The room they were led to wasn't much. Four walls, two metal bunk beds, a folding table, a lamp that flickered when the hallway lights buzzed on and off.
But the door closed. And locked.
Compared to the open rows of cots in the gym, it might as well have been a castle.
"Two adults, two kids," the volunteer said, checking her list. "You get your own space." She handed Albert a key on a plastic tag. "Share the bathrooms at the end of the hall. Curfew at ten. Good luck."
The door clicked shut behind her.
For a few seconds, no one moved.
Then Maya stepped forward, put the cat on the lower bunk, and climbed up beside him.
"Is this… ours?" she whispered.
"For now," Albert said. His voice came out softer than he meant it to. "Yeah. It's ours."
He took the top bunk nearest the door. Melissa didn't know he'd answered that question for her yet. She was still somewhere under that red sky, surrounded by people whose lives were burning in different ways.
He just hoped the message he'd left would go through.
It was past midnight when the door finally flew open.
"Maya!" Melissa's voice cracked on the name.
She stood in the doorway, still in scrubs, hair flattened by the cap she'd worn for twelve hours. Her sneakers squelched faintly with each step; she'd been hosing down the entrance for smoke.
Maya launched herself off the bunk.
"Mom!"
Melissa dropped to her knees just in time to catch her. For one long, silent moment, they clung to each other so tightly that neither of them remembered there was anyone else in the room.
Then Mr. Whiskers meowed, indignant at being squashed.
Melissa pulled back just enough to stare at the cat.
"You… you brought him?" she said, voice shaking.
Maya nodded fiercely. "Albert went back. He turned the truck around. For him. For me."
Only then did Melissa look up.
Albert was standing by the wall, shoulder against the peeling paint, arms folded like he didn't quite know what to do with them.
"Thank you," she said. The words came out hoarse, more breath than sound. "Really. I—"
"You'd do the same," he said. "If it had been the other way around."
She thought of William asleep in the corner, backpack under his head like a pillow.
"Yeah," she said. "I would."
The first tremor hit just before dawn.
The building shuddered, and the light in the hallway went out with a pop. The room dropped into thick, instant darkness.
Maya woke up screaming.
Albert was off the top bunk and on the floor before the second scream. William sat bolt upright, heart hammering.
"It's okay," he said automatically, sliding over to Maya's bunk. He found her hand in the dark. "It's not the fire. It's just the ground being weird."
Melissa had been dozing in the chair by the door, too wired to lie down. She fumbled for her phone, thumb hovering over the flashlight icon, then stopped. The last thing the kids needed was the glare of another emergency.
Instead, she crossed the room by memory, guided by the sound of her daughter's hiccuping breaths.
Her arms went around both kids at once.
"I'm here, I'm here," she murmured. "Feel that? That's me. I'm not going anywhere."
She didn't realize until then that her own hands were trembling too.
Something brushed her shoulder. Warm, solid.
Albert's hand.
"I'm here too," he said quietly.
In the dark, with the building humming around them and aftershocks chasing each other under the floor, the four of them huddled together on one narrow bunk. A temporary shelter inside a temporary shelter.
Outside, a generator coughed to life. The lights flickered, then flared back on.
No one moved.
Maya's breathing steadied. William's hand loosened its grip on her sleeve.
Melissa let her forehead rest on Albert's shoulder for a heartbeat longer than strictly necessary. Then she straightened, embarrassed by the sudden rush of intimacy.
"Sorry," she muttered. "I'm not usually this—"
"Human?" he said. "Congratulations. You've passed the test."
She huffed out a laugh before she could stop herself.
In the morning, the shelter staff made an announcement over the PA system.
"Attention, residents. We are beginning the process of assigning temporary apartments to families with children. Please come to the main office when your name is called."
The word apartments sent a ripple through the building.
Rooms with doors, not just curtains. Real kitchens. A place to put more than a backpack down.
Albert and Melissa exchanged a look.
"Families with children," Melissa repeated slowly.
"That's us," Albert said.
She hesitated. "Is it?"
He thought of the way Maya had clung to him in the truck. The way William had reached for her hand in the dark.
"You want her in a tent?" he asked.
Her jaw tightened. "Of course not."
"Then yeah," he said. "It's us."
When they reached the office, the line for apartments was even longer than the line for cots had been.
A harried housing coordinator flipped through a stack of folders. "Last batch of units for this week," she said. "We've got… one left that fits four. Rest are singles."
She looked up, eyes narrowing as she took them in: two adults, two kids, one cat.
"You four together?" she asked.
Melissa opened her mouth, then closed it.
Maya's hand slid quietly into hers.
"Yes," Melissa heard herself say. "We are."
The coordinator smiled. "Then you just got lucky."
She pulled a set of keys from the pile and slapped them down on the table.
"Congratulations," she said. "You're a household."