Day 10. 7:16 AM.
-70°C exterior.
20°C inside.
Unit 1418.
Jae-min hadn't slept.
Fourteen hours with his hand on Ji-yoo's and his back against the wall beside the sectional and his knees drawn up and his head tipped back, the void humming in his chest quiet and steady at a low vibration he'd learned to treat like background noise.
She hadn't moved or spoken or opened her eyes since the brief moment at 2:34 PM when she'd whispered about the plane and then slipped back under.
Alessia checked her vitals every forty minutes with pulse steady and breathing regular and temperature normal, and the silver traceries beneath her skin had faded to almost nothing but the gravity was still there.
Everyone could feel it, a faint pull toward Ji-yoo's body that wasn't strong and wasn't dangerous but was just present like a small planet sleeping in the corner of the room.
The water in the bottles tilted slightly toward her no matter where they were placed on the white porcelain tile.
Rico had taken the night watch and sat at the dining table with his rifle across his knees and his eyes moving between the comms setup and Ji-yoo's sleeping face, not having said much since yesterday.
Neither had Jae-min because there wasn't much to say.
Yue was asleep on the floor by the glass slider with the jian beside her and her hand close enough to grab it, her body angled toward Jae-min's corner the way a compass needle finds north.
Jennifer was awake barely, having managed to sit up against the wall wrapped in a down comforter with her face still pale and gaunt but the fever broken and the IV fluids doing their job.
She was watching Ji-yoo with her gaze flicking toward Jae-min for half a second and then dropping to the porcelain tile.
'He hasn't slept. Fourteen hours. His hand hasn't left hers.' Jennifer ached, a desperate longing consuming her chest. 'I want to bring him water. I want to tell him to close his eyes. But I can't even look at him without my chest caving in.'
Alessia was at the kitchen counter crushing vitamins into powder on the dark granite and mixing them with water, her hands steady but her eyes red from crying in the bathroom again last night.
Jae-min had heard her through the wall and hadn't said anything and neither had she.
Seven days of this.
Ten days since the world ended.
And Ji-yoo was still sleeping.
Jae-min closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wall with the void humming and the generator droning and Manila frozen and dead beneath minus seventy outside.
His hand was warm around hers.
And then she squeezed back.
Jae-min's eyes snapped open.
Ji-yoo's fingers were moving, not twitching and not the random spasms of a dreaming brain but a deliberate controlled squeeze, pressure and let go and pressure again.
She was holding his hand.
"Ji-yoo?" Jae-min breathed, a fragile hope cracking through his exhaustion.
No response with her eyes still closed and her breathing still slow, but her fingers kept moving in a slow rhythmic pulse against his palm like a heartbeat.
He leaned closer.
"Ji-yoo, can you hear me?" Jae-min whispered, a desperate urgency tightening his throat.
Her lips moved barely, a whisper that was more breath than sound.
"Kuya." Ji-yoo whispered, a shattered wonder trembling through the word.
His chest cracked because she hadn't called him that since they were kids, the Filipino word for older brother, informal and intimate, the kind of word you only used with family and with the person you loved most in the world.
"Kuya, you're alive." Ji-yoo sobbed, a frail thread holding her voice.
Tears not his but hers, leaking from beneath closed lids and sliding down her temples into the cushions, silent and steady.
"Ji-yoo." Jae-min rasped, a raw grief scraping his voice. "I'm here. I'm right here."
Her eyes opened.
Black, not the soft black he'd known his whole life but something harder behind them now, something that had seen things.
Her gaze swept the room in two seconds flat, ceiling and sectional and dining table and kitchen doorway and glass slider, a soldier's scan before locking onto his face.
She stared at him for two full seconds without breathing.
Then she moved, not words and not a smile but reaching for him with both hands fisting his shirt and pulling herself toward him with whatever strength she had, her arms buckling halfway before she collapsed against his chest.
But she didn't let go.
Jae-min caught her with one arm behind her shoulders and she pressed her face into his neck and her fingers dug into his shirt and she held on.
"Kuya." Ji-yoo breathed against his collarbone, a desperate relief breaking through her voice.
She crawled into his lap with her knees on either side of his hips and her face buried in his neck and her arms locked around him the way she had when she was seven and scared of thunder.
She didn't speak and didn't explain, she just held on.
And Jae-min held her back.
The silver traceries pulsed beneath her skin, and the gravity in the room shifted with the water bottles tilting another degree toward her and the comforter around Jennifer's shoulders pulling taut, but Ji-yoo didn't acknowledge it because her entire world was the heartbeat under her ear.
She pulled back just enough to look at him and the sharp smile returned, not warm and not soft but something with teeth in it.
"You look like shit, Kuya." Ji-yoo murmured, a fierce affection roughening her voice.
"You look worse." Jae-min whispered, a broken relief cracking through the words.
Her mouth twitched, and the smile widened a fraction before her eyes went distant and she pressed her fingers to her temple.
She flexed her other hand and the silver traceries pulsed beneath her knuckles, visible for a moment then fading, and she could feel it, the pull of the floor and the walls and the furniture and him, a second heartbeat beneath her ribs thrumming in time with a frequency that had nothing to do with blood.
She pressed her palm flat against her chest over the sternum where the weight had been.
"I can feel you. Here." Ji-yoo declared, a quiet awe softening her rough voice as her fingers pressed harder.
Jae-min didn't answer because the way she was talking, the confidence and the casualness and the way she'd assessed the room in two seconds flat, this wasn't the Ji-yoo who had boarded a plane to Seoul before the freeze.
'Someone older. Someone who's seen things I haven't.' Jae-min observed, a careful dread weighing down his chest. 'She's not the same.'
"Ji-yoo, how do you feel?" Jae-min questioned carefully.
"Like I died." Ji-yoo stated flatly. "Which I did."
A beat with her fingers still pressed to her chest.
"Two timelines. Same volume. The memories are overlapping." Ji-yoo murmured, a disoriented grief hollowing her words.
She paused and her black eyes cleared and the sharpness returned.
"I remember things that haven't happened yet." Ji-yoo declared, a quiet certainty.
"Taiwan. Training. Missions. The." Ji-yoo started before stopping and looking at her hands with the silver traceries pulsing again.
"Who the hell is Captain of the Preta Group?" Ji-yoo demanded, a confused frustration tightening her brow.
Jae-min's blood went cold.
"Ji-yoo." Jae-min started, a careful fear.
She held up a hand, not angry but steady.
"I know this is strange. I know what you're thinking." Ji-yoo said, a steady composure anchoring her voice before she looked at him and the sharpness softened into something raw.
"But I'm still me." Ji-yoo declared, a fierce loyalty burning beneath the quiet.
Alessia was moving toward them with the stethoscope in hand.
"Ji-yoo, I need to check your vitals. Can you." Alessia started, a clinical steadiness barely concealing her dread.
Ji-yoo's head turned and her whole face changed.
"Ate." Ji-yoo breathed, a warm recognition flooding her black eyes.
Alessia's composure cracked with her hand trembling on the stethoscope. "You remember me." Alessia murmured, a relieved wonder dissolving her clinical mask.
Ji-yoo reached out and took Alessia's wrist, not to stop her but just to hold on, her thumb pressing against the pulse point and checking the way a field medic checks.
"You haven't been eating." Ji-yoo observed, a sharp concern cutting through her hoarse voice.
"I could ask you the same thing." Alessia murmured, a watery laugh escaping.
"How long?" Ji-yoo questioned, a weary impatience.
"Fourteen hours." Alessia answered, a quiet grief weighing down her clinical tone.
Ji-yoo was quiet with her gaze drifting and the sharpness flickering as something darker moved behind her eyes.
"Felt like years." Ji-yoo murmured, a distant horror flickering behind her eyes.
"Training. Fighting. Killing." Ji-yoo whispered, a cold recollection emptying her voice.
She didn't smooth it over or redirect, and the words hung in the air like smoke after a gunshot.
She blinked, the darkness receded, and she leaned back into Jae-min with her head finding his shoulder and her hand finding his and lacing their fingers together.
She tried to sit up, and this time Jae-min caught her with one arm behind her shoulders helping her upright, and she leaned against him with her head on his shoulder.
Then the casual confidence fell away, the sharp eyes and the tactical scan and all of it, and what was left was a girl who thought her brother was dead.
'She carried that grief. In another life. A life where I never called.' Jae-min realized, a hollow devastating guilt pressing against his ribs. 'And she lived with it.'
She started crying, not quiet tears but ugly crying that shakes the whole body and makes sounds you can't control, burying her face in his shoulder and grabbing his shirt and holding on like if she let go he'd disappear.
She pressed closer climbing deeper into him with her whole body curling toward his like she was trying to merge with him and the space between them was an insult she refused to tolerate.
"I thought you were dead." Ji-yoo sobbed into his collarbone, a raw destruction muffling her voice.
Jae-min held her and didn't say anything because there was nothing to say.
She was crying about a life that hadn't happened, a world where he'd died alone in a frozen apartment and she'd survived a plane crash unable to reach anyone.
Those tears weren't for this timeline but they were real and her grief was real and her love was real.
So he held her and let her cry.
Rico was standing by the kitchen counter having gotten three steps toward her when she woke before she'd turned that tactical gaze on him and he'd stopped because the look in her eyes wasn't recognition but shock.
"Uncle." Ji-yoo gasped, a stunned grief breaking her voice on the word.
Rico's face crumbled with his jaw trembling and his eyes going glassy, the old soldier who had fought in three wars and stared down the apocalypse without flinching coming close to breaking.
"Hey, kid." Rico rasped, a rough warmth barely holding together his voice.
Ji-yoo's face twisted and she pulled away from Jae-min just enough to reach toward Rico with her hand shaking, the other staying locked on Jae-min's shirt because she needed both and couldn't let go of either.
"You're alive." Ji-yoo whispered, a broken grief fracturing her voice.
"I'm alive, kid." Rico confirmed, a steady warmth grounding his rough voice.
She stared at him processing with the two timelines fighting for dominance in her head, then closed her eyes and let out a sound half laugh and half sob.
"You look like shit, Uncle." Ji-yoo murmured, a broken affection bleeding through the tears.
Rico exhaled with a sound that was half laugh and half sob.
"You look worse, kid." Rico replied, a gruff tenderness roughening his voice.
She laughed again realer this time and her hand found Jae-min's again and didn't let go.
— • • • —
Jennifer watched from across the room.
'She crawled into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. She reaches for him and he catches her.' Jennifer ached, a hollow longing pressing behind her ribs. 'I've never had that.'
Ji-yoo's gaze found her and something in her face changed, the sharpness softening with steel still behind her eyes but the cold assessment gone and replaced by something warmer and older.
"Jennifer." Ji-yoo called, a careful quiet settling over her voice.
Jennifer's fingers tightened in the comforter and the ice-blue hair fell forward across her face as she didn't look at Jae-min.
"Ji-yoo." Jennifer whispered, a fragile steadiness.
Ji-yoo studied her and the ice-blue hair and the gaunt face and the comforter wound between her knuckles, then reached out and took Jennifer's hand.
Jennifer flinched, not from fear but from surprise.
"I know." Ji-yoo declared, a quiet conviction.
"All of it. The hallway. The door you never knocked on." Ji-yoo murmured, a heavy grief weighing down her voice. "In every version, Jennifer. Every version, you stood at that door."
'In every version. Even when the world ended and rebuilt itself, I was still standing at that door.' Jennifer shattered, a devastating grief cracking open the walls around her heart. 'Still silent. Still too afraid to knock.'
Ji-yoo squeezed her hand and pulled her closer until Jennifer was close enough that Ji-yoo could press her forehead to hers.
"He found you anyway." Ji-yoo whispered, a fierce gentleness burning through her raw voice. "So stop standing at the door."
She let go and leaned back into Jae-min and closed her eyes.
Jennifer said nothing with her fingers trembling in the space where Ji-yoo's hand had been, but something in her chest clenched like a fist for years and loosened just a little.
'He found me. I was dying and he found me. I never walked to him. I never knocked.' Jennifer realized, a fragile hope flickering beneath the grief. 'He came through that door anyway.'
Jae-min watched from across the room with his face unreadable but his eyes on their hands and his jaw tightening a fraction the way it always did when someone touched what was his.
He didn't move and didn't intervene but the tracking was instinctive and automatic.
— • • • —
The room was quiet with the wind outside picking up in a low constant moan against the ballistic glass and minus seventy pressing against the tower like a siege.
Alessia moved to the kitchen counter to prepare Ji-yoo's first meal and Jae-min followed with his hand finding the small of her back warm and steady, and she leaned into the touch without thinking.
"She's going to be okay." Jae-min murmured, a quiet conviction warming his voice close enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple.
"You don't know that." Alessia countered, a stubborn fear clinging to her whisper as she pressed back against his hand.
"I know you saved her." Jae-min whispered, a fierce gratitude roughening his voice with his fingers sliding along her waist and pulling her a half-step closer. "I know you haven't slept. I know you cried in the bathroom."
Her shoulders stiffened then relaxed.
"Jae-min." Alessia breathed, a tender surrender.
"Eat something after this. Real food. Not just vitamins." Jae-min ordered, a protective insistence pressing a kiss to the crown of her head with his hand lingering on her hip.
Alessia's ears were crimson as she busied herself with the rice.
"I'll eat when she eats." Alessia murmured, a stubborn warmth.
"Stubborn." Jae-min whispered, a faint affection.
"Takes one to know one." Alessia murmured back, a soft defiance lifting the corner of her mouth.
He smiled against her hair then let go and walked back to the sectional and sat beside his sister.
The room settled into a new rhythm with Alessia working at the counter and Jennifer staring at the floor and Rico cleaning his rifle and Yue sleeping by the slider.
And Ji-yoo leaned against her brother's shoulder with her black eyes half-closed and one hand in his and the gravity humming low and constant in her chest.
Not speaking and not explaining but just there.
Alive.
And in a bunker in the sky fourteen floors above a frozen world, that was enough.