The morning light filtered weakly through the ruined ceiling, casting silver patterns on the cracked walls. Dust floated like drifting embers Lina sat beside the old fire pit, staring at her mother's journal. Her fingers traced the edges of the scorched pages like she was trying to wake them up.
"She always wrote in it," Lina said softly. "Mostly at night. When she thought I was sleeping."
Rivas crouched beside her.
"Did she ever talk about where she went?"
"She didn't have to," Lina said. "I know where."
The hallway beyond the shelter dipped into a collapsed corridor choked with broken supports and slanted walls. Rivas's team followed Lina's small frame through the narrow gap in the rubble. She moved with eerie confidence, never hesitating.
They emerged into a hollowed-out side chamber where vines and mold had overtaken old supply shelves.
And blood had dried into the concrete floor.
Elen's breath caught. "This was a fight."
A rusted metal rod lay discarded near the far wall bent, smeared with faded stains. Near it, a broken handheld flare. A torn strip of cloth. A fragment of a shredded coat.
Lina didn't cry. She just stared.
"She made noise on purpose," she said. "She banged on the walls. Hit the pipe with her fists. She screamed. So they would come to her, not to me."
"How many were there?" Toma asked gently.
Lina swallowed. "Three. Big ones. I could feel them. They moved in the ceiling. She knew they were there. She told me to stay in the pipe tunnel and not come out… not even if I heard her scream."
Rivas knelt beside the stain, her gloved hand brushing a faint symbol scratched into the concrete.
A child's name.
LINA written in shaky block letters with a bloodied finger.
"She kept them away from me," Lina said. "She ran into this room and they followed."
They gave her a moment.
No one asked what happened after.
They didn't need to.
The room was too quiet.
The story had already soaked into the walls.
Later, back in the shelter, Koji read the remaining pages of Lucia's journal aloud to the team.
"The treatment saved me. I still remember the fever breaking the mirror life cells did their job. I was supposed to go back for follow-ups, but the city fell before I could. I didn't even know I was pregnant then…"
"Lina is strong. Stronger than me. She can sense them before they come. I thought it was fear at first. Then a fluke. But it's real. She knew they were close, hours before we saw them."
"I think… maybe Mirror Life didn't just cure me. Maybe it left something behind. Maybe it touched her, too."
"She has to live. Even if I don't."
As night fell again, Lina sat wrapped in a thick jacket, gazing at the stars peeking through the collapsed ceiling. Rivas joined her, offering a fresh blanket.
"She died protecting you."
"I know," Lina said.
"Do you… feel anything now?"
Lina shook her head slowly.
"They're not nearby. It's quiet."
She looked up at the sky.
"But it never stays quiet for long."