Back at the bridge, the generator coughed, then recovered, floodlights fluttering like moths bumping a window. The captain’s radio crackled: “Secondary surge in three. Bridge integrity advisory remains yellow-to-orange.”
“Copy,” she said, eyes on the line, the pit, the faces of the people still too near the lip. “Clear the last of the civvies. Operator, you release if the cable sings a note you hate.”
“Understood,” he said, thumb worrying a groove in the lever only he could feel.
Luke stood shoulder to shoulder with a firefighter at the edge—not to play hero, just to take a small job from someone who already had two. Rook checked his knots even though nothing was tied that would save anything now. June angled the kids around a puddle that wanted to be a pond and made the puddle feel less ambitious by ignoring it.
I kept moving between lists and faces, handing out moving blankets like citizenship papers. The USPS cap Liam had put on my head sat lopsided; I didn’t fix it because his small approval had weight. When I looked up, Ms. Patel was staring at her pizza box, and her face did a thing I recognized—like a teacher who held it together through the drill and only afterward let herself feel the fire.
