The shower spray was scalding, but Alex barely felt it. He braced his hands against the cheap fiberglass wall, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking.
He was furious.
"Animals..." he mumbled to himself, the water drumming against his back. "She... she put me in the same group as those... animals."
He'd been so careful. He'd saved her. He'd gotten her out. He'd been respectful, hadn't he? He hadn't stared. He hadn't touched her. He'd been as kind and professional as anyone could be when the literal world was ending around them. And her first instinct was to treat him like the very monsters he'd just killed. The disappointment was a cold, heavy thing under the rage.
He stood there for several minutes, letting the heat and the anger wash over him. Then, slowly, as his breathing evened out, the prepper—the analyst—took over.
He shut his eyes, and he thought.
Why would she do that?
She was terrified. She was alone.
And she had just seen, in brutal, bloody detail, what the new rules were.
She had a sister. Mina. She couldn't get to her alone. She knew that. Even if she did, how could she protect her? How could they eat?
And... Alice. He was a 20-year-old guy, but he wasn't blind. She was... outstanding. In the old world, that was a gift. In this one, it was a liability. A death sentence.
Even a single man... one glance... it wouldn't take a genius to know what would happen.
And then she saw him.
A guy who wasn't scared. A guy who moved with purpose. A guy who killed four men and five of those things without breaking a sweat. In her eyes, he wasn't a student. He was strength. He was survival.
And in this new world, what did she have to trade for that survival?
His anger didn't vanish, but it shifted. It curdled. He understood her logic. It was a desperate, horrific, transactional piece of reasoning... and it was probably the most logical-seeming path she thought she had. The thought that the world had broken her, broken them, that quickly, was the most enraging thing of all.
Still, it angered him. He scrubbed his face, dried himself off with the thin dorm towel, and pulled his clothes back on. They felt grimy and wrong, but they were all he had.
If she's still here, he thought to himself, I'll apologize. For lashing out. She didn't deserve that.
He unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out. The small cloud of steam followed him.
To his surprise, Alice was still there.
She was sitting at the small desk, in the other chair. She'd put on clothes—some gray sweatpants and a university hoodie. Her hair was still wet. She was staring down at the table, her hands clasped in her lap. She hadn't touched the food or the soda. The cup noodles, now swollen and soggy, sat steaming in their two bowls.
Alex walked to the table and sat down, the silence in the room heavy and thick. For some reason, he felt... embarrassed. He stole a quick look at her. Even in casual clothes, with her face scrubbed clean and her eyes red-rimmed, she was breathtaking. The thought made his face feel hot.
He cleared his throat. "Look..."
She flinched, but didn't look up.
"I, uh..." he fumbled, "I'm sorry. For... for lashing out. Yelling. I shouldn't have."
Alice slowly picked her head up, her eyes wide. She looked at him, really looked at him. He wasn't the cold hunter from the hall. He wasn't the furious man who'd slammed the bathroom door. He was just... a guy, staring at the cup noodles like they were the most interesting thing in the world, his face a little red, looking profoundly awkward.
A small, strange sound escaped her. A tiny, watery snort. She covered her mouth, but it was too late. A single, short chuckle broke free.
His head snapped up, a look of pure confusion on his face.
"I'm sorry," she said, and this time, a tiny, real smile touched the corner of her mouth, even as a fresh tear rolled down her cheek. "God, I'm... I'm sorry. For accusing you. For... for all of it."
They ate in the heavy, strange silence, the only sounds the scrape of their plastic forks against the styrofoam. When they were finished, Alice set her bowl down and let out a long, satisfied sigh, a ghost of a smile on her face.
"I have never," she said, her voice small, "been so grateful for cup noodles in my entire life."
Alex let out a short chuckle, just a puff of air through his nose, but he didn't move the conversation further. He just started quietly packing the trash into a single plastic bag. Alice noticed his deflection, his immediate return to a world of tasks.
"How?" she asked, her voice just above a whisper.
Alex stopped, his hands full of wrappers. "How what?"
"How are you... like this?" she gestured vaguely to the room, to him. "The world ended today. I... I'm a mess. Those men..." She swallowed, her voice catching. "You... you're just... adjusted. How?"
Alex was silent for a long moment. He didn't look at her, staring instead at the locked door. Alice could see the tension in his shoulders, like he was weighing his options, deciding what to say.
"I've had dreams," he said, his voice low, "since I was a kid. Strange dreams. That this... this was coming."
Alice waited, not saying a word.
"At first, I just thought they were nightmares. But they didn't stop. They... gnawed at me. So, I started... doing things. Taking martial arts classes. Studying survival skills on the internet. How to filter water, how to pick a lock, first aid."
He rubbed his knuckles, his gaze distant. "Then, a few years ago... my parents died. Car accident. And I got... funds. So, I started preparing. Emergency stashes. Go-bags. Every time I got something done, learned a new skill, set another thing aside... the nightmares would ease up. For a little while. So I never stopped."
He finally turned to look at her, his expression grim. "Every single day, when I stepped out of my flat, I was prepared for that day to be today."
As soon as the words were out, he grimaced, a flash of self-consciousness on his face. He'd just shared his deepest, weirdest secret with a total stranger. He'd never told anyone that, not even Mark.
Finding the silence uncomfortable, Alex quickly changed the topic. He seized on the first thing he could think of. "Anyway... what about you? Alice. That's a very American name. But your friend... you had a key. I heard you say 'Anya' back in the room." He paused. "And your last name... 'Kovalenko'? You don't have a hint of an accent."
To his relief, she chuckled, the sound light and a bit watery. "You're very observant. 'Anya' is... was... what my father calls me. My full name is Alisa, but I go by Alice. And my mother is American. She's a diplomat. I grew up in D.C. and New York, so... no accent."
"And your father?"
"He's the Russian one," she said, a small smile playing on her lips. "Ex-military. He runs a private security company here in the States now. I'm studying to be a diplomat, like my mom. My sister, Mina... she's still in high school."
Her smile faded. A brief, heavy silence fell, and her expression turned uncertain. "It's... it's just us two, right now. My mother... she left for a business trip to Singapore about a week ago. And my father..." Her voice dropped. "He flew out yesterday. For a job. 'High-risk extraction' in South America."
She looked down at her hands. "He said he'd be gone two, maybe three weeks. It's... it's not the first time they've left us alone, but... just..."
She didn't need to finish the sentence.
Alex nodded, his mind filing the information. Security company. Trained father. High-risk. He remembered her desperate offer. "Your sister... Mina," he said, his voice practical, not emotional. "You said earlier... that you needed my help. To get her safe."
Alice's face flushed bright red, the memory of her towel-clad 'offer' flooding back. But then she looked up at him, a sudden, desperate beam of hope on her face. "Yes! She's at our apartment. You... you will help me? I'll... I'll do anything."
Alex held up a hand, and her face fell.
"Hold on," he said, his voice firm but not unkind. "I'm not... I'm not a hero, Alice. I'm just a guy with a plan. And my plan... it involves my flat. My friends are waiting for me there. Mark and Jenna. I gave them a six-day deadline. I have to get there."
This grounded her instantly. The hope was gone, replaced by a desperate calculation. "Oh," she said, her voice small. "I... I understand."
"Where is she?" Alex asked. "Where's your apartment?"
"It's on West 108th," she said, her words coming faster. "Between Broadway and Amsterdam. It's a doorman building, high security... or, it was."
Alex was silent, mapping it out in his head. Morningside Heights. His flat: 118th. Her apartment: 108th.
It was ten blocks south of his own street. A detour. A ten-block detour, in the wrong direction, through an infected city.
He thought for a few long minutes. He looked at her. She was watching him, her entire world hanging on his answer. He let out a long breath.
"Okay," he nodded. "It's doable. My flat is on 118th. Your place... it's not that far. We can bypass it on the way. We rest here tonight. Dawn... at dawn, we move. We go to your place. We get your sister. And then... then we go to mine. No other stops. Understood?"
The words were barely out of his mouth before she moved.
All the exhaustion and fear vanished from her in an instant, replaced by a surge of pure, unadulterated joy. She jumped up, her chair scraping loudly on the floor.
"Really? You mean it?"
Before he could even answer, she ran around the small table, grabbed his arm, and leaned in, planting a quick, warm peck on his cheek.
Alex's entire system short-circuited. He went rigid, his face instantly on fire. He sputtered, leaning back so fast he almost tipped his chair over. "You... you... what are you doing?"
Alice pulled back, her own face now a bright, charming red. But her eyes were sparkling with a mischief he hadn't seen before. She gave him a small, challenging smile and said, her voice a questioning tone, "A... prepayment?"
Alex, completely flustered, just stared. He quickly composed himself, clearing his throat and forcing his gaze back to the empty cup noodles. He needed to get the conversation back to logistics. Anywhere but here.
"Right," he said, standing up, his voice a little too stiff. "Okay. We need to rest." He looked around the room. "There's... there's only one bed."
He pointed to the small, sad-looking twin bed against the wall. "You take the bed. I'll crash on this couch. It's... fine."
Alice's expression softened, the gratefulness flooding back. "No... Alex, I can't. You're... you're doing all of this. You're the one fighting. You need to rest properly. You take the bed."
Alex raised an eyebrow, his pragmatic, sarcastic side returning. "And you'll take the couch? The thing between the door and me?"
She looked confused. "Yes..."
"Right," he said, crossing his arms. "So, how noble of you. If a-," he gestured to the door, "-something gets through that lock and the desk, you'll be the one to stall it, right? You'll... you'll give me a whole three seconds to wake up while it chews on you. Great plan."
Her face fell. "I... I didn't..." She was left speechless, his cold logic undeniable. She looked from the couch to the bed, then back to him, a desperate new idea forming. "Then... then," she started, her voice getting weaker with each word she uttered, "we... we could... both sleep on the bed?"
Alex just scoffed. "I've seen that bed, Alice. It's a dorm twin. Unless you want to sleep in each other's arms, literally, we can't both fit in there. It's not happening."
The suggestion, laid bare so bluntly, sent a wave of crimson up Alice's neck. She spun around, turning her back to him with a soft "Hmphf!"
"Fine!" she said, her voice muffled. "Then I'll take the stupid bed."