Getting three women up two flights of stairs without making noise was harder than it sounded.
Shin was the problem, not because she was difficult but because her leg was and every step she took produced a sharp inhale that she was clearly trying to swallow and not entirely succeeding at. Dr. Kang had her arm over her shoulders and was taking most of her weight with the professional expertise, it was clear it was not her first time doing this and Maya had taken her other side without being asked.
Michael led the way while Sera covered the rear.
They moved through the Floor 4 stairwell door and started up and for about thirty seconds everything was fine. Then Shin's foot caught the edge of a step and she went down on her bad leg and the sound she made was short and involuntary and loud enough that everyone froze.
They stood completely still in the stairwell and listened.
From below something sounded .One of the big signatures he felt on Floor 3, Michael could feel it on the pulse, turning toward the stairwell like it had noticed them and was heading towards the noise with interest.
Nobody breathed.
Five seconds. Ten. The signature drifted closer to the stairwell door one floor below them and then stopped. Michael had his hand on one of the smoke canisters in his pocket doing a very quick calculation about whether using it in a stairwell was a good idea, the answer being probably not, when the signature slowly turned away again and went back to whatever it had been doing.
He let out a breath so carefully it barely made a sound.
They kept moving.
---
Floor 6 had never looked so good.
Michael got the door open and got everyone through and got it closed behind them and the feeling of being back on his floor with the stairwell door between them and everything below was significant enough that he stood there for a second just appreciating it.
Maya was looking up and down the cleared hallway like she was waiting for something to go wrong. Dr. Kang was still focused entirely on Shin, checking her leg now with quick precise hands. Shin herself had gone a particular shade of pale that Michael didn't love.
Sera was already at the apartment door.
"Get them inside," she said without looking back and he heard the bolt on the reinforced door disengage.
---
The apartment with four extra people in it felt considerably smaller than it had twenty minutes ago. Shin was on the couch with her leg stretched out and Dr. Kang crouched beside her doing a proper assessment now that they had light and space.
Maya was standing in the middle of the living room turning slowly and taking everything in she was seeing, she couldn't believe that such a good room existed.
She looked at the reinforced door then at the storage unit visible through the bedroom doorway, beside that was the water collection system and the viewport in the window covering.
Slowly she took in the general shape of an apartment that had clearly been worked on and made into something built for this apocalypse.
"You built all this?" she asked.
"I've been here a while," Michael said.
"How long?"
"Twenty one days."
She stared at him. "Alone?"
"Until three days ago."
Maya looked at Sera who was leaning against the kitchen counter watching the room with her usual quiet attention. Then she looked back at Michael with an expression an expression of relief, she had finally found someone capable of keeping her safe in this horror.
He wasn't entirely sure he was that person but he wasn't going to argue with the expression.
"How bad is her leg?" he asked Dr. Kang.
"There's no fracture I think but the wound is infected." She didn't look up from what she was doing. "I need antiseptic, proper bandaging and something for the fever. She's been running one since yesterday." A short pause. "Do you have any of that?"
Michael opened the shop.
[Medical Kit — Advanced. 80 SP.]
He had three hundred and forty SP after the rescue reward had landed. He bought it without blinking and it appeared on the coffee table in that shimmer of blue light that he had stopped trying to hide around Sera but that made Dr. Kang go completely still and Maya make a sound that wasn't quite a word.
Dr. Kang looked at the kit and looked at the table it had appeared on. She then looked at Michael with an amused expression that had lots of questions to ask.
"You'll get used to it" Sera said from the side as Dr. Kang nodded and picked up the kit opened it and got back to work.
Maya had no such restraint. She was staring at him with both eyebrows as high as they would go. "What was that."
"Long story," he said.
"That kit just appeared from nothing."
"I know."
"From nothing, like it wasn't there and then it was there."
"Yeah."
She opened her mouth then closed it then opened it again. "How."
"You'll get used to it," he said again and she looked at him with an expression of frustration, she badly wanted to know how it was even possible.
Sera caught his eye from across the room and the corner of her mouth moved. She'd had the exact same conversation with him four days ago and watching someone else have it was apparently entertaining to her.
He gave her a look and she looked away innocently with a small smile.
[Bond Event — New Survivor Settled: Dr. Kang. +1 Bond Point. Current BP: 1 — Dr. Kang.]
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