice. Sera in the middle. Lachlan left, restless energy pressed flat at the edges. Alexei right, loose and steady, fingertips a quiet pressure between Sera’s shoulder blades when a tread went slick.
Elias stayed behind them, his scarf angled so the draft hit him before it ever found her.
The first landing was a throat that had swallowed the blizzard and let little pieces of it pass. Snow dust had pushed under sowhere and drifted along the far wall, glittering like ground glass. Frost ferns climbed the ceiling.
A door halfway down rattled under the wind’s hand.
"Structural?" Elias asked.
Zubair splayed his fingers on the wall, heat just a whisper under the skin. "She holds," he said. "Today."
They took the next flight. Wind whistled up the well once, curious, and dropped away. Lachlan’s hand brushed Sera’s hip and retreated the instant he noticed. He grinned at himself like he’d been caught stealing the last cookie.
She didn’t smile back. She didn’t need to. He corrected anyway.
At the third door, Zubair stopped. The steel had old bolts and a tired hinge. Sobody had kept it shut once. Sobody had tried to kick it open later and lost.
Zubair set a shoulder to it, patience and heat. The fra grudged them an inch. Elias ca up with a pry bar and a face that said he’d rather be holding a scalpel. Lachlan took the top edge.
"All together," Zubair said.
tal complained and then gave up. Cold shoved past their knees.
The south landing looked like money that had gone through a wash: nice bones, everything slightly off. Polished floors turned gritty. Frad art hung crooked. A console table leaned on one broken leg. Snow had feathered in through pinholes and left pale spirals on the tile.
Left branch: a pair of double doors glazed with mottled glass, frosting so thick it looked flocked. The skybridge would be on the far side of that.
"Hold," Zubair said, scanning ceiling lines and corners. He moved like a man picking where to put his feet in a minefield. The floor answered with honest noises under his weight. He nodded once.
They went to the doors. Breath turned to tiny crystals in the seam and fell away. Elias touched the pane and hissed. "Don’t put skin on it," he said, catching himself a beat late.
"Translation appreciated," Lachlan joked, but his eyes never stopped moving.
"Romantic," Alexei muttered. He blew a fog circle that froze back in an instant.
Zubair worked the latch. It had turned itself into a lock over ti.
He ward the hinge enough to think about it without lting anything. Elias wedged the bar under the plate and leaned. Lachlan pushed. The door thought about it, complained louder, and stuck.
Sera laid her fingers on the seam where frost had ford in lace and found the parts that wanted to let go. Not force. Not fire. Just patience and pressure in the right places. The seal lifted with a soft hiss.
The door ca open a hand’s width and the wind ca through like a mouth, quick and greedy. The ding-ding-ding of driven ice resud, louder here. Frost fur lined the inside of the bridge. The glass rattled like loose teeth.
"Stop," Zubair said, as Lachlan leaned toward the gap. "Eyes here first."
Lachlan stepped back without arguing. Progress.
Zubair crouched and ran his hand along the floor by the threshold. He listened with his bones. He moved to the sidewall, searched seams, and found an anchor bolt that still believed in its purpose. "Here," he said. He moved three feet and knocked twice on the steel uprights, listening to the tone. "And here."
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