The first sniper shot of the night came at 7:26.
It sounded different from the rifle bursts near Utopia.
One clean crack crossed the rain.
Then nothing.
The salon owner turned off the final lamp and moved away from the window.
"Roof shooter," she said.
"How do you know?" June asked.
"Because people who lived through the old government learned the difference between a warning and an execution."
There had been no warning.
Through a narrow space beneath the shutter, we saw two red-band soldiers walk toward a body lying beside the pharmacy. The man had left his apartment carrying an empty medicine box. One soldier searched his pockets. The other photographed him with the box placed beside his hand.
Within minutes, MALT's accounts called him an armed looter.
He had carried no weapon.
The owner covered the gap beneath the shutter with a folded towel.
"Nobody stands near the glass again."
The night became smaller.
At 8:05, the salon's landline rang once and stopped.
Two minutes later, it rang twice.
The owner lifted the receiver.
Ko Lin spoke from the railway signal box using the local service circuit.
"Snipers are on the grain warehouse, the old cinema, and both apartment towers beside Platform Three," he said. "Scouts are watching the alleys below them."
"The freight lane?"
"Still scheduled to clear at four forty. The train blocks two roofs for six minutes. Not the others."
He had drawn the route with railway distances.
Blue Orchid's rear door opened into three connected courtyards. Those led to a covered loading shed. From the shed, nineteen meters of open service road separated them from the freight-platform entrance. The disused inspection passage began beyond it and continued beneath the tracks to Utopia's boiler building.
Nineteen meters had sounded short before rifles occupied the roofs.
Kitty could not run across it.
June could not use one hand if she fell.
NS's arm continued bleeding through the salon cape.
My fever had reached thirty-eight point three.
"Can Utopia send smoke?" NS asked.
Ko Lin heard him through the receiver.
"The wind is toward the campus. Smoke would clear this road and blind their own gate."
"Lights?"
"The soldiers brought generators. If we cut the district power, their searchlights remain."
"Then what do we have?"
Ko Lin was silent.
Thunder rolled above the railway.
"Weather," he said. "One freight train. Eleven minutes before the patrol vehicles return to the maintenance lane. And people who know which doors still open."
It was not an extraction plan.
It was a collection of things that might fail in our favor.
At Utopia, Sleeping Man listened to the same call through the maintenance office.
Shinso marked the suspected sniper positions on a printed campus map. The direct distance between Blue Orchid and Utopia was less than a kilometer. Every usable road made it longer.
"We can send the Engineering group through the boiler passage," KM said.
"They still have to cross the nineteen meters from the other side," Mr. Kim replied.
"Then we cover them."
"With what?"
KM looked toward the tools his crew had carried back from the detention rescue.
None of them answered the question.
The city police had only a few rifles inside Utopia. Returning fire toward apartment roofs would place sleeping families behind every target. Sleeping Man refused to turn the neighborhood into a shooting range to rescue four students.
JP sat beside the map in his wheelchair.
"So they cross alone."
"They cross with the district," Sleeping Man said. "Ko Lin is assembling rail workers. The residents will open the courtyards. We receive them at the boiler door."
"And the snipers?"
Sleeping Man looked at the dark marks surrounding the route.
"They are the reason no honest person can promise this will work."
JP gripped the wheelchair rims until his knuckles lost color.
KM placed the utility-truck keys on the table.
For once, he did not offer to drive through bullets.
He sat beside JP and waited.
Blue Orchid had only one room without a street-facing window.
The owner spread salon capes across its tile floor and folded towels beneath Kitty's swollen ankle. She took the chair nearest the front entrance for herself.
"I wake if the shutter moves," she said.
"You should sleep in the back," Kitty told her.
"If soldiers enter and find an empty salon, they search. If they find an old woman sleeping beside her cash box, they insult her business and leave."
"They struck you this morning."
"That was an insult to my face. The business survived."
She closed the rear-room door before anybody could argue.
There was not enough floor for four separate places.
NS sat against the storage cabinet with his injured arm elevated across a stack of towels. June lowered herself beside his uninjured side.
"If I touch the left arm, tell me."
"You will know. I become much less charming when stabbed by my own stitches."
"Less?"
"You recovered enough to make jokes."
June tried to rest against the wall. The angle forced her injured wrist beneath her body.
NS moved his right arm away from his side.
"Use this."
She looked at him.
"Your arm?"
"I was issued two. One remains under warranty."
"You will be uncomfortable."
"That stopped being a useful measurement today."
June hesitated before resting her head against his shoulder. Her bandaged wrist lay across his chest. NS adjusted the edge of the salon cape around her without touching the injury.
"Wake me if you hear anything," she whispered.
"I will."
"Promise?"
"Yes."
Her breathing remained uneven for several minutes.
Then exhaustion won.
Her head slipped lower against NS's arm. He caught her before the injured wrist struck the floor and placed a folded towel beneath it. June murmured something he could not hear.
"What?" he whispered.
She did not wake.
NS looked at her face for several seconds, then toward the closed door.
Whatever answer he wanted could wait for a country where voices were not evidence.
Across from them, Kitty sat with her back against mine because neither of us could find a position that protected both her ankle and my ribs.
"This is stupid," she whispered.
"The floor?"
"You have a fever, bruised ribs, and whatever is happening inside your head. I am using you as furniture."
"The disciplinary panel may appreciate evidence of alternative employment."
"Do not make me laugh. It moves my foot."
I shifted until my shoulder rested against the cabinet. Kitty turned carefully and placed her head in the space between my upper arm and chest. One hand remained against my shirt above the injured ribs, as if she could feel whether my breathing changed.
"Tell me before you disappear," she said.
"I will."
"You said that in the truck."
"I am saying it better now."
Her eyes closed.
"Hold my hand."
I found it beneath the cape.
"I'm here."
The sentence felt older than that room.
Kitty fell asleep before I understood why.
Her weight changed slowly as sleep took her. First her forehead rested against my shoulder. Then her cheek settled into the bend of my arm and her fingers loosened around mine without releasing it.
My arm began going numb within minutes.
I did not move it.
There had been nights when I had imagined Kitty this close and believed it would answer every question between us. Inside Blue Orchid, it answered none of them. She was injured, frightened, and exhausted. I was simply the person she trusted enough to fall asleep beside while rifles watched the street.
That trust felt more fragile than romance.
I pulled the edge of the salon cape higher across her shoulder.
She moved closer to the warmth of my fever.
Across the room, June slept against NS's chest while his good arm protected her wrist. The four of us had spent weeks measuring every glance, every rumor, and every person chosen first.
Fear had reduced those calculations to something simpler.
Keep breathing.
Keep holding on.
Reach morning together.
Neither boy slept.
NS watched the thin line of light beneath the rear-room door. I watched the towel cabinet tremble whenever a truck moved outside.
We divided the room without discussing it. He listened toward the rear courtyard. I listened toward the street. When one of us heard boots, the other checked that the girls were covered and still breathing normally.
Neither position allowed us to protect anyone from a rifle.
Staying alert was the only useful thing our bodies could still pretend to do.
At 10:44, boots stopped beside the salon.
Kitty's body tightened in her sleep. I held still until the patrol continued.
At 11:30, a searchlight crossed the upper ventilation window. June turned her face into NS's shoulder. His good arm rose around her without waking her.
At 12:16, another sniper fired.
At 1:03, the acid rain struck the roof hard enough to drown the street for almost a minute.
At 1:47, NS whispered my name.
"Still awake?"
"No. This is a detailed nightmare."
"It needs better furniture."
We listened to the girls breathe between us.
"If the coup had waited another week," he said, "I don't think we would have spoken again."
"I thought the same thing."
"Would you have preferred that?"
I looked down at Kitty's fingers around mine.
"Ask me when nobody is aiming a rifle at the answer."
NS looked at June.
"Fair."
Silence returned.
"Thank you for coming back across the track," I said.
"You and Kitty were lying in front of a train. It limited my options."
"Still."
"You went back for June at Congress Square. You went back for JP today. We are both terrible at leaving people."
"Maybe that is why we keep finding each other."
He gave the smallest laugh.
"Do not make this emotional. June is asleep. She cannot defend me."
The laugh hurt my ribs.
It was worth it.
At 2:28, my temperature reached thirty-eight point seven.
I did not need the thermometer to know.
The room alternated between cold and unbearably warm. The shadows around the shampoo shelves changed shape whenever lightning entered through the vent.
Once, I looked toward the mirror stored against the wall and saw no reflection inside it.
Only a rooftop beneath permanent black clouds.
A hand touched my face.
The rooftop vanished.
Kitty had awakened.
"You went somewhere."
"For a second."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
She pushed herself upright despite her ankle and touched her forehead to mine.
"You're hotter."
"That sounds almost romantic."
"It is medically disappointing."
She poured water onto a clean towel and placed it behind my neck. Her movements woke June, who checked NS's bandage before checking her own wrist.
For several minutes, the four of us sat awake beneath the capes.
Nobody mentioned how we had been sleeping.
Nobody moved farther apart.
At 3:12, the landline rang once.
The signal.
Ko Lin was still alive.
The route was still possible.
The owner woke us fully at four.
She tightened Kitty's ankle wrap, replaced the soaked gauze on NS's arm, and tied June's wrist support beneath a dark coat. She gave me two fever tablets from an unopened packet and watched until I swallowed them.
"The plan has changed," she said.
During the night, MALT had placed a fourth sniper on the water tower overlooking the freight entrance. Scouts now checked every rail worker approaching Platform Three.
Ko Lin had arranged six legitimate maintenance crews to enter from different streets at the same time. The four of us would wear spare rain jackets and move with the smallest crew through the connected courtyards.
Kitty would travel on a low equipment trolley beneath a waterproof cover until the loading shed.
After that, there would be no cover wide enough for all of us.
"Nineteen meters," NS said.
"Nineteen exposed meters," the owner corrected.
"How long between shots?" I asked.
"Do not build a plan around a sniper missing."
She looked at each of us.
"If the scouts stop the crew, you separate before they see Kitty. If shooting begins, you do not turn around for me or Ko Lin."
"We are not agreeing to that," June said.
"You do not need to agree. You need to reach the university and remember who helped you."
Outside, thunder rolled directly over the railway.
The rain strengthened.
At 4:31, the rear courtyard opened.
Ko Lin waited beneath it with five rail workers and the equipment trolley. His face looked older than it had the previous morning.
"Freight movement begins in nine minutes," he said.
We placed Kitty beneath the waterproof cover. She kept one hand outside until I took it.
June walked beside NS. The salon owner locked Blue Orchid and put the key inside her cash box.
Nobody knew whether she would use it again.
The courtyards opened one by one.
At 4:39, we reached the loading shed.
The freight train began moving across the southern line. Its metal cars blocked the old cinema and one apartment tower.
The grain warehouse remained visible.
So did the water tower.
Ko Lin raised one hand.
"When the thunder comes, we cross."
Lightning opened the sky.
For one second, every rooftop became white.
I saw the sniper above the water tank turn toward us.
Thunder struck.
We moved.
The rifle fired before Kitty's trolley cleared the shed.