The relief hit them both at once. Christine and her mother, finally reunited after what must have felt like an eternity of separation, collapsed into each other's arms. The hug was tight, desperate, the kind of embrace that said everything words couldn't. Christine's shoulders shook with silent sobs, her face buried in her mother's shoulder. The older woman's hand cradled the back of her daughter's head, her own tears streaming freely down her face.
"I thought I'd lost you," Christine whispered, her voice muffled and broken.
"I'm here. I'm here, baby. We're okay. We're both okay."
They held each other like that, swaying slightly on the tilted corridor surface, two people who'd been certain they'd never see each other again given a second chance.
Jake sat slumped against the corridor a few feet away, watching them with distant eyes. His chest heaved with each breath, his lungs burning like he'd just run a marathon. Which, in a way, he had. His body was screaming at him in about seventeen different languages, all of them variations on "stop moving immediately or we're going to shut down."
His hands lay in his lap, palms up, barely recognizable as human anymore. The swelling had gotten worse. The splits in the skin had widened. Every tiny movement sent fresh jolts of pain through his nervous system, though the pain was getting duller now. Not because it was lessening, but because his brain was simply running out of capacity to process it all.
He closed his eyes, just for a moment. Just to rest them. Just to—
Voices. Faint but unmistakable. Coming from nearby. Shouting. Crying. The sounds of desperation.
Jake's eyes snapped open. The apartment next to his. A7. The lady with the children. The ones who'd been calling for help all night while he'd been scraping concrete with a spoon.
He couldn't ignore them now. Not when he was right here. Not when he had the means to help.
"Christine," Jake's voice came out hoarse, rough like sandpaper. "Could you tie all the blankets together to make a large rope? There are people stuck in A7, and there are children with them."
Christine pulled back from her mother, wiping at her eyes. Her face was blotchy and tear-stained, but her expression shifted immediately to determination. "Yeah. Sure."
She and her mother moved with efficiency, taking the blankets from the rescue they'd just completed and adding more material to the rope made of coats. Their hands worked quickly, tying knots that looked secure and competent. Jake wondered distantly if they'd done sailing or camping or something that taught them proper knot-tying. The rich people hobbies he'd never had time or money for.
Meanwhile, Jake lay there on the cold corridor surface, trying to convince his body to cooperate for just a little while longer. Just a few more rescues. Then he could rest. Then he could stop.
His muscles twitched and spasmed. His vision kept going fuzzy around the edges. But he couldn't stop. Not yet.
"We're done," Christine announced.
Jake forced his eyes open—when had he closed them again?—and looked at the makeshift rope they'd created. It was long. Maybe fifteen feet, maybe more. Enough to reach down into another apartment's central area.
All three of them moved toward Jake's apartment and the door to A7 beside it. The journey was agonizing, even though it was only a few meters. Jake's legs barely responded to commands anymore. He was running on pure willpower, and that tank was nearly empty.
He reached for the door handle to A7 and pulled it open.
The voices became instantly clearer. Louder. More desperate.
"Jake? Is that you? Please hurry! My son got sick and is getting worse!"
The woman's voice was raw with panic and exhaustion. Jake could hear the desperation, the fear, the hope all tangled together in those few words.
But Jake's brain wasn't processing emotions anymore. It was in pure survival mode, focused on one singular objective: get them out. That was it. Nothing else mattered. Not their stories, not their circumstances, not their fear. Just the process of extraction.
He looked back at Christine and her mother, his expression blank and focused.
"I will slowly get into the apartment. You two lie down and hold it tight." He paused, thinking. "Also place some flower pots at the end of the rope too. For weight. For anchor."
Christine studied his face, taking in his heavy breathing, his trembling hands, the way he swayed even while standing still. Concern etched itself across her features.
"I will go there," she offered quickly. "I'm not that heavy. I can—"
"You don't have to," Jake cut her off, his voice flat and brooking no argument. "I will go and bring them up. We don't know what kind of situation they are in." His eyes met hers, and something in his gaze made her words die in her throat. "And I was the one who promised them. It's fine. I will be able to do it. You guys just hold it tight."
Before either woman could protest further, Jake was already lowering himself down.
The apartment A7 had a similar two-bedroom layout to Christine's, but the configuration was reversed. The bedroom was to the right instead of the left. The central living area stretched below him in an L-shape, and somewhere in that maze of tilted surfaces, a family was trapped.
Jake's feet touched down on the slanted wall. He used the floor for support, his hands leaving bloody smears on the formerly white paint. Moving was getting harder. His body was starting to rebel in earnest now, muscles locking up, joints refusing to bend properly.
He worked his way along the connecting place to Central area toward what should be the bedroom door. The husband. The lady had said her husband was stuck in there. In the bathroom specifically. If Jake could free him, get him out, then the man could help with the others. Two people were better than one, especially when one of those people was running on fumes.
The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. Jake pushed it open further and leaned inside, still gripping the rope with one hand while his body pressed against the wall for support.
He Reached what could be the bathroom door, And peeked inside as there was no noise.
"Hello? Sir? Your wife sent me to fetch you first—"
The words died in his throat.
There was blood. So much blood. A pool of it, dark and viscous, covering the bathroom floor and wall . And in the center of that pool, face-down and utterly still, was a man.
Jake's brain, exhausted as it was, still managed to piece together what had happened. The earthquake. The tilt. Something had broken—glass from a mirror, maybe, or a shower door. A shard had caught the man's thigh, sliced deep into the body. The wound was massive, the kind that needed immediate medical attention or you'd bleed out in minutes.
The man had tried. Jake could see that. Makeshift tourniquets made from towels, now soaked through. Pressure applied with shaking hands. But alone, injured, in shock—he hadn't stood a chance.
He'd been dead for hours. Probably died not long after the building stopped moving.
Jake closed his eyes, forcing down the nausea that rose in his throat. Not now. He could fall apart later. Right now, there was still a woman and two children who needed help.
He backed out of the room slowly, pulling himself up with the rope. His mind raced, trying to figure out what to say. How to break this news. Should he tell her now? Later? Ever?
When he emerged from the bedroom, he could see them more clearly now. Down in the central area, the lady and her two children huddled under a table that had wedged itself at an angle. Some instinct had told her to shelter there, and it had probably saved them from falling appliances.
One child—a girl, maybe eight or nine years old—lay unconscious in her mother's lap. The other, a boy who couldn't have been more than five or six, clung to his mother's side, his face buried in her shoulder.
Jake made his way back up the rope, his arms burning with the effort. When he reached the corridor, Christine and her mother helped pull him over the edge. He didn't speak, just turned around and went back down.
This time, he went straight to them.
The lady looked up at Jake, and the hope in her eyes was like a knife to his chest.
"Please hurry," she begged, tears streaming down her face freely now.
Jake swallowed hard. He couldn't tell her. Not yet. Not while she was trapped down there with her children. She'd break down, and then he'd have to rescue three people in emotional distress instead of two.
" Your husband, Told me to get your kids and you out first " Jake lied, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "He is a bit stuck right now and is freeing himself and I am a bit tired and—"
He stopped himself. No point explaining. Just get them out.
The lady nodded frantically, accepting his excuse without question because what else could she do?
"Ma'am," Jake said gently, kneeling beside the table. "Take my daughter first. She's unconscious and needs help.", lady said hearing Jake.
The lady carefully lifted the girl toward him. The child was light—too light, the kind of lightness that came from not eating properly, from being in shock, from being hurt. Jake gathered her into his arms, cradling her head carefully. There was a nasty bump on her temple, dark and swollen. Concussion at minimum. Maybe worse.
He carried her up slowly, his legs screaming in protest. Christine and her mother took the girl from him as soon as he crested the edge, laying her down gently in the corridor.
Jake went back down. Again. And again.
The boy came next. He was awake but silent, his eyes wide and glassy with shock. He didn't cry. Didn't speak. Just clung to Jake like a lifeline as they made the ascent.
Then it was time for the lady.
Jake descended one final time, his vision tunneling, black spots dancing at the edges. Just one more. Just get her out. Then they'd deal with the husband. Or the truth about the husband. Whatever needed to happen.
But when he reached her, she was slumped against the table's leg, breathing shallow and labored.
"Ma'am? Let's get you out of here."
She shook her head slightly, the movement causing her to wince in pain. Then she shifted, turning slightly, and Jake saw it.
The wound in her back.
A piece of rebar. Or maybe a metal bar from some piece of furniture. Something long and sharp had pierced through her lower back and was still lodged there. Blood seeped around it, staining her shirt dark. The angle suggested it had gone through her kidney, maybe her liver. A wound like that—you didn't move the object. You left it in place until trained medical personnel could remove it in a hospital with blood transfusions standing by.
Removing it now would kill her in minutes.
"I will not make it," she said softly, her voice eerily calm. Accepting. "Please help my husband. Please save him. I will not make it."
Jake's throat closed up. "Your husband is no more," he said, the words coming out in a rush before he could stop them. "I didn't know how to tell—"
She broke.
The sound that came from her wasn't quite a scream, wasn't quite a sob. It was something more primal than that. Pure anguish given voice. Her body shook with the force of it, tears pouring down her face unchecked.
"No, no, no, please, no—"
Jake reached out and took her hand, holding it tight. There were no words. Nothing he could say would make this better. So he just held on while she fell apart.
When the worst of the sobs had passed, when she'd exhausted herself crying, she looked up at Jake with eyes that had aged decades in minutes.
"Take my children to safety," she whispered, squeezing his hand with surprising strength. "Please, Jake. Promise me. Promise me you'll keep them safe."
Jake's vision blurred. He wasn't crying—he couldn't afford to cry—but his eyes burned anyway.
"I will do what I can for them," he promised, his voice thick. "I'll protect them. Please rest easy."
The lady smiled then. Small, sad, but genuine. Like a weight had been lifted. She'd done all she could. Her children would be safe. That was enough.
Jake squeezed her hand one more time, then let go. He climbed back up the rope slowly, each movement steady. When he reached the corridor, Christine and her mother were waiting with the children. The girl was still unconscious. The boy sat nearby, silent and small.
"What happened?" Christine asked, her voice gentle.
Jake shook his head from side to side. The universal gesture for bad news. For it's over. For there's nothing we can do.
Christine understood immediately. Her face fell, one hand rising to cover her mouth. Her mother's expression mirrored hers—grief for people they'd never met, empathy for loss they'd almost experienced themselves.
Jake looked down at the children, these two small humans who'd just lost everything and didn't even know it yet. The girl's head injury needed attention. The boy needed... everything. Comfort. Safety. A world that made sense.
And somehow, impossibly, they'd become his responsibility.
Christine's mother knelt beside the unconscious girl, checking her pulse, gently examining the bump on her head with practiced hands. Maybe she had medical training. Maybe she was just a mother who knew how to care for hurt children.
Jake slumped against the wall one more time, letting his head fall back against the concrete. Two children. Two orphaned children who needed him to keep moving, keep functioning, keep getting them to safety.
He couldn't stop yet.
But God, he wanted to.