ROSIE.
The wind howled like it wanted to peel the city apart.
Ice slammed against steel and glass, broken power lines sparked on soaked pavement, and above it all — far above the shrieking, shivering desperation — Rosie stood still, bone-dry beneath the skeletal overhang of an abandoned streetcar station.
She watched the people run.
Dozens now, maybe more.
Flooding toward the tower like rats toward high ground. They screamed. Cried. Pounded on doors that wouldn't open. One man slipped, cracked his head on the curb. A mother lost her grip on a stroller that skittered off into the dark.
Rosie didn't flinch.
Brent paced behind her, visibly tense, coat soaked through and sticking to his frame.
"They're not going to open the door," he said. "They can't. They know better."
"They'll open it," Rosie said softly.
"Why? Because of the weather?"
"Because people are mirrors," she replied. "If you put enough pain in front of them, they see themselves in it. And then they have to decide if they can live with their own reflection."
Eric crouched nearby, sharpening a blade on the edge of a broken railing.
"And if they don't open it?"
Rosie smiled.
"Then the people they turn away will turn on them."
"You're betting on a riot," Brent muttered.
"I'm not betting," Rosie said, stepping out into the storm.
Ice clinked against her hood.
"I'm building one."
She turned toward the distant silhouette of the tower — that glass-clad monolith, still standing, still warm, still not letting anyone in.
"The storm is the best part," she whispered. "It tears down walls people swore they'd never cross."
Then she looked back at the crowd.
At the mass of soaking, screaming, frantic bodies slamming into steel and glass and sensor-locked doors.
And she waited.
Because whether the doors opened for mercy or were ripped off by force—
Either way, Rosie would be the first to walk through.
--
BORIS.
The storm sounded different from the inside.
Muted. Filtered. Like a memory instead of a threat. But Boris could still feel the pressure of it in his chest — the way the air shifted in the building with every gust, the vibration of wind pushing against reinforced glass.
He tightened the latch on the greenhouse coop, fingers moving with practiced care. The chickens were restless — feathers puffed, heads twitching. They could feel it too.
"It's okay," he murmured in Russian, low and gentle. "Still standing. You're safe."
The cow, Dolly, paced her stall, snorting and turning in anxious circles. Boris checked the feed bin, topped off the water, ran a calming hand along her side. Her flank twitched, muscles tight under her skin.
"You have better instincts than we do," he muttered. "You always know before it comes."
He crouched by the rabbit enclosure next, checking latches, testing the temperature regulators. One of the younger rabbits pressed her nose against the mesh. Her heartbeat fluttered beneath his fingertips like a warning.
"It's not you I'm worried about," he whispered.
Outside the glass, the terrace lights were off, but shapes moved in the distance — the edge of shadow creeping closer, bodies collecting.
They didn't know about the gas lines, the panic doors, the layered defences. They didn't understand the math of survival.
But they knew warmth. They knew food. They knew someone was inside.
Boris stood slowly, looking out past the sunflowers, past the reflection of his own face, toward the city beyond.
"If they get in," he said softly, to the rabbits, the hens, the cow, "we protect you first."
His voice didn't shake. His hands didn't either.
But something deep in his bones curled tighter.
Because if the storm couldn't break the glass—
The people just might.