Marco's fever broke before noon.
He hadn't turned. Twelve hours since the bite and he was still himself — sick, pale, barely able to sit up, but present. Ayesha noted it, changed his bandage, and moved on. There were more immediate problems.
Dante had information.
He'd been talking since he woke up, in the careful, organized way of someone who had spent years learning to structure arguments. Before the Lightfall he and his blockmates had been tracking movement from their building window — three other buildings in the immediate area showed signs of survivors. Lights flashing. Fabric tied to window grates. One building on the corner had been banging on its pipes in a pattern too deliberate to be random.
Lucian sat across from him and listened.
"How many in your building before you left?" he asked.
"Eight that we knew of. We lost two trying to reach the ground floor." Dante's jaw tightened briefly. "The others stayed. We were trying to find food."
"The ones who stayed — what floor?"
"Third. Room 304. They barricaded the door."
Lucian filed it. Three buildings with confirmed survivors plus eight more in the San Clarion dorm. That was a number worth acting on.
Across the room, Ivan had disappeared into the kitchen again. The sounds coming from it were the particular sounds of someone who had found a problem they genuinely enjoyed — scraping, tapping, the occasional satisfied grunt. Carla had ended up in the kitchen doorway watching him work, her architecture student brain apparently unable to resist the process.
"What is he doing," Dante asked.
"Making the building harder to break into," Lucian said.
"With what?"
"Whatever he found."
Dante looked at the kitchen doorway for a moment. "I did two years of structural engineering electives before I switched to law."
Lucian looked at him. "Tell Ivan that."
Dante went and told Ivan. Ivan's response, audible from across the café, was: "Finally, someone useful. Get in here."
Carla stepped aside to let Dante through and watched them both disappear into the kitchen with the expression of someone deciding whether to feel offended or relieved.
Rhea appeared beside Lucian with two biscuits and held one out. He took it.
"You're thinking," she said.
"I'm always thinking."
"You're thinking louder than usual."
He almost said something to that. Didn't. He ate the biscuit and looked at the wall and thought about Casa de Esperanza.
Eight minutes away. Seven floors. Concrete construction built in the early 2000s when the university was expanding, thick walls, iron-grated windows on the lower floors. A courtyard with gates that were currently torn off their hinges but were structurally repairable. Enough rooms to house fifty people if they cleared the upper floors. Enough space for a kitchen, storage, a medical area.
He had cleared the first three floors already. The Bone-Crawler was dead. The biggest known threat in that building was gone.
It was sitting there empty when it could be something else entirely.
Ayesha sat down across from him without him noticing her approach, which was unusual. Either he was distracted or she was getting quieter. He suspected both.
"You've been staring at nothing for six minutes," she said.
"Casa de Esperanza."
She didn't ask what about it. She already knew. "How many do we need before it's viable?"
"More than seven. Less than we think." He looked at the room — Marco resting, Lira elevated on the sofa, Rhea hovering, the sounds of Ivan and Dante from the kitchen. "Ivan can fix the gate. We clear the remaining floors. We bring in survivors from the buildings Dante identified and anyone else we find."
"Timeline?"
"Three days to clear and secure the dormitory. One week to make it functional." He paused. "If nothing goes wrong."
"Something will go wrong."
"Something always goes wrong." He stood. "That's why we start now."
He picked up his sword. Ayesha looked at him.
"You're going to the corner shophouse."
"Dante said the pipe signals stopped this morning. That means either they ran out of strength or—" He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
"I'll come," Ayesha said.
"Lira needs someone who knows what they're doing."
Ayesha glanced at Lira, then back at Lucian. She sat back down. It wasn't agreement exactly — more the specific silence of someone choosing the right battle.
Lucian went to the kitchen door. "Ivan."
Ivan appeared, a strip of wire in his hand and a smear of something on his cheek. "Yeah."
"Keep the door wedged. Nobody goes out while I'm gone."
"Understood." Ivan looked at the wire. "For the record I think this tension anchor system is genuinely elegant and you should tell me that when you get back."
"I'll consider it," Lucian said, and left.
Outside, the afternoon sun pressed down hard over the cobblestones. The streets were quiet. A zombie drifted at the far end of the block, moving away. Lucian headed north toward the corner shophouse, sword loose in his hand, his mind already sorting through the variables of what he was building.
Seven people was a group.
What he was thinking about was something larger.
The walls of Intramuros had kept centuries of history inside them — wars, revolutions, the weight of lives lived and lost inside 0.67 square kilometers of colonial stone. Now they kept something else in. And something else out.
Lucian intended to make the most of both.
He turned the corner.
The shophouse pipe signals had stopped because the door was already open.
Not forced — opened. From the inside, carefully, and left slightly ajar. Like someone had walked out recently and hadn't bothered to close it all the way behind them.
He stood in front of it.
Looked at the gap.
Looked at the empty street in both directions.
Then he pushed the door open with the tip of his sword and stepped inside.