10:20 AM. Day 16.
Uncle came back from the east wall. He stood at the center of the corridor and looked at the crack for a long time. The main fracture had widened another centimeter. The tributary branches had extended further. The plaster around the edges was flaking away in thin, frozen sheets. The steel behind it was visible now — corroded with frost eating into the reinforcement at the molecular level.
He turned and looked at Jae-min.
"This won't hold."
Jae-min didn't argue. The building was failing. The position they'd stopped in was temporary by nature, and the temporary was running out.
"The generator's rated for a closed room," Uncle said, thinking out loud. "This corridor has two open breaches. We're losing a degree every six or seven minutes. Maybe faster."
The building had stopped being shelter when the south wall came down. Now it was just a structure — walls and floors and a roof slowly becoming as cold as the air outside. The insulation was compromised. The envelope was broken. Every crack, every gap, every fracture was bleeding out what little warmth remained.
They had a time limit. The time limit was shortening.
Alessia was beside Ji-yoo again. Ji-yoo's breathing had shifted — still shallow, still irregular, but thinner. Each breath took longer to arrive. The pause between exhale and inhale had stretched from a second to nearly two.
Alessia pressed her palm to Ji-yoo's forehead. Her jaw tightened.
She couldn't stabilize her here. The cold was too aggressive, her own capacity too diminished. Ji-yoo needed warmth, proper rest, and treatment that required hands that didn't shake. None of those things existed in this corridor.
Jae-min saw it. Alessia knew he saw it. Neither of them said anything.
Staying was slow death. The building was failing, Ji-yoo was declining, Alessia was fading, Jennifer was losing the link, Yue's scanner was dead, and the Archbishop was sitting outside the south gap with the patience to wait for every last one of them to freeze.
Moving was dangerous. Every step cost heat. Every person who couldn't walk was a weight on the people who could. The stairwells were frozen. The corridors were wind tunnels.
Staying killed them slowly. Moving might kill them faster.
"We move."
Uncle looked at him. Jae-min looked back. The exchange lasted less than a second.
No resistance. Everyone already knew.
Uncle turned to the corridor. "Prepare to move. Priority cases first — children, then injured, then everyone else. Stay tight. Stay quiet. Don't stop unless I tell you to stop."
The response was slow. Bodies that had been still for twenty minutes had to convince joints to unlock, muscles to fire, legs to bear weight. A man near the east wall pushed himself up and grabbed the wall when his knees buckled, holding the position for ten seconds before his legs stabilized. The children were the hardest — two adults had to lift a young boy whose legs had locked at the knees, and he made a small, sharp sound when the joints unlocked. Not a cry. Just a gasp. The sound cut through the silence like a blade.
Outside, Victor held the courtyard.
He'd been positioned behind the delivery truck near the east-side gate since before the collapse, watching the south face and the dark shapes beyond the rubble field. His rifle was across his knees. Ammunition low. Position exposed.
He'd watched the Archbishop's formation reorganize — fewer bodies than before, but more disciplined, more patient. Now the building was cracking in new places, and the formation was still holding. He checked his magazine. Four rounds. He pulled his sidearm. Fourteen. Better.
Inside, the corridor was in motion. Not flowing — crawling.
The group moved in a tight cluster, priority cases at the center, able-bodied on the perimeter. The pace was glacial. The man with the locked knee had to be supported on both sides. The children walked between adults, faces buried in their collars.
Jae-min moved at the edge of the group. His left arm was useless — shoulder locked, fingers frozen into a rigid curl. He navigated by sound and memory and the faint, blurred shapes his vision could barely resolve. The frost on the walls caught what little light came through the fractures and threw it back as a dim, blue-grey glow, like everything was underwater.
"Yue."
She was two meters ahead. Turned her head. Slow.
"Path's not clear."
A pause.
"...but it's passable."
They moved toward the north stairwell. Not up — the upper floors were colder and the stairwell was a wind tunnel. Through. Uncle had identified a structural junction on the north side where two corridors met at a reinforced wall. No external exposure. No large cracks. A section of intact insulation that might still hold residual heat. It wasn't shelter. It was less cold than what they were leaving.
The stairwell entrance was a frozen chute. Steps invisible under ice that reflected the dim light like polished glass. Two adults went first, testing each step before committing. One slipped, caught the railing, held. The other made it four steps before his foot slid and he had to grab the wall.
The line behind them stopped. Waited. Resumed. Progress measured not in steps but in the gaps between them.
Jennifer's voice came thin from behind. She'd stayed in the corridor — moving her was too risky with the link active.
"They're holding. No push. Signal's unstable."
Uncle acknowledged with a nod. The window existed. Limited, narrow, and closing. But it existed.
They moved.
The building had failed them. Now they had to leave it behind.