Chapter Four - Heat Comes Through the Walls

Nobody answered. Mara looked at him for a long moment, finally seeing not a villain, just a man doing arithmetic after the world had cornered him. Then a scream broke out from the corridor. On the camera feed, the north gate was already breached. Sophie was shouting into the radio three times over, getting nothing back. The whole shelter had started to lose its shape. The line for water broke first, then somebody grabbed a medication box, and then the crowd turned on itself. Everybody was realizing that rules only work while resources can still be assigned. "Faster," Carl growled. Elliot locked the main line into the temporary power box. The moment the connection took, the pump room jolted hard enough to make the ceiling dust shake loose.