Chapter 54: The Double Heist
The common room smelled of woodsmoke and cold metal, the oil lamp casting a low amber glow over the scattered gear. Rosa stood at the table, her breath fogging in the chill, running her fingers over the straps of her pack one last time. Roy was clipped to her collar, a tiny weight she barely felt anymore, his harness cinched tight against the wool of her scarf.
"Check the seam," he said, his voice thin and crackling through the earpiece she wore.
"I already checked it twice."
"Check it again."
She huffed a small laugh and pressed her thumb against the clasp anyway. It held. "Satisfied?"
"For now."
Jason came down the stairs with his own pack, his breath puffing in the cold air. He crossed the room and set his hand on her shoulder, squeezing once before moving to the table to inspect the map. "Lee's team is ready," he said. "They're doing a final sweep of the basement door."
Rosa nodded. The plan sat in her chest like a stone. Two teams, split at dawn. Her, Jason, and Roy for the engineering building's display case. Lee, Jayden, and Amie for the materials science lab, where the magnet and focusing lens were supposed to be. It was a good plan. It had felt thin and sharp in her hands when they'd laid it out the night before, and it still felt thin and sharp now, like something that could cut her if she gripped it too tight.
Roy shifted on her collar. "They'll be fine," he said, as if reading her. "Lee knows the layout. Jayden's careful. Amie's quiet."
"I know."
"You don't have to worry about them."
"I'm not." She said it too quickly, and Roy didn't argue, which meant he knew she was lying. She let out a long breath and reached up to touch him lightly through the fabric, just a brush of her finger against the harness. He leaned into the touch.
The dorm's front door creaked open ahead of schedule, and Lee's head appeared in the gap, his glasses fogged white. "Ready when you are," he said. "Jayden's got the bolt cutters. Amie's carrying the spare power cells."
Rosa shrugged her pack onto her shoulders and checked her knife at her hip. "Let's move."
The snow had come again overnight, a fresh layer of white over the frozen campus. It muffled their footsteps as they stepped outside, the world hushed and pale, the sky the color of old bone. Rosa's breath clouded around her face as she scanned the treeline, the rooflines, the drifts. Nothing moved. The silence felt heavier than sound.
They split at the old quad, its fountain buried under a mound of snow. Lee raised a hand as his team peeled off toward the materials science building. Jayden gave a two-finger salute. Amie, bundled to the eyes, offered a shy wave. Rosa returned it, then turned toward the engineering building.
The walk took longer than she'd hoped. The snow was deep in places, up to her knees when she crossed the open stretches, and the cold seeped through her boots and settled into her bones. Jason moved beside her in silence, his eyes tracking the same sightlines she followed. They had done this dance a hundred times before, in a hundred different dead places. The rhythm was familiar. The shape of the walk, the pause at each corner, the quick signal between them. It made something in her chest ease.
The engineering building rose ahead of them, all gray concrete and dark glass, its entrance gaping like a mouth. The doors had been forced open at some point, the metal frames twisted outward. Rosa drew her knife and stepped through the threshold, the air inside the building colder and stiller than the night outside.
"Third floor," Roy said quietly. "Southeast corner."
Rosa took the stairs two at a time, her boots echoing on the concrete in the hollow building. Jason followed, his own knife out, covering their backs. The halls were empty, lined with dust and the scattered remains of a world that had stopped suddenly. A broken chair. A puddle of frozen water. A smear of something dark that Rosa chose not to look at too closely.
The third floor was dark, the windows boarded over. Rosa clicked on the small flashlight she'd brought, sweeping the beam across the hall. The display room door was open.
Roy's voice crackled in her ear, tight and low. "Third floor, southeast corner. The display case is intact, but the door's been pried open."
Cold dread bloomed in Rosa's chest. She moved down the hall, boots whispering over the dust, and stopped at the display room threshold. The room was a small museum of engineering history, models of turbines and bridges lining the walls, all coated in a layer of frost. In the southeast corner stood a display case, its glass fogged and cracked.
The case was whole. The ingot of alloy T91 sat inside on a small velvet stand, a dull gray lump that hardly looked worth the risk of this whole expedition.
But the door. The door had been pried open with something heavy, the frame splintered, the lock hanging loose.
"Someone's been here," Rosa said.
Jason crouched by the frame, studying the damage. "Recent. The wood's still pale where it cracked. A few days, maybe."
Rosa stepped toward the display case, her flashlight beam steady on the glass. She reached out to test the latch. It was unlocked. She pushed the glass open and the cold inside the case rushed out, smelling of dust and old metal.
Roy's weight shifted on her collar. "Careful," he said.
She lifted the ingot. It was heavier than it looked, dense and solid, the metal lending a strange, faint hum to her palm that she felt through her glove. She wrapped it in the cloth Lee had given her and tucked it into her pack.
"Got it," she said. "Now we just need the magnet and the lens."
Jason moved to the window, peering through a crack in the boards. "Clear so far. No walkers on the south lawn. But we should move. I don't like how quiet this is."
Rosa zipped her pack and followed him to the door. The building pressed in around them, dark and cold and still, and she had the sudden, irrational feeling that they were being watched.
"Roy," she said quietly. "Any eyes on us?"
A pause. Then his voice, small and tight. "No. But there's something on the roof of the materials science building. I can't make it out from here. Something moving."
Rosa's mouth went dry. She quickened her pace down the hall, Jason close behind her, and they did not slow until they were out of the engineering building and back into the blinding white of the frozen morning.
Rosa crossed the snow toward the materials science building at a half-run, her boots punching through the crust with every step. Jason matched her pace, his breath coming in white bursts, his hand resting on the grip of his knife. The frozen morning pressed in around them, silent and pale, but Rosa's skin prickled with the knowledge of unseen eyes.
"Roy," she said, her voice low and tight. "Where are you?"
"Roof of the building beside you. North edge, near the ventilation shaft." His voice crackled through the earpiece, thin but steady. "I climbed up to get a better look at whatever's moving."
"You climbed up? Without telling me?" The anger was a flare in her chest, hot and immediate. "We had a deal. Twenty minutes, clipped to the tow line."
"The tow line's right here. I clipped it to a pipe before I went up." A pause. "It's not moving anymore. Whatever I saw, it's still."
"Get down. Now."
"I'm coming. I just wanted to see."
Rosa bit back the rest of the words. They could argue about this later, in the warmth of the common room, when Roy was safely back in the security of Anderson. Right now she just needed him down.
The materials science building loomed ahead, a block of gray concrete with its windows dark and empty. Rosa scanned the roofline, her breath fogging the air, but the north edge was a blur of white against the pale sky. She picked up her pace, snow crunching under her boots, and rounded the corner of the building.
There he was.
Roy had clipped himself to a pipe beside a drain spout and was working his way down, hand over fist, his tiny body swinging slightly with each movement. He moved with the practiced ease of someone who had spent months learning to navigate a world built for giants, his feet finding purchase on the rough concrete, his grip sure. Rosa watched him for a long moment, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Jason came up beside her, and she saw him exhale a long breath.
Before he could call out, Rosa reached up and muted her comm. Then she reached over and tapped his earpiece, miming the motion. Jason's eyes flicked to her, questioning, and he muted his own.
"I need you to keep him with you," Rosa said, her voice low. "When he gets down. Keep him with you."
Jason drew a breath. "What do you mean?"
She watched Roy's progress down the drain pipe, three inches of stubborn determination. The fear had been a steady pressure in her chest since the moment he'd said something was moving, and now that she could see him whole and climbing and alive, she could feel the shape of what she wanted to do. Grab him. Tuck him into her pocket. Carry him back to Anderson and not let him out until they were behind the reinforced door again.
"I mean I'm scared," Rosa said. "I'm scared and I'm angry. And if I get a hold of him, I don't know if I'll be willing to let him out of a pocket until we're back in Anderson." She forced the words out. "And I refuse to let myself do that to him just because I'm scared and angry."
Jason was quiet. She could feel his gaze on her, steady and warm, but she kept her eyes on Roy. He was almost halfway down the pipe now, pausing to check his anchor point before continuing.
"He'll know something's wrong if you won't hold him," Jason said.
"Then tell him I need a minute. Tell him I'm shaken up. That's not even a lie." She pressed her palm against the cold wall of the building, grounding herself. "I just need you to be the one holding him for a little while. Until I can be careful with him again."
Jason stepped closer, his shoulder brushing hers. "Rosa. You're allowed to be scared for him. That doesn't make you a bad sister."
"I know it doesn't." She finally turned to look at him. "But I don't want to be the kind of sister who keeps him in a box because I can't handle the fear. He's been through enough. He shouldn't have to be coddled just because I've got knots in my stomach."
"Fair point." Jason's hand found hers, squeezed once. "Okay. I'll keep him with me. And when you're ready, you can tell him whatever you need to tell him. But Rosa, I don't think he'd want you holding back the fear either. He knows you worry. He's always known."
Rosa looked back at the pipe. Roy had reached the bottom, swinging down from the drain spout and landing in a small drift of snow that came up to his knees. He brushed himself off, a tiny figure shaking snow from his coat, then looked up.
"There you are," he said, his voice crackling back through the unmuted earpiece. "You two look like you're having a conversation about me. That's usually not a good sign."
Rosa muted her comm again and composed her face before unmuting. "We were just discussing the fastest way back to Anderson. You good?"
"Good." Roy waded through the snow toward her boots. "Sorry about the climb. I saw something and got curious. It turned out to be a bird."
"A bird," Rosa repeated.
"A big one. But still a bird." He reached her boot and looked up, his face pale in the morning light. "You're not mad?"
Rosa opened her mouth to say no, that she wasn't, that they'd talk about the climbing later. But the truth got in the way. "I'm a little mad," she said. "But we can talk about that later."
Jason crouched down and scooped Roy up in his cupped palm, raising him to shoulder height. "Come on, little man. Let's give Rosa a minute. She's got a lot on her mind."
Roy looked at Rosa over Jason's palm, his eyes sharp and knowing. She could see him reading her, the same way she could always read him. He didn't argue. He just nodded and let Jason settle him into the inner pocket of Jason's coat, where the warmth of his body would keep him safe.
Rosa watched them go, Jason leading the way across the snow toward the loading dock. The knot in her chest loosened, just slightly. She still had the ingot in her pack. The magnet and lens were still waiting in the materials science building. And Roy was safe, held steady by someone who would keep him as close to her as she needed him to be without trapping him.
She followed them, her boots sinking into the crust of the snow, and for the first time since she'd seen him climbing down that pipe, her heart felt like it had room to beat properly.
Rosa caught up with them at the edge of the loading dock, her pack settling against her shoulders. Jason had Roy tucked into his inner pocket, and she could see the small shape of him against the wool, a bump of warmth where his body pressed against Jason's chest. It was good. It was right. Her hands stayed loose at her sides, her breathing steady.
"Chemistry building," Jason said, catching her eye. "That's the checkpoint."
Rosa nodded and took point, her boots carving a path through the snow. The campus stretched out before them, white and empty, the buildings hulking silhouettes against the pale sky. She moved with the rhythm of practice, scanning sightlines, checking corners, listening past the sound of her own breathing for anything that didn't belong.
The chemistry building came into view, a low brick structure with a loading bay on its east side. Lee was already there, pacing a small circuit in the trampled snow, his glasses fogged and his breath coming in white clouds. Jayden stood sentry with her bolt cutters resting on her shoulder, scanning the rooftops. Amie sat on the loading dock's edge, hugging a wooden box to his chest like a child with a treasured toy.
Lee spotted them first and raised a hand. "You got it?"
Rosa swung her pack off her shoulder and opened the top flap. The ingot sat there, wrapped in cloth, dense and solid. She pulled it out and handed it to Lee, who took it with both hands like it was made of spun glass.
"T91," he breathed, turning it over in his gloves. "This is it. This is exactly it." He looked up at her, his eyes bright behind the fogged lenses. "We got the magnet too. Clean extraction, no walkers, no trouble. Amie's got it in the box."
Rosa looked at the wooden box in Amie's arms. It was the one Jason had built, hardwood scraps fitted together with careful joinery, lined with layers of cloth. Inside, she knew, sat a neodymium magnet strong enough to pull metal across a room. The focusing lens was probably in Lee's pack, wrapped in foam, handled only by its edges.
"Lens?" she asked.
Lee patted his pack. "Intact. Pristine, actually. The whole lab was untouched. Whoever Carter was, he didn't strip it clean. He just took the tube and left."
"Good." Rosa let out a long breath, feeling something in her chest ease. "The power cells?"
Jayden jerked a thumb at her pack, bulging with spare batteries and cells. "Got three from the lab's backup systems. They still hold a charge."
"So we have everything." Roy's voice came from Jason's pocket, muffled but clear. "The alloy, the magnet, the lens, the power cells. All of it."
Lee's face was lit with something Rosa hadn't seen in him in months, a pure, uncomplicated joy. "We have everything. I can build the dampener. I can finish the prototype." He clutched the ingot to his chest, looking like he might cry. "We can actually do this."
Rosa felt the words land in her chest like a stone dropping into still water. A ripple of something she hadn't let herself feel since she'd watched Roy shrink, a cautious, fragile hope.
"Let's get home first," she said, but the edge in her voice had softened. "Then we build it."
They gathered themselves and moved out, a caravan of five across the frozen campus. Amie carried the wooden box with the magnet, cradling it like something alive. Lee carried the ingot in his pack, wrapped and padded and lashed with more straps than strictly necessary. Jayden took point ahead of Rosa, her bolt cutters ready for any obstacle. Jason walked at the rear with Roy in his pocket, keeping watch over their backs.
The sun was higher now, a pale disc behind the cloud cover, casting the world in a flat white light. The snow had stopped, finally, and the silence was vast and clean. Rosa let herself breathe.
She walked beside Jason for a while, keeping pace, their shoulders brushing. She could feel Roy's presence in his pocket, a small warmth she knew better than the back of her own hand. The anger had dimmed with the success, but there was something softer beside it, a tiredness that wasn't unpleasant.
"You okay?" Jason asked, not looking at her.
"Yeah." She thought about it, then said it again. "Yeah, I think I am."
"Good." He bumped her shoulder gently. "You did good today. We all did."
They passed the old student union, its windows shattered and dark, and the library with its great doors hanging open like a mouth. The campus was a graveyard of the life they'd once known, but Rosa found she didn't feel the old ache anymore. The world they were building now, the one that ran on oil lamps and stubborn hope, it had its own shape. It had its own reasons to live.
The gate of Anderson Hall appeared ahead, the reinforced wooden barrier a welcome sight against the white expanse. Jayden gave the signal, three sharp knocks on the wood, and after a moment the gate swung open. Sandy stood in the gap, rifle in hand, her face breaking into a grin when she saw them all standing there.
"You're early," she said. "That's either very good or very bad."
"Very good," Lee said, his voice brimming. "Very, very good."
They filed through the gate, stamping snow from their boots, the warmth of the entryway washing over them. Rosa closed the gate behind them and leaned her forehead against the cold wood for just a moment, letting the weight of the morning settle into her bones. Then she turned.
Roy had climbed out of Jason's pocket and was sitting on his palm, looking at her with those steady, knowing eyes. He was three inches tall, and he was whole, and he was home.
"You ready?" Rosa asked.
"For what?"
"For going back to your proper size."
Roy's face lit up, a smile she hadn't seen in months, bright and unguarded. "Yeah," he said. "I'm ready."
The lock clicked shut behind Rosa, the heavy deadbolt sliding home with a sound that felt final in the cold hallway. She pressed her palm flat against the door of the fifth-floor storage room, feeling the vibration of the bolt settle into the wood. Inside, wrapped and padded and lashed with more straps than necessary, sat everything they needed. The ingot. The magnet. The lens. The cells. All of it waiting.
"Everyone rests," she said, turning to face the group. "An hour at least. Eat something hot. Warm your feet. We're no good to Lee if we're shaking from cold."
Jayden raised an eyebrow. "An hour? We just got back. I could sleep for a week."
"Then sleep. We’ll wake you if you’re needed."
Lee was already limping toward the stairwell, his pack still clutched to his chest. "I'm going to start on the dampener housing. Just a sketch. I can't rest until it's drawn."
"Lee." Rosa caught his arm. "Rest. The sketch will still be there in an hour. If you burn yourself out now, you'll make a mistake, and we can't afford mistakes."
He looked at her, his eyes bright with the manic energy of someone who had been waiting months for this. But the fight went out of him, replaced by something tired and grateful. "Okay. An hour. Then I'm back at it."
Jayden and Amie drifted toward the stairwell together, Amie still cradling the wooden box like he might never let it go. Sandy herded them along, muttering about stew and warm bread. The hallway emptied.
Rosa stood alone in the dim light, listening to the sounds of her family settling back into the rhythm of home. Boots on stairs. A door opening. Muffled voices. The hiss of the stove being lit somewhere below.
She walked downstairs to her own room and had her hand on the handle when Jason caught up with her.
His footsteps were quiet, the way they always were, but she knew the sound of him well enough to feel him arrive. He stopped close behind her, not quite touching, letting her sense his presence. She heard his breath, slow and even, and then his voice, soft and serious.
"Rosa."
She didn't turn. Her hand stayed on the door handle, her thumb pressing into the cool metal.
The words left unsaid hung in the air between them: you need to talk with him.
She knew what he meant. She knew the second she felt him behind her that he’d given her the space she'd asked for. The space to gather herself. The space to decide what kind of sister she wanted to be.
She turned.
Roy was sitting on Jason's open palm, a small figure against the broad expanse of his hand, his harness loose around his shoulders. He looked up at her with those steady eyes, patient and watchful, the way he always looked. He didn't know what was coming. He had no reason to.
Rosa held out her hand.
Roy climbed onto her palm without hesitation, his feet sure against her skin, and settled into the curve of her fingers. She cupped her other hand over him, not trapping, just sheltering, and raised him to her chest.
"Thank you," she said to Jason.
He nodded once, his eyes holding hers for a moment longer than necessary. Then he turned and walked across the hall to his own room, leaving her alone with the small weight in her hands.
Rosa pushed open her door and stepped inside.
The room was just as she'd left it. Bed against the far wall, the sleep mask still lying on the pillow where she'd dropped it that morning. The cold had seeped in through the boarded window, raising goosebumps along her arms. She crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge, her back against the headboard, her knees drawn up.
She opened her hands.
Roy was looking at her, his head tilted slightly. He waited. He had always been good at waiting, at letting her find her own way to the words.
"I'm not mad about the bird," she said.
"Okay."
"I'm mad about the climbing." She watched his face for a reaction, but he just nodded, waiting. "You said you'd stay on the tow line. You said twenty minutes. And then you climbed a pipe to the roof of a building without telling me."
"The tow line was anchored-"
"I know it was anchored." Her voice came out sharper than she meant it to, and she paused, breathing. "I know. I saw it. But Roy, I looked up and you were gone. I didn't know where you were. I didn't know if you were okay. And for about thirty seconds I was certain I was going to lose you, and there was nothing I could do about it."
Roy's face softened. He took a step toward her, closing the distance between them until he was standing at the base of her thumb, looking up at her with nothing between them.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think. I saw something moving and I wanted to see what it was, and I didn't consider how scary that would be for you. That was wrong."
"It was."
"I won't do it again. Not without telling you first."
Rosa looked at him, this tiny boy-sized man who had been her brother for longer than he'd been small. She thought about all the ways she'd tried to keep him safe. The pocket in his harness. The sleep mask. The way she checked the seam of every clasp before they left the dorm. She thought about the fear she carried everywhere, a low constant hum, and how sometimes it swelled so loud she couldn't hear anything else.
"I don't want to keep you in a box, Roy." Her voice cracked on the last word. "I don't want to be the reason you stop living your life. But when I saw you on that pipe, I felt something break open in me. And I don't know how to put it back together yet."
Roy was quiet for a long moment. Then he stepped forward, crossed the last inch of space, and pressed his palm against her thumb. Just a small touch. Just a hand on her skin.
"You've been scared for me since the day we met, Rosa. I've always known that. And you've never once let it stop you from doing the right thing. Not once." He looked up at her, his eyes steady. "But I need you to tell me when it's too much so I can help."
Rosa felt the sting behind her eyes and didn't blink it away.
"Okay," she said. "I'll try."
"That's all I ask." He sat down on her palm, cross-legged, looking up at her with the same expression he'd worn when she'd first held out her hand to him in that pharmacy. The same trust. The same certainty. "And Rosa. I'm going to be big again soon. If everything goes right, in a few days I'll be staring down at you instead of up."
She laughed, a wet, shaky sound. "Don't remind me."
"I'm telling you because I need you to know. Whatever happens in that lab, whatever Lee builds, whatever goes wrong or right, I'm still going to be me. Big or small. And I'm still going to need you to tell me when the fear is too much."
She curled her fingers around him, a loose cage of warmth, and brought him to her cheek. He leaned into the contact, a tiny pressure against her skin, and she felt the knot in her chest loosen at last.
"Okay," she said again. "I promise."
They stayed like that for a long moment, the room cold around them, the morning light thin through the boards. Rosa could hear the sounds of the dorm waking below, the clatter of the kitchen, the murmur of voices, the small ordinary sounds of a family making itself whole.
"Now sleep," Roy said, his voice muffled against her cheek. "You were up before dawn and you haven't eaten."
"Who's the big sister here?"
"Apparently me, today."
She laughed and lowered him to the pillow beside her, where he curled into the fabric with a practiced ease. She lay down beside him, not bothering to undress, just pulling the blanket over her legs and closing her eyes. The weight of him beside her head was a comfort. The words they'd exchanged were a ground beneath her feet.
The sleep mask was next to the pillow now. She reached for it, fitted it over her eyes, and felt Roy climb & settle into the pocket against the side of her nose. The weight of him there, small and indomitable, was the last thing she felt before sleep pulled her under.