"Direwolf," Alexei said softly. "Young."

"Mother?" Elias asked.

"Dead," Zubair replied, and the word fell with the calm of a fact, not the weight of a judgment. "We probably killed her."

Lachlan eased the bucket away from the pup with his boot and spoke in the voice he used for clients who brought their first child to the gym. "Hey, little thing," he said. "It’s all right. No one is going to hurt you."

Sera slipped one glove off with her teeth and held out her bare hand, palm down.

The cold did not trouble her, but she let her hand tremble anyway so the pup could smell something that looked like effort.

The pup took a cautious breath and then another. It pushed its nose forward a few centimeters and then stopped.

Its belly trembled from the strain of holding still. The thick fur at its shoulders was matted, and there were lines of old dried milk across the soft fur of its chest where it had tried to feed too long after it should have been weaned.

"We cannot keep it," Elias sighed, not unkindly. "It will be loud when it is hungry. It will be louder when it is afraid."

"We do not leave it to starve," Lachlan replied, not looking at the other man. His face did not change, but his hands told the truth. They were already empty of work and ready for a different kind of care.

Alexei looked between them with that thin, private smile he used when he thought they were about to do something foolish and honest at the same time. "If it stays, we train it," he announced like he had already come up with a whole plan. "If it leaves, we track it for an hour to see where it goes."

Zubair searched the nest with his eyes, not his fingers.

He studied the doorway and the smudges on the tile. He studied the tiny marks near the baseboard where small claws had slid on wet linoleum.

He did not study the pup. "It got in through the broken panel by the janitor’s hatch," he said after a moment. "It stayed because the noise outside frightened it, and because there is paper that smells like people. It has not cried for two days or more. It will learn to be silent if it stays with us."

Sera did not plan the next part.

She let the creature inside her press its weight against her bones and then ignored it with gentle hands, the way you ignore an anxious dog.

She slid her fingers under the pup’s front legs and lifted it against her chest. The body was warmer than she expected, and the legs kicked once in panic before they tucked tight.

The pup smelled like dust and old toner and the faint, wild scent of winter that sneaks in through broken seals. It put its narrow muzzle against the hollow between her collarbones and made a soft sound that was not fear. It was something else, something like relief or the simple need to be touched.

"We keep it," she said. Her voice was quiet, but the room answered anyway because that is what rooms do when a choice becomes real.

Elias let out a slow breath. "We will need water and a warm corner," he said, already adjusting his lists. "It will not take solid food well. We will have to soak meat and break it small."

Lachlan found a towel that was still mostly clean and folded it around the pup without making a show of it. Then, he handed it back to Sera. "We can use the small crate from the furnace room," he said. "We’ll line it with shirts. It will be safer near the desk where the light is low."

Alexei lifted the empty file box and shook out the ruined paper with a grimace. "A direwolf in an office," he chuckled. "This is a new one for the list."

Zubair was the only one who did not come closer. He stayed in the doorway, eyes on the hall, one hand loose on the knife at his hip, calm in the way of men who listen more than they speak. "We are not finished," he said. "Carry it and keep moving."

So Sera tucked it into her jacket and kept moving with the rest.

They finished the second floor with the same slow care.

Sera worked with one arm when she could and set the pup down in its towel nest when she needed two hands. The pup watched from the comfort of her jacket with a steady, unblinking attention that made it seem older than its body.

It did not whine when they pushed furniture. It did not yip when tape pulled free with a loud rip.

When the sounds from the stairwell rose or changed, it lifted its head and then lowered it again, and Sera felt that soft line inside her chest draw tight and then ease. It was a simple thing, but it made her breath settle.

Only once did they need to burn anything.

Sera found a body that had not been touched by fire or ice under a collapsed cubicle wall, and they took it out back and did what had to be done. No one spoke during that part. They did not need to talk about rules that were already written in their hands.

By early afternoon the light had turned pale and thin through the cloud cover, which meant the day was already leaning toward evening.

They had finished barricading the main doors with two filing cabinets and a table wedged at an angle that would force any heavy body to slide rather than hit.

They had cleared sightlines to the stairwell in case they needed to fight, and they had left a simple marker system at each landing so that one glance would tell them if anything had moved in their absence.

The office that would serve in case of emergency as their base was calm now.

The wet floor had dried in the places where they had pushed air across it, and the smell of ash had faded to the place where the mind stops noticing it until someone moves the air wrong.

Sera set the pup beside the inner desk where the shadow was soft and the draft could not reach.

The pup had stopped shaking and now lay on its side with its paws curled toward its chest, which made it look as if it was holding a small, invisible ball.

She dipped her fingers into a shallow bowl of water and let the drops roll off her fingertips for the pup to lick. Its tongue was warm and rough. It blinked very slowly, the way tired animals blink when they do not want to fall asleep in a new place.

Lachlan leaned on the doorframe and watched them with a look that might have been a smile if he had let it show. "We should give it a name," he murmured softly.

"Not until it survives the week," Elias gently reminded. "We do not name hope too early."

Alexei opened his mouth to argue for something wicked and sweet, but the look on Zubair’s face stopped him. The leader had gone very still in the outer office, his head turned slightly toward the window as if he had heard a word no one else had caught.

Sera followed his gaze.

Outside, the pale light lay flat across the empty parking lot and the line of low buildings that faced their street.

Nothing moved.

Even the plastic banner that had torn free from a nail in the last windstorm was quiet. And yet Zubair’s eyes narrowed, and his right hand lifted with two fingers raised, which was the signal that meant listen with more than your ears.

"What is it?" Lachlan asked, no louder than a breath.

Zubair did not answer at once. He nodded toward the far corner and the thin slice of view that looked past the old bank to the tall concrete tower that rose above the block like a gray tooth.

"There," he said. "Top floor. Third window from the left."

They looked.

At first Sera saw only the flat gray face of a tower in the distance and the dark rectangles of glass that reflected a sky too heavy for this hour. Then the sun slid through a narrow seam in the cloud and found a hard edge on that upper floor.

The flash was small and clean, a quick blade of light that struck the inside of her eye and made the world narrow to a point.

Zubair’s hand closed into a fist.

"Glint," he announced.

Sera was already moving.

She pressed one hand to the pup so it would not try to follow, and with the other she reached for the rifle one of the men had put by the inner desk.

The sling slid over her shoulder in a smooth circle. Behind her, chairs whispered against the floor as the others took their positions without scraping the legs. The tape on the baseboards did not make a sound.

Another flash came—shorter this time, as if whatever had caught the sun had shifted a fraction and then held still.

Sera set her cheek against the stock and drew a slow, measured breath that did nothing to heat her lungs but steadied her hands all the same. Zubair lifted two fingers again and then pointed down and left, guiding her to an angle that would give them the safest view through the narrow cut in their barricade.

"On the scope?" Lachlan asked, almost without sound. He didn’t seem surprised that Sera was handling a rifle like she had been using them for years. It was just expected that there was more to her than met the eye.

"Not yet," Alexei murmured, already sliding to the outer edge of the window with a shard of black cloth in his fingers to kill the glare on their side. "Hold."

Sera exhaled and tightened her grip. The pup on the desk made a small sound that was almost a growl and then went quiet again, as if it understood that the room had changed.

The light flashed once more—sharp, precise, and exactly where Zubair had pointed.