CHAPTER 3 – SHELTER AIR
The flyer looks worse in daylight.
MARY'S WINTER SHELTER.
HOT MEALS – WARM BEDS – INTAKE 6PM.
NO ONE TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF ID.
Half the ink has bled in the weather, streaking the picture of a steaming bowl into something that looks more like smoke from a fire. Someone tagged the bottom corner with a tiny skull-and-crossbones in silver marker.
I stand on the opposite sidewalk and read it for the fourth time. My fingers are jammed under my arms for warmth. The wind knifes down the street and finds the gap at my collar like it has a personal grudge.
Warm beds. Warm anything.
My brain keeps flicking back to the alley: concrete leeching heat out of my back, brick wedge in the door, the way my toes only just started cooperating again this morning. That was "better than dying." Not exactly a long‑term plan.
Across the street, St. Mary's squats in brick and faded paint. Church on the top half, shelter on the bottom. The old stained‑glass windows have clear panes patched in where color used to be. The stone steps are cracked in the middle from decades of winter, patched with cold asphalt that never quite matches.
There's a hand‑painted board over the main doors: ST. MARY'S COMMUNITY CENTER. "Community Center" is newer, the white letters brighter than the rest. Someone tried to make it look hopeful. The sagging gutters and peeling trim didn't get the memo.
People drift in and out in clumps. A woman with two kids and three plastic bags. A guy in a big army surplus coat, hands jammed in his pockets. A girl my age in a knit hat with little ears on it, face set in a way that says she's ready to swing if anyone laughs.
I stay where I am on the corner, pretending to stare past the building like I'm waiting for a bus that doesn't exist.
Too many eyes. Too many doors. Too many ways to get filed away.
Every time the front doors swing open, warm air spills out and reaches me in a thin, dying ribbon. Under the chill there's a blast of other smells—soup, sweat, old wool, industrial cleaner. Shelter air. I know that scent mix too well. Different churches, different cities; same recipe.
My stomach reacts before my head does. It twists, that hollow, angry knot just under my ribs. I didn't eat this morning. Didn't have the cash to blow and still keep anything for tonight.
Name goes in a book if you walk through that door.
"Intake," my brain supplies, unhelpfully. Paper forms. Rules. Curfews. Questions like: Where are you from? Do you have any ID? Are you on meds? Are you a danger to yourself? To others?
The answer to some of those is "yes" in ways I don't want them to write down.
Another gust of wind punches through my hoodie. It steals my breath and makes my eyes water. My shoulder throbs in time with my heartbeat, a leftover complaint from the teleport fall and the brick‑wedge job.
Fine.
I step off the curb, dodge a car that doesn't bother to slow down, and cross toward the stairs.
Up close, the cracks in the stone are deeper. Somebody tried to paint over graffiti near the rail; you can still see bone‑white lines bleeding through the beige. A small metal camera bubble sits above the door, dark dome reflecting a warped little version of me as I climb. The red indicator LED inside it is dead.
Cheap camera. Either broken or unplugged. Good.
I take a breath, let it fog out in front of me, and pull the door open.
Warmth hits like a slap.
It's not even that hot in here—just normal human temperature—but after the alley and the street, it feels like walking into a different planet's atmosphere. Humid, thick with bodies and breath. The smell slams in next: sweat, soap, bleach, old food, plastic mattresses, wool coats that got wet and didn't fully dry.
Shelter air. Yeah. Still the same.
Noise rides on top of it. Kids laughing too loud. Someone coughing. A TV somewhere off to the left with the volume down low, the newscaster's voice a distant murmur. People talking in little pockets of sound, the words blending into background static.
My hands want to ball into fists. I make them relax. Standing still in the doorway is how you get noticed, so I keep moving, letting the door whisper shut behind me.
First thing I do is scan.
Ceiling: water stains in the corners, old fluorescent fixtures buzzing, a hanging exit sign crooked over a side door. Walls: volunteer posters, a bulletin board with job printouts, that winter shelter flyer again. There's a beat‑up dome camera in the far corner of the lobby, pointed mostly at the intake table and the front door. No one's watching a live feed; it's probably recording to some dying hard drive in a closet.
Exits: main door behind me, side door with push bar to the right, hallway leading deeper into the building straight ahead.
People: A woman behind a folding table with a laptop and a stack of forms on clipboards. Two residents slumped in plastic chairs by the wall, waiting for… something. A kid playing with the strap on his mom's bag.
The woman at the table looks up as I approach. Her eyes do a quick scan: shoes, pants, hoodie, backpack. She's tired. Not suspicious, just running through a checklist she's done a thousand times.
"Hey there," she says. "You here for a bed?" Her voice is warm but worn around the edges.
"Yeah." My voice comes out hoarser than I like. I clear my throat. "If there's space."
"We're tight, but we'll make it work." She turns the clipboard around and slides it over. "Intake's simple. First name, last name, age. Any allergies. Any meds we need to know about. No ID required."
Her finger taps the printed line at the bottom of the form: NO ONE TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF ID.
That helps. A little. Not enough.
The clipboard is old, the metal clip bent. The pen is tied to it with a bit of yarn. The lines on the form are cramped and thin; somebody designed it on a computer that didn't like margins.
Name.
For a second I think about lying. Some fake combination of first/last that no system is waiting for. But if I'm here more than once, they'll notice the switch. And if they ever need to yell for me in a fire, it'd be helpful if I looked up.
"Xavier." I write it down before I can overthink it. "Thompson."
The letters look wrong on this paper. My name in black ballpoint, in a building in a universe where Gotham is real. Somewhere out there, a guy in a bat mask is probably gliding over rooftops, and I'm filling out forms in his city.
Age. Eighteen.
Allergies: none I know of. Meds: none, unless you count the caffeine headache I've been carrying for three days.
I hand the clipboard back. She glances over it, then writes the same information in a big ledger book next to her elbow, the paper already bloated a little from years of ink and humidity.
Two systems, I note. One digital, one analog. If someone ever comes digging, they'd have to reconcile both. That's messy. Messy is good.
"First time at St. Mary's?" she asks, already reaching for a wristband roll.
"Yeah."
"Okay. Curfew is nine. We lock doors at ten. You can come and go during the day, but if you miss curfew, your bed might go to somebody else. No weapons, no drugs, no alcohol. No fights. Respect staff and other guests." She says it like she's recited it a thousand times, but her eyes stay on my face, checking whether it's sticking.
I nod. "Got it."
She tears off a cheap paper wristband and offers it. I hesitate for half a breath, then hold out my wrist. Her fingers are warm and dry. The band is cold. It sticks together with that gummy adhesive that never comes off clean.
The part of my brain that doesn't shut up whispers: Tagged. Filed. On a list.
The part that remembers the alley answers: Warm. Food. Heat.
"You'll be in the men's dorm down the hall," she says. "Dinner's at six. Coffee's in the common room if you want some. Try not to drink a gallon; it's cheap and mean." There's a ghost of a smile at that. "I'm Nia, if you need anything."
I nod again and don't commit to using her name. "Thanks."
She gestures to a volunteer hovering nearby. "Tom, can you show Xavier the dorm and the common room?"
Tom is mid‑twenties, pale, kind face, volunteer badge hanging crooked. He smells like cheap coffee and sanitizer. "Hey. This way, man."
We walk down the hallway. The walls are off‑white under bad lighting, scarred with scuff marks at bag height. Doors on either side lead to offices, storage closets, a bathroom. The floor changes from tile to old linoleum, then to that weird industrial carpet that hides dirt but never really looks clean.
Under it all, the building hums.
I can hear the heater from here. Not as loud as it'll be in the main room, but the sound travels through the bones of the place: a low, rumbling whoosh broken up by rattles and the occasional hollow bang. It's uneven. Sick. The kind of mechanical rhythm that tells you something's working too hard and losing.
Tom pushes open a door at the end of the hall. "Common's here. You can park your stuff along the wall. Don't leave anything too valuable out; we're not the Ritz."
Warmth hits harder here. The common room is big and a little chaotic. Tables scattered around, all different heights and shapes, surrounded by mismatched chairs. A sagging couch against one wall under a bulletin board. A TV bolted high up in the corner plays some local news station with the captions on, image washed out and colors a little off.
Kids are playing at one table with a deck of bent cards. A couple are building a tower out of plastic cups in the corner, arguing about whose turn it is. Adults sit in loose clusters: some talking, some staring at nothing, some hunched over bowls.
The air is a mix of canned soup, instant coffee, and people who've been stuck indoors too long. There are blankets draped over chair backs and stacked in a rolling cart by the door.
My whole body wants to sag in relief and bolt at the same time.
I unshoulder my backpack and keep the strap looped through my arm as I lean it against the wall near the door. If someone tries to grab it, they're taking me with it. Tom doesn't seem to notice or care.
"Bunks are through there," he says, pointing to another door on the far side. "You'll get assigned one before lights‑out. For now, just… find a spot. There's coffee over there. Food later."
"Okay," I say.
He gives me a tired smile and peels off toward the front, probably to help Nia with more forms.
I stand there a second too long, just inside the room, then force my feet to move. Corner. Wall to my back. View of both door and most of the room. Old habits don't die; they just rearrange.
As I cross to an empty table along the side, the heater noise gets clearer. There's a big, square vent high on the wall, metal slats painted the same color as the plaster. Every time the blower kicks in, it rattles, a fast metallic chatter that vibrates in my teeth. Then it chokes and goes quiet for beats that are just a little too long.
That's not just age. That's strain. Air in the lines, maybe. Or a pump fighting itself. Bad in any building. lethal in one full of kids and old people in winter.
Not your problem, I tell myself.
I sit anyway, angling the chair so the wall catches most of my back and the room stays in front of me. The plastic seat is cold. The table's surface is carved with names, doodles, and a couple of "S + ?" hearts someone scratched in and tried to sand out.
A coffee urn sits on a folding table near the kitchen hatch, next to a stack of chipped mugs. People cycle through, pour, shuffle away. After watching enough, I get up, grab a mug with fewer visible stains than the others, and fill it halfway. The liquid is thin and smells like burned cardboard, but it's hot.
I wrap my hands around the mug and let the heat soak into my fingers before I risk a sip. It's as bad as it smells. I drink anyway.
From this angle, I can see most of the room in a series of reflections: TV glass, a framed picture, the shiny edge of a fire extinguisher case. It's not perfect, but it's enough to keep track of movement without staring.
A man sits in the far corner with a newspaper spread open in front of him. He's older—sixties maybe, dark skin, gray beard trimmed close. Army jacket with the patches long gone. His hands are big and rough, fingers thick from work or fights or both. A pack of cigarettes bulges in his breast pocket, but he's not smoking in here. Shelter rules.
His eyes move more than the rest of him. They track the kids, the staff, the TV, the door I came in through. When they land on me, they don't skitter away like most people's do. He just takes me in quietly, then tips his chin in a tiny nod.
I nod back. Anything more would be… something. I don't know what yet.
Harris, my brain labels him, from the way Nia said his name when he walked past the desk earlier. HARRIS – VET – POSSIBLE ALLY. Filed under the mental folder marked Watch This Person.
The TV in the corner flickers through news segments. A talking head in a studio. Stock footage of police tape. A grainy shot of some skyline that looks wrong even though I know it's real here. The captions lag the audio by a second.
"…GCPD spokesperson… ongoing investigation… vigilante rumors have been denied…"
My shoulders tense. I force my eyes away. Not for me. Not yet.
The heater kicks on again with a cough and a bang. The vent above shivers. A kid sitting under it, a little girl with hair in four neat puffs, tilts her head back and closes her eyes as the warm air hits her face. She scoots her chair closer without even realizing she's doing it. When the blower cuts out too soon, she frowns like someone stole something.
On another table, an old woman in three layers of sweaters pulls the top one tighter across her chest. Her hands shake. Every time the silence between cycles stretches longer, she shivers more.
These are my people, some traitorous part of me thinks. The ones who crowd near heaters and vents without even knowing they're doing math about survival in their heads.
I shut that thought down hard.
"They treating you alright?"
I look up. The older guy from the corner—Harris—is closer now, leaning against the next table with the ease of someone who's got his balance under control, even with years in his joints.
"Yeah," I say. "Got here, like, ten minutes ago."
"First night?" His voice is low, gravelly. Friendly without being soft.
"Yeah."
He nods slowly, like that fits something he already assumed. His gaze flicks to my mug. "You figure out not to drink the coffee yet?"
"It's hot," I say. "That's enough."
He huffs a sound that might be a laugh. "Fair." He glances up at the vent as it rattles again. "Old girl doesn't like this cold. She complains."
"Sounds like more than complaints," I say before I can stop myself. "Like the pump's eating air. Or there's a bad valve up the line."
Harris's eyes sharpen. "You know boilers?"
I lift a shoulder. "Know broken things. They talk the same."
He studies me for a moment longer, then pushes off the table. "Mm. Well. If she dies, we're all gonna wish somebody listened." His tone stays light, but there's weight under it. "Name's Harris."
"Xavier."
Another short nod. He drifts back to his corner, folding himself into the chair with an old soldier's economy of movement. A few minutes later, a staff member passes by his table, says something I can't hear. He answers with a half‑smile and a shrug, like this is all normal.
Dinner is soup and bread and something halfway between stew and slop. It smells better than it looks and tastes better than it smells. I eat fast, stopping just short of shoveling. The heat from the food fills the hollow under my ribs in a way that makes me feel… floaty. Lightheaded, but in a good way.
I keep my ears on the heater the whole time.
By the time they start announcing lights‑out for the dorm, the cycles are getting worse. Longer pauses, louder bangs. Every time, I expect it to just… not come back on.
When they call my name for a bunk, I flinch before I move.
"Xavier Thompson?" Nia calls from the doorway. "New kid, brown hoodie, backpack bigger than he is?"
A couple of people glance at me. I keep my face neutral, raise a hand. "Yeah."
She gestures me in. The dorm is a long, low room with rows of metal bunk beds. Mattresses covered in plastic crinkle covers. Thin blankets folded at the foot of each. The air in here is warmer than the hallway but cooler than the common room, like it's a downstream branch in the building's blood flow.
"You're on Bunk Twelve, top," she says, pointing. "Keep your bag with you. We lock the dorm during the day; you'll have access after breakfast. Lights out at ten. Quiet hours after that, which means no yelling, no music, no drama, please. We're full."
"Got it," I say.
She gives me a look that's equal parts tired and kind. There's a crease between her eyebrows that hasn't had a day off in years. Then she moves on to wrangle someone arguing about bunk assignments.
Bunk Twelve is halfway down the room, against the wall. Top bunk. I swing my bag up first, then haul myself after it. The springs squeak. The plastic under the sheet crackles. It smells faintly of bleach and other people's sleep.
I sit with my back against the wall and my feet drawn up, laces still tied. Shoes on until I trust the place. Maybe even after.
Around me, the dorm fills in stages. People climb into beds, cough, fart, whisper, snore. Someone's kid whines until their parent murmurs them down. The lights go from harsh overhead to softer, then click off entirely, leaving only the orange glow from the exit sign and a bit of light from the hallway bleeding under the door.
The heater's voice changes shape in the dark.
From here, I can hear it more clearly through the vents and the walls. The boiler down below groans, rumbles, kicks. Air huffs through ducts overhead. There's that rattle again, metal on metal, then a hollow thunk like someone hitting a pipe with the side of their fist. Then silence.
I count. One, two, three, four—
At twelve, it kicks back on in a rush.
People shift in their beds like they can feel the timing too.
Harris is across the aisle, one bunk down. He lies on his side, facing the room, eyes open. In the dim light, the lines in his face look deeper.
"Can't sleep?" he asks quietly.
"Listening," I say.
"To what?"
"Building." I nod toward the ceiling. "She's not happy."
He grunts softly. "Been that way for a while. They keep calling the city about it. City keeps saying 'next week.' Winter doesn't wait on their schedule."
Silence trickles between us. Somewhere near the door, someone snores like a chainsaw. A baby coughs. The heater runs a cycle and then stops.
"How long you been here?" I ask.
He thinks about it. I can see the calculation in his eyes. "Too long. Not long enough. Coming and going for a couple winters. Place like this… it'll keep you alive if the pipes don't give out." He tilts his head toward the vent. "If you're hearing something, kid, I'd listen close. You don't owe this building anything, but everyone wrapped up in these blankets? They're one bad cold away from real trouble."
It lands heavier than it should. I don't answer.
He doesn't push. "First few nights, you sleep light no matter what you do," he says instead. "Brain is waiting for someone to drag you out of your bunk. Gets better after a while." A pause. "Unless you're like me and still jump at every pipe noise." There's half a smile there, self‑deprecating.
"I sleep light everywhere," I say.
"Then you'll get along fine."
He rolls onto his back, hands folded over his chest, eyes on the ceiling. I lie down too, still in my hoodie, still on top of the blanket. Backpack under my knees, one arm threaded through the strap.
The mattress rustles when I shift. Springs complain. My body isn't sure what to do with this much horizontal surface that isn't concrete.
The heater shuts off again. The quiet after is thick. I stare up into the dark and count my breaths.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirtee—
Nothing.
The silence stretches longer this time. I feel it in the room before I feel it in the temperature. People wake up in pieces—someone coughs, someone turns over and tugs the blanket, someone swears under their breath. The air loses that invisible warmth that was just holding the chill at bay.
Come on, I think, like the building can hear me. Don't make me go find you tonight.
At twenty‑one, the boiler finally kicks back in with a resentful roar. The duct above my head vibrates hard enough that dust sifts down in a light sprinkle. Warmth trickles into the room again, slower this time.
Not sustainable.
I close my eyes.
I could ignore it. It's not my job. I didn't build this place, and I didn't break it. There are people whose whole job is supposed to be making sure pipes don't freeze and heaters don't fail in shelters packed with kids and elders. They're not here. That's the problem.
If it dies, it's the alley all over again—but for a lot more people than just me.
Fix it, the part of me that kept a drunken parent from blowing up a house hisses. Fix it before somebody pays for the city's laziness with their lungs.
My hands itch. Not literally; it's deeper than that. An internal restless heat that isn't about body temperature at all. It's the same feeling I get looking at a crooked picture or a dripping faucet, multiplied by a hundred and layered over the memory of the little girl under the vent closing her eyes like it was the only sun she got all week.
I breathe out slow.
"I can't fix Gotham," I whisper into my pillow, too soft for anyone else to hear. "But I can fix that."
The heater thumps again, as if it's offended by the implication.
"Tomorrow," I tell it. "If you're still alive."
The room settles. People sink back toward sleep now that the air's moving warm again. Someone mutters in their dreams. Somewhere in the building, a pipe ticks as it expands.
I lie there, listening to every sound the shelter makes, mapping them in my head. The boiler's down and to the left. The main feed probably runs along the east wall. There was a door by the hall near the back with a taped‑over STAFF ONLY sign. If I follow the noise, I can find it.
The thoughts are supposed to calm me. They do, in a way. The same way sketching out an escape route calms you while you wait for a fire that might happen.
It's a long time before my eyes close. When they finally do, it's with the steady, uneasy hum of the heater in my ears and the certainty that if it fails, I won't be able to leave it alone.