Living Room | 8:26 AM
Yuki sat on the edge of the mattress for a while after Aveline left, hands over her face, cheeks still radiating heat into her palms.
She sat with that for a moment. Then she dropped sideways onto the mattress and made a sound into the blanket that she was glad no one else was there to hear — a small, compressed noise that had nowhere else to go and no better place to be.
Eventually, the heat from the fireplace gave way to a different kind of discomfort: sticky skin, stale clothes, the particular sour quality of someone who had trained hard yesterday and then slept in what they were wearing. She groaned and forced herself upright.
Her phone lay on the coffee table where she'd left it. She grabbed it without thinking, thumb brushing the cracked screen out of habit, expecting the usual nothing—
No. No Service.
Actual bars. The Wi-Fi icon blinked weakly in the corner like something that had been away for a long time and wasn't sure of its welcome.
Yuki froze.
Then she let out a noise that could generously be described as a controlled sound and bolted toward the kitchen.
"Adrian!" She shoved the phone in his face before she'd fully entered the room. "The internet's back!"
Adrian, mid-sip of coffee, performed the particular manoeuvre of someone trying not to spill scalding liquid while also processing information. "What?"
"Signal. Wi-Fi. Bars." She waved the phone. "We're back in civilisation."
He squinted at the screen, and something in his expression shifted — relief, or something adjacent to it. "Huh."
"If the signal's back—" She was already spinning toward the hallway, feet moving before the thought had finished. "—the pipes might be—"
Bathroom | 8:32 AM
She twisted the bathroom tap.
Nothing. Then the pipes did something that sounded like a large animal clearing its throat, a deep groaning that came from somewhere in the mansion's bones. A burst of rust-coloured water coughed out, violent and sudden, before it cleared, steadied, and ran clean and hot and continuous from the faucet.
The water steamed. The sound of it was music.
Yuki put her hand over her mouth.
"Thank you," Adrian said, from somewhere behind her, with a sincerity that suggested the gratitude was genuine and directed at no one in particular. "Thank you, plumbing gods. We can shower."
"Dibs." Yuki was already moving, already pulling open the cabinet to grab the change of clothes that had been sitting folded on the side table for three days. "I smell like depression and gunpowder."
"Pretty sure Aveline needs it more than either of us."
"Aveline bathes in vodka and moral superiority," Yuki called over her shoulder, already stripping off yesterday's training clothes. "Move."
The bathroom door closed. The shower started. The sound of actual hot water moving through actual pipes filled the mansion like a small and specifically welcome miracle — the percussion of it against the tile, the steam rising, the smell of hot stone and minerals and life.
Adrian listened to it from the kitchen and drank his coffee and looked at the staircase and didn't think about the living room.
He didn't think about it very hard.
Kitchen | 9:02 AM
Yuki emerged twenty minutes later trailing steam, cheeks flushed, hair damp and starting to curl at the ends in the humidity. She looked lighter. Like something that had been pressing on her had been washed off along with everything else. Her skin had that clean, vulnerable quality of someone freshly showered — soft, pink, alive.
"I think I saw God," she announced, dropping into a chair with the focused intention of someone who had just experienced a legitimate miracle. "In the shape of hot water pressure. Briefly. But we made eye contact."
"Don't use it all," Adrian said, already moving toward the hallway with a towel. "Some of us are still technically a biohazard."
"I left you mercy," she called after him. "Can't promise the same for Aveline!"
The shower was scalding and slightly irregular in pressure and the best thing Adrian had felt in days. The water that went down the drain was an unpromising grey — ash, sweat, dried blood, marker ink, the accumulated physical record of the last several days. For a few minutes there was no mission, no apocalypse, no Aveline with her cold hands and her certainty, no whatever that thing in his chest was that he wasn't naming.
Just heat. The steady percussion of water on tile. The basic, animal relief of being clean.
He came back down to find Aveline already in the kitchen in a fresh black turtleneck and dark jeans, hair damp at the ends but somehow already composed. There was no visible evidence that she'd spent the night on a narrow mattress by a fireplace with someone pressed against her. The evidence had been tidied away, apparently, along with everything else.
She moved with the same efficiency she brought to everything — each motion purposeful, nothing wasted.
Yuki sat at the table with both hands wrapped around a mug of tea, eyes closed in the manner of someone conducting a private ceremony. "She has actual mint toothpaste," she murmured, without opening her eyes. "Not the hospital chalk. Mint. We're saved. Civilisation is restored."
Adrian dropped into the chair across from her, aware of the way Aveline was moving around the kitchen with practiced precision, aware of her in a way that made the back of his neck warm.
"Aveline. You checked when the roads clear?"
"The storm broke overnight." She turned something in the pan with precise, unhurried movements — butter, the smell of it hitting hot metal and releasing something rich and savory. "Road crews started at dawn. Major highways are reopening in sections."
A small radio sat on the counter, volume low, an announcer working through a list of route numbers and districts in the measured tone of someone delivering information that mattered to someone, somewhere.
Yuki lifted her mug. "To civilisation."
"No toasts," Aveline said, without looking back at them. "You train with knives in an hour. You need your hands steady."
Yuki lowered the mug. "You really know how to kill a mood."
"That's literally my job," Aveline said, and set a plate on the table with the authority of someone who has made breakfast and considers the matter settled. Eggs. Toast. Fruit. Everything plated with the same geometric precision she brought to violence.
Training Room | 10:02 AM
The mats were cold underfoot. Showers or not, the training room kept its own temperature, separate from the rest of the house, as if the space had been designed to remind you that comfort was available elsewhere and you had chosen not to be there.
Aveline stood in the centre with a short combat knife in each hand. Not wooden trainers. Real steel — dull enough not to take a finger off by accident, sharp enough that an accident would still hurt and leave evidence.
"Rule one," she said. "Never assume a knife fight is survivable. The moment someone pulls a blade, you're already behind. Your goal is not to win. Your goal is to walk away with your major organs still in the configuration they started in."
Yuki swallowed. "Inspiring."
"Realistic," Aveline corrected, and drove one knife into the foam dummy's chest with the precise, unhurried certainty of someone who had done this many times and found the motion unremarkable. She dragged it sideways in a short, efficient line that would have ended things if the dummy had been capable of ending.
"Guns are loud. Knives are quiet. In close quarters, they're worse — more personal, harder to miss with, harder to stop." She pulled the blade free. "Grip. Forward blade from the thumb side." She demonstrated, the knife extending from her fist with the natural authority of something that belonged there, something that had always belonged there.
"Reverse blade along the forearm." The flip was smooth, a single motion, the kind of movement that had stopped being technique and become instinct so long ago that instinct had stopped being the right word. "You'll learn both. Each has a purpose."
She held a knife out to Yuki.
Yuki looked at it for a moment before taking it. It felt wrong in her hand — the weight of it, the specific weight of something that was not a training object, not rubber or wood, that had an edge and knew it. The metal was cool. Real.
Aveline stepped in close without asking and repositioned Yuki's fingers with hands that were immediately, startlingly cold. The temperature of them was shocking against Yuki's warm skin.
"Thumb here," she said, low and close. "Not on the spine — impact will push it across the edge and you'll cut yourself. Wrist straight. Elbow in." She guided the adjustment, her hands firm, impersonal. "The blade is part of your arm. Not something you're borrowing. Something you've decided to have."
Yuki's breath caught slightly, which she chose to attribute to the cold. "What about slashing?"
"Slashing is messy. Unreliable." Aveline moved Yuki's arm in a slow, controlled arc — a thrust toward the dummy's midsection, then angling upward toward where the ribs would be. "You stab to end a threat immediately. You slash to make them bleed out or drop the weapon." She held the position. "Target zones: throat, inner thigh, armpit, kidneys. Major vessels. You go for them and you don't stop until the threat stops."
Yuki's face had gone a particular shade of pale. "Great."
"Hey," Adrian said, from his spot against the wall. "Maybe build up to the serial killer briefing."
"She's a marked target," Aveline said, without looking at him. "This keeps her alive longer." She stepped back. "Again. On your own. Slow."
Yuki repeated the motion. Thrust. Angle. Withdraw. Her shoulders were tight, her wrist still working against her, but the geometry was beginning to be recognisable.
"Better," Aveline said. "You're generating power from your shoulder. Generate it from your core and let your arm deliver it. The shoulder is just the hinge."
Yuki set her jaw and went again.
When Aveline turned to Adrian, her expression didn't change, but the temperature of the room seemed to drop another fraction anyway.
"Your turn."
She tossed him the second knife. He caught it without thinking — the weight landing in his palm with the comfortable familiarity of something he'd held before.
"Forward grip."
He shifted without having to think about it.
"Reverse."
He flipped it. The motion was clean. Practiced. Right.
"Attack the dummy. Centre mass."
He stepped in and drove the blade home in a single decisive line.
"Again."
He repeated it. Faster.
"Not bad," Aveline said. "NPU close-quarters training?"
"Elective. For raids."
"Your footwork is sloppy." She didn't move to correct it physically. Stayed exactly where she was. "You're assuming your target remains stationary. In the field, they've already moved."
Adrian exhaled through his nose. "You spent five minutes turning Yuki into a mannequin. You can fix my feet."
"You don't need your hand held," Aveline said. "Fix them yourself."
He stabbed the dummy harder than necessary on the next pass.
"Too much force," she added. "You're not splitting wood. You're creating entry points. Precision over force — force without precision just makes a bigger mess."
Adrian pulled the knife free, jaw tight, said nothing.
The image from this morning came back without announcing itself: Aveline curled against Yuki's side, the arm draped across her waist, the way Yuki had smiled when she said she's warm and meant it in about fifteen different ways simultaneously.
"Now," Aveline said, looking between them. "Disarms. Adrian keeps the knife. Yuki, you take his wrist and survive."
Yuki produced a small, involuntary noise. "That's very optimistic of you."
Aveline positioned herself behind Yuki, cold hands settling briefly on her shoulders to orient her. "Eyes on the knife. Not his face. People telegraph with their arms, not their expressions. Watch where the blade is going, not where he's looking."
"Right." Yuki squared up, exhaled. "Okay."
Adrian lifted the knife. "You sure?"
"If you hold back, she learns nothing," Aveline said. "If you hurt her, you'll regret it."
"Very motivating," he muttered. "Great coaching environment."
He lunged — slow, telegraphed, giving her time to read it. Yuki flinched sideways, slapping at his forearm rather than redirecting it, the knife stopping a few inches from her hoodie.
"Inside the line of the strike," Aveline said, moving Yuki's wrist into the correct plane of the deflection. "Not away from it. You're not dodging. You're redirecting the force. Again."
They ran it again. And again. Each time Aveline made small adjustments — elbow angle, palm position, the placement of Yuki's feet — with the patient, methodical precision of someone correcting a mechanism rather than criticising a person.
Adrian watched the way Aveline's hands remained steady regardless of how many times Yuki fumbled. The way her voice dropped fractionally softer when Yuki's breathing sped up, without softening any of the information in it.
"Good," Aveline said quietly, when Yuki managed a clean redirect — Yuki's palm catching Adrian's wrist and pushing it wide before his momentum could carry the strike home. "Again. Faster now."
He increased the speed. Yuki kept up for the first three passes — blocking, redirecting, even managing a quick elbow strike to where his ribs would be, which connected and was not nothing.
On the fourth, she misjudged the distance. Stepped in at the wrong angle. His forearm brushed her chest instead of being caught and they nearly collided, and Yuki squeaked and stumbled—
Aveline's hand snapped around Adrian's wrist.
Not hard. Precise. Over the tendons, at the exact point where the grip was a fact rather than a suggestion, the knife suddenly not going anywhere.
"Careful," she said.
Adrian met her gaze.
The warning in it was flat and clear and entirely without drama, which was somehow worse than if there had been drama. It was a statement of fact: hurt her and see what happens.
"She stepped into it," he said.
"And you had a choice about what to do with that." Aveline released his wrist. "Don't forget she's not your opponent."
Yuki straightened, cheeks pink. "I'm fine. Keep going."
They switched. Adrian empty-handed, Yuki with the knife, the dynamic immediately different in ways that were partly technical and partly something else. Yuki's grip was still working against her, but it was improving with each pass — the knife settling into her hand with slightly more authority each time, the motion becoming slightly more deliberate.
Aveline hovered. Occasionally guided. Occasionally just watched, in silence, in the particular way of someone who is paying close attention and has chosen not to announce it.
When she finally called the break, Yuki's arms were shaking and Adrian's shirt had committed to being damp with sweat.
"Water," Aveline said. "Ten minutes. Then sparring."
Yuki dropped onto the bench against the wall and immediately became a person who was no longer standing. "I'm dead," she said, between pulls from her water bottle. "This is murder. This is what murder looks like."
Adrian lowered himself beside her, more carefully than usual — his ribs filing a formal complaint. "She already killed us yesterday. This is the bonus content."
Yuki huffed out a laugh, then winced, rotating her wrists carefully. "Do you think I'm actually getting better? Or is she just tolerating me out of professionalism?"
Adrian looked across the room at Aveline, who was cleaning the blades with slow, methodical movements, the towel working across the steel with the patience of someone for whom this was routine and not a task. Her posture was loose. No visible fatigue. No indication that the morning had asked anything of her.
"She doesn't know how to pretend," Adrian said, honestly. "If you were wasting her time, you'd know."
Training Room | 10:54 AM
No knives this time. Just the mats and the cold and whatever they'd each brought with them from the morning.
"Distance, timing, and restraint," Aveline said. "Adrian attacks, Yuki defends. You can counter, but no head strikes. Try not to break each other." She looked at them both. "Three. Two. One."
Adrian moved first — a testing jab toward Yuki's shoulder, nothing committed, gauging. She blocked it. He circled, feinted low, went high. She flinched but got her forearm up.
"Good," Aveline said. "Don't chase him. Let him come to you. You're smaller — your energy is a resource, not a currency. Don't spend it chasing."
He pushed the pace. Not full speed, but enough to ask questions. The contact accumulated — taps to her ribs, her arm, her side, each one a sentence: this is what you're leaving open.
Yuki stumbled back under it. "Ow. Rude."
"You're leaving your right side open," Adrian said.
"Because you keep hitting it!"
"Then stop leaving it open."
"Adrian," Aveline said. "You're moving faster than the drill requires."
"She needs to be able to handle real speed—"
"She needs to be able to handle this speed first." Flat. Factual. "Slow down."
He did. Slightly.
The image came back without announcing itself — Aveline curled against Yuki's side, the arm draped across her waist. The way Yuki had smiled. The way Aveline's hand had tightened at her hip.
His next strike landed harder than he'd intended.
Yuki got her arm up but not quite far enough. The contact wasn't bad — it wasn't — but it was more than the drill called for, and he saw her jaw tighten with it.
Focus.There's nothing to focus on. There's nothing—
He pushed again. The rhythm of it should have been grounding and instead it wasn't. Each time Yuki flinched, some part of him noticed it in a way that made the next strike worse rather than better, sharper rather than controlled, like something was feeding itself. Like he was trying to hurt something and Yuki just happened to be in the way.
Yuki blocked two. Missed the third.
His palm caught just above her stomach with more force behind it than he'd meant, and the air left her in one choked, complete expulsion. She went down to one knee with her arms around her middle and her head down, gasping.
Adrian stepped back. The guilt arrived before he'd fully processed what had happened — immediate, physical, sitting heavy in his chest.
"Enough."
Aveline was there. One hand between Yuki's shoulder blades, one steadying her arm, voice at the volume of something that didn't need to be louder to be clear.
"Breathe. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. The air comes back."
"I'm—" Yuki wheezed. "Fine."
"You will be." She kept her hands where they were. Patient. The coldness was still there but it was also something else — something that held Yuki upright, that kept her present.
Adrian stood with his hands at his sides and said, "Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't—"
"Didn't mean to," Aveline said. "But you did." She didn't raise her voice. She didn't look at him. She waited until Yuki's breathing had evened out before she did anything else. "You let whatever you're carrying bleed into the drill. That's how people die in the field. Your team doesn't need your internal weather. They need your precision."
"I know," he said. "I know. I just—"
"What you just doesn't matter right now." She helped Yuki upright with the careful, cold steadiness of someone who has made a decision about how to hold another person and is executing it. "We're done."
"I can keep—"
"I said we're done." She set a towel on the bench. "Lunch in an hour."
She walked off the mat. Didn't look back. The session closed behind her like a door shutting.
Yuki stretched her side carefully, testing the complaint there. "She's right," she said, without looking at Adrian. "You were going pretty hard."
"I know." The guilt was doing something ongoing and unpleasant. "I'm sorry."
She nudged his arm. "You hit like a truck, though. I'm choosing to take that as a compliment."
He almost laughed. "Still sorry."
They left together in silence.
Living Room | 3:02 PM
By mid-afternoon the house had found a strange, provisional quiet. Snow outside, visible now through the cleared glass. Warmth from the fireplace, the heating system finally doing something useful, the particular stillness of a space that had been through several difficult things and was taking a moment to breathe.
Aveline declared free time with the enthusiasm of someone announcing a mandatory briefing and disappeared into the adjacent room to do something inscrutable.
Yuki dropped onto the sofa and became horizontal. "I'm dead."
"You're not dead," Adrian said, lowering himself to the other end with the careful movements of someone whose ribs were filing a formal complaint. "If you were dead she'd have noted the time and moved on."
"Death by a tall woman with knives," Yuki said, into the cushion. "That's going on my headstone. Not the virus. Not the apocalypse. Her."
Aveline appeared from the hallway, walked to the shelves without explanation, and clicked the television on — the old screen crackling to life with a burst of static before resolving into something. She slid a disc into a player that had probably last been serviced when the interest didn't exist.
What is she doing...?