Reality, Theo decided, wasn't just broken. It had been compartmentalized. There were places for the shambling dead, places for hiding survivors, and now, evidently, places for those who still had bullets and the will to use them.
He and Pras moved south with a new, grim silence between them, but the tension from their earlier disagreement was a live wire. It was Pras who finally cut the quiet, his voice tight with controlled urgency.
"This Cendana place. It's south, right?"
"Yes." Theo's eyes scanned the side streets.
"My mom's kos is south too. Blok M. Further west, past the main road." Pras's voice tightened. "We shouldn't detour."
"It's not a detour. It's a vector. That transmission came from there. We need to see the source."
"Source?" Pras stopped walking, forcing Theo to turn. "My mother is alone. She's not a vector, she's my mother. Every minute chasing your clue is a minute she's terrified, or trapped, or—"
"Or alive." Theo's voice was low, strained. "We just run headlong, we die. That thing in the minimart wasn't alone. We move smart. Gather information. That hotel was priority on the emergency band. We see what's there, we learn the rules. That helps us survive the next block. Get to her."
"And if it's just a crater? Wasted time."
"Then we've lost an hour, but we know it's a danger zone. That's not waste. That's reconnaissance. You don't charge into a fight you don't understand."
Pras looked away, his brain working. The logic was sound, but cold. It clashed with the burning image of his mother's face. "One hour. We look. No more. If it's nothing, we leave. We go to her."
Theo held his gaze, then gave a single, sharp nod. "Deal."
The sound of controlled gunfire led them the rest of the way. Pop. Pop-pop. Pause. Pop.
From the rooftop of a low-rise office building two blocks away, they saw it through Theo's small binoculars. The elegant hotel was now a fortress. A perimeter of yellow-and-black police trucks, BRIMOB emblazoned on the sides, had been established a block out from the main entrance. Officers in black tactical gear and gas masks moved with a stiff, nervous discipline, forming a lethal cordon.
And they were shooting. Not at monsters like the Brute, but at the shamblers drawn by the noise. A creature in the tattered remains of a business suit lurched across the intersection toward the barrier. Two officers took aim. The shots were crisp, precise. The shambler's head snapped back and it crumpled. A team in heavier protective gear would later emerge, drag the body behind a truck, and douse it with a chemical from a canister that made the air shimmer with toxic fumes even from a distance.
"They're not trying to save anyone." Pras's voice was barely a whisper. "They're... sanitizing."
Theo's engineer mind saw the process. Containment. Eradication. Disposal. This wasn't a rescue. It was a quarantine with extreme prejudice.
"We have to get closer. See what's in there."
"Are you insane? They'll shoot us for coughing!"
"We don't cough. We talk."
It was a naive hope, and Theo knew it. But the need to know was a physical ache.
They circled, using backstreets and broken-down market stalls for cover, until they were as close as they dared—a single block from the western edge of the BRIMOB line. Theo took a breath, raised his hands, and stepped out of an alley mouth, Pras following suit.
"HEY! DON'T SHOOT! WE'RE ALIVE! SURVIVORS!"
The reaction was instantaneous. Four rifles swiveled toward them. An officer behind a truck door barked into a radio. A man with sergeant's markings stepped forward, his face obscured by a respirator, his voice electronically distorted.
"This is a restricted bio-hazard zone! Turn around immediately! Return to your residences and await instructions!"
"My wife!" Theo's voice broke with genuine desperation. "She's missing! Was there an evacuation? Did you take people out?"
"There is no evacuation! The zone is sealed! Final warning: DISPERSE!"
Pras took a step forward, hands still raised. "Please, my mother lives just past here! Blok M! We need to pass through! We won't go near—"
It was the wrong move. The sergeant's hand went to his sidearm. "You approach the perimeter, you will be detained as a potential carrier! Do not test us! GO!"
The final word was a crack of pure authority. Another officer leveled his rifle, the red dot of a laser sight blooming on Pras's chest.
Theo's mind clicked. Carrier. Not victim. Carrier. They weren't protecting people from the plague; they were protecting the perimeter from people.
"Pras, back up. Slowly."
They retreated into the alley. The laser dot vanished. The moment they were out of direct line of sight, they ran, not stopping until they were three twisting alleys away, hearts hammering against their ribs.
"They would have shot us." Pras panted, leaning against a wall.
"They're terrified. Following orders." Theo's mind raced. "That hotel isn't just a hotspot. It's ground zero for something they don't understand."
He looked at Pras. The path to his mother's kos was now behind a wall of armed police. The hotel's secrets were locked behind the same wall. The system had them trapped.
"We need a new vector. We go over."
His gaze stopped on a skeletal silhouette rising above the nearby rooftops, just outside the western perimeter. A construction crane, part of a half-built high-rise that had been stalled before the Red Rain. It stood like a sleeping giant, its long, latticed boom arm pointing like an accusatory finger… directly over the cordoned-off block, and potentially, over the Hotel Cendana itself.
A crazy, beautiful, terrifying idea assembled itself in his mind. A plan of angles, counterweights, and sheer, stupid audacity.
"Pras." A ghost of a technician's smile touched Theo's lips. "How's your head for heights?"
Pras followed his gaze to the crane. His face paled. "You can't be serious."
"They're watching the ground. Looking for threats pushing through. Not for a delivery from above." Theo's mind was already mapping it: the climb up the crane's tower, the careful traversal along the boom arm, the descent. A series of mechanical problems. Dangerous, but solvable. "We get to the tip. Scout. If the boom's over the hotel, we find a way down—service hatch, window, something. If not, we at least get a view of what they're guarding."
"And if they see us? A sniper—"
"Then we're two obvious targets on a crane." Theo's voice was flat. "It's a risk. But staying down here, guessing, getting nowhere... that's a slower death. Your mother's on the other side of that line. My wife's trail might be in that hotel. We're running out of time."
Pras stared at the crane, then back at the direction of the BRIMOB trucks. Another controlled burst of gunfire echoed down the streets. He swallowed hard, the fighter in him weighing the odds of a brawl against the odds of a fall from a hundred meters up.
"Crazy shit." Pras finally muttered, grim resolve replacing fear. "Okay. How do we even get in the crane cab?"
Theo shouldered his pack, the weight of the tools inside now feeling purposeful. "Leave that to me. Just be ready to climb." He paused. "And for God's sake, don't drop anything."
They melted into the shadows, two ghosts moving toward the sleeping steel giant, ready to turn its indifferent bulk into the key for their desperation.