Seraphina's Revenge: A Rebirth In The Apocalypse Novel

Chapter 122: Things You Can’t Control

The air in the hall tightened, not to the breaking point, but just to a line you could see.

Elias met his eyes and held them. There was no flinch, nothing that suggested he was trying to hide something. "I am not asking to put you anywhere," he said. "I am asking because if your body is doing something new, I want to understand it so you don’t burn yourself out. So that none of us do."

He shut his mouth for a second and then added, quieter, honest in a way that rippled through his posture, "I like knowing what I can’t control. It makes it smaller and easier to deal with."

Zubair stared another breath, then inclined his head a fraction. Not forgiveness. Not even agreement. Just the admission that he had heard the truth in it.

"Cards on the table, then," Lachlan said, clapping his hands once and letting the echo run. "Since we’re apparently having Show and Tell."

Alexei grinned outright. He lifted his palm and exhaled over it like he was warming his fingers. Frost raced across the glove in a thin lace and then sublimated into a puff as he flexed. He wiggled his fingers. "Parlor tricks only. I save the good stuff for birthdays."

Elias’s eyes sparked despite himself. "Peripheral induction without a medium? Or are you condensing ambient—never mind," he said, catching himself. "Later."

"Later," Zubair agreed, tone making it a boundary. "And only if the person says yes."

"Consent," Lachlan said in a sing-song voice. "Healthy boundaries in the apocalypse. Love to see it."

Sera had stayed half a step back, watching the lines of them shift.

The creature approved of the heat and the cold and the way they didn’t break when pressed. She approved of the way Elias’s questions didn’t have the smell of cages on them today, even if old memory snarled in the corners of the room.

"Ask your questions," she said to Elias, level. "Write your little charts. But no tests on us. No ’let’s see what happens if’ just because you’re curious."

Elias nodded once, quick, relief and frustration both there and gone. "Agreed."

"And no needles unless we’re bleeding," Lachlan added. "House rule."

"Fine," Elias replied with a shrug. "For now."

They let that stand.

The ice groaned outside, a long, low whale-song of pressure finding a new balance. Snow light bled through the narrow gap Zubair had made at the sash and drew a bright blade across the tile.

"Window works," Alexei said, practical again. "We should pick anchor points. Rope from stairwell landing to frame, so no one gets clever and slides off when we come back with hands full."

"I’ll rig it," Zubair said. "Two bolts into concrete, plates on the jamb, line with a static and a safety. If the pane goes, we still have the wall."

"Take weight in pairs," Elias added. "One inside, one out. If anything under the ice shifts..."

"We don’t move," Sera finished. "We wait it out and we don’t panic." She looked down the hall toward the service stairs they’d passed—two turns, a straight shot. "We do this quiet. No metal on glass. No boots on the edge. We’re not the only things learning new tricks."

They all knew she meant the dead.

The ones pressed to the facade had frozen in supplicant poses, palms and faces fused to the outside of the panes, eyes milky as old marbles.

But frozen didn’t mean gone. Frozen was simply a pause. Spring, if it came, would bring everything back that had been held.

"Elias," Zubair said, eyes still on the frame. "You asked your question. My answer is yes. There are changes. We manage them. We don’t perform them."

Elias’s throat worked. "Understood."

"And if I see a cage," Zubair added, so offhand it almost sounded like a joke, "I melt it."

Lachlan’s grin came back, wide enough to show teeth. "And if I turn blue, someone punch me before I do something stupid."

"Could be fun," Alexei said. "We place bets."

Sera’s mouth twitched; the closest she got to a smile. "Don’t bleed on the ice. It attracts things."

They fell into motion with the ease of men who had done hard things together and survived.

Zubair took measurements with his eyes and hands the way some people took them with tape.

Elias produced a coil of rope from his pack that looked brand-new and made a noise of annoyance when the end refused to stay taped; Alexei took it and made the knot pretty in three seconds, as if he hated ugly solutions on principle.

Lachlan found a pry bar in a maintenance closet and used it to test the give on a section of baseboard, not because he needed to but to satisfy the part of him that wanted to touch the edges of a thing and make them answer.

Sera stood at the window again and watched the white world hold its breath.

Snow fell with no hurry, each flake catching every scrap of light and throwing it back until the hall itself seemed to glow. Beneath that calm, the ice made its private symphony—pops like faraway gunfire, long bass groans, a skittering crackle where a skin of new freeze crossed a seam.

She put two fingers to the glass where a dead hand lay on the other side, fused at the palm to the building. The creature stretched toward it the way a wolf might scent the air. The human in her didn’t move.

"Ready," Zubair said at last.

He eased the sash again.

The blade of cold widened, bringing with it the brightness, the clean smell of a world that had lost its rot under a lid of crystal. He sealed it back to that thumb’s width and looked to Sera.

"Tomorrow," she said. "We test the ice. We fix our lines. We don’t get cocky."

Elias nodded. "And tonight, we talk."

Lachlan groaned. "About feelings?"

"About variables," Elias said. "And limits. If you can heat metal, Zubair, we need to know how much, how often, and what it costs you. If you can flash-freeze, Alexei, we need to understand range and control. If anyone else has... anything... better we say it now than find out while falling through a roof."

No one looked at Sera. She appreciated that. It was respect or fear or both.

"Fine," Lachlan said. "Group therapy. I’ll bring snacks."

"We have no snacks," Alexei reminded him.

"Then I’ll bring my winning personality."

Zubair’s mouth made an almost-smile. "We’ll ration that carefully."

They started back up the stairs, rope slung, plan set, the cold following them in a clean ribbon that tangled around their ankles and then let go. At the landing, Sera paused and glanced back down the hall.

The window gleamed in its frost fringe. Beyond it the white plain lay still and bright as if it made its own dawn. Somewhere under twenty floors of ice, something moved—not loud, not near, but enough to send a ripple through the music that ran along the glass.

She didn’t mention it.

They all heard it.

And deep down, in the place where trust and terror live together without fighting, they knew the same thing: when it came to bad situations, they would get themselves out.

They always had.

And they would again.