Cole came in first, followed by his six the same order they’d held on the street. Michael closed the gate behind the last one, then stood in the lobby with seven new people, ran the pulse, and found the building still clear and the street behind the gate empty.

Cole observed the lobby. His eyes went to the perimeter panel first, then the gate mechanism, the stairwell door, the ceiling, and finally the floor. The whole sweep took about four seconds and covered everything worth noting.

"Is that a Generator?," he asked, hearing the hum.

"No it’s just a backup system," Michael replied.

Cole nodded and looked at the gate again. "The mechanism is internal only."

"Yes."

"Smart." He looked at Michael. "You designed this."

"I built it," Michael said. "The design came first."

Cole looked at him and the almost-smile came back. "You’re an engineer."

"No, data entry," Michael said.

Cole stared at him.

"Before the apocalypse I mean," Michael said.

Cole held his gaze for a moment and then looked around the lobby again and said nothing about the data entry thing which Michael appreciated.

"We have supplies," Cole said. "It should be enough for two weeks at our current consumption rate. Medical basics, ammunition for the firearms and tools." He looked at Michael. "We’re not coming empty handed."

"I wasn’t going to ask you to," Michael said. "But noted."

Cole looked at him. "What are the rules?"

"You carry weight. You don’t take what isn’t yours. You don’t touch anyone who doesn’t want to be touched." he paused. "Everyone in this building earns their place. The same rules applies to everyone."

Cole looked at him steadily. "And in return."

"A home," Michael said. He paused. "Safety is a relative concept out there. Less relative here."

Cole looked around the lobby once more then at the other six people. Something passed between them that Michael couldn’t fully read.

"Alright," Cole said.

---

Michael took them upstairs.

He put Cole’s six in the apartments on Floor 5 that Damon’s clearing run had opened up the day before, two rooms with enough space and a water collection point in the hallway that he extended from the Floor 6 system with a quick shop purchase while nobody was paying attention to his hands.

Cole took to the sixth floor.

He didn’t go to his apartment but to the watchtower, because Cole had looked at it the moment he came through the gate the way Michael looked at a new blueprint, and he wanted to see what Cole did with the view before he decided anything else.

Cole came up through the hatch,stood on the platform and looked out at the city.

He stayed quiet for a long time.

"The horde came from the southeast," Cole said.

"Yes."

"Something drove it."

"The Brute was the anchor."

"Before the Brute," Cole said. "Something likely drew the Brute." He looked southeast. "It’s still there."

Michael looked at him. "You can see it."

"I can see the way the remaining Rotter scatter avoids a specific area eight blocks out," Cole said. "Those things avoid what they’re afraid of. Whatever’s out there, the Rotters won’t go near it." He paused. "Which means it’s either their apex predator or something else entirely."

Michael pulled up the pulse and looked at the signature eight blocks southeast and then at Cole.

"I’ve been tracking it since the night of the horde," he said. "It appeared when the horde moved. Like the horde moving uncovered it."

Cole looked at him. "Uncovered."

"It was there before, hidden under the horde’s signature density. When the horde dispersed, it was just there."

Cole was quiet for a moment. "That’s not animal behavior," he said. "Hiding under a horde’s signature density, that doesn’t happen by accident."

Michael looked at him. "No," he said. "It’s not."

The two of them stood on the watchtower and looked southeast at the empty city.

"You’re going to deal with it," Cole said.

"I know."

"Before it decides to deal with you."

"I know that too," Michael said.

Cole looked at him sideways. "You’re not worried."

"I am but I already have a plan on how to handle them," Michael said.

Cole looked at him for a moment, then back out at the city, and something in his expression settled into a look of respect.

"What do you need," Cole said simply.

Michael looked at the Tier 3 blueprint list open in his vision, at the perimeter wall sitting at the top of it, then at the steps after that, the SP balance and the timeline he’d been running in his head since last night.

"How are your people at construction," he said.

Cole looked at him. "Define construction."

"Moving materials. Holding position while things get built. Following specific instructions about placement and sequence without needing to understand why."

Cole thought about it. "They are disciplined enough to do it right," he said. "Experienced enough not to ask stupid questions." He paused. "Why."

"Because I’m building a perimeter wall," Michael said. "And I need it done before whatever that thing is suddenly rampages, I don’t want to be caught off guard."

Cole looked at the building exterior visible below them, the gate, the reinforced windows, and the infrastructure of thirty days of careful construction.

"How long," he said.

"It should take at least three days if I have enough body moving materials," Michael said. "Five if I don’t."

Cole looked at his watch."It’s two in the afternoon," he said. "We start today so we can get a day’s work in before dark."

Michael looked at him.

"I said we’d pull weight," Cole said simply.

Michael almost smiled. "Come downstairs," he said. "I’ll show you what we need."

---

They were halfway down the hatch ladder when the pulse caught something that made Michael stop on the rungs.

Floor 6 hallway. 607. Two signatures were inside, Gareth and one other, and the particular static quality of two people who had been talking for a while and had gone very still very recently.

The timing of the stillness lined up exactly with Cole and Michael coming down from the watchtower.

Michael filed it and kept climbing down, without changing his expression or pace. Cole followed behind him, and they headed to the stairwell. The whole time the two signatures in 607 stayed very still and quiet.

At the bottom of the watchtower stairwell Michael looked at Cole. "I’m going to introduce you to the people in this building," he said. "All of them."

Cole nodded.

"Some of them you’ll like," Michael said. "One of them you won’t."

Cole looked at him with his steady dark eyes. "The other group," he said. "In the hallway apartments."

"Yes."

"I clocked them when we came up," Cole said. "The one at the end of the hall, watching from the doorway. He had his hand on his weapon the whole time we passed."

Michael looked at him. "And."

Cole looked back. "And I’ve met men like that before," he said simply. "Decent enough when they need to be. Problem when they think they don’t."

Michael said nothing.

"You’ve already assessed that," Cole said.

"Yes," Michael said.

Cole was quiet for a moment. "You let us in because of him," he said—accusatory, just reading the situation accurately. "Not just because of the trouble you’re going to have to deal with."

Michael looked at him steadily. "I let you in because you spent twenty minutes in an open street with your hands visible and your weapons where I could see them, and you didn’t move once," he said. "And because you haven’t lost anyone in thirty days, which in this city means you’re doing something right." He paused. "The other thing is also true."

Cole looked at him for a long moment.

Then he nodded once and they went downstairs to start building.

---