The tower was quiet, for once.
Not silent. The crumbling building never gave him that.
There was always pipes cracking under pressure and ice. Wires hummed in the stairwell like a plucked string, powered by very sketchy sources that could backfire in a moment. Somewhere below, a baby cried once, cut off sharp by a mother's hand, not wanting to call attention to either one of them.
But the usual clatter…. the arguments over rations, the sewing needles scraping through tarp, the hammer blows echoing like gunfire… those had gone still.
The air was thin enough to breathe without tasting smoke.
Noah took the chance.
He left Roane watching the seventeenth floor and slipped up two more flights, his boots rolling across concrete as if he had always belonged here.
