Chapter 15 (Joint POV)

  The copper shimmer faded from Joshua’s shoulders as he muscled the cart onto the kitchen’s warped floorboards. The ka?thunk of eight?inch pneumatic wheels crossing the threshold echoed through the cottage like thunder, shaking loose a puff of plaster dust from the ceiling rafters. Anna, half hidden behind a barricaded window, I Stared at Joshua, he smirked at me before shrugging towards the cart.

  “you mind helping me this shits heavy.”

  We wrestled the last crate off the cart and set it on the kitchen floor with a dull?thud. My shoulders were on fire and Anna’s breathing sounded like she’d just finished a sprint, but the little cottage suddenly looked as if the world’s strangest grocery truck had exploded inside it—pink tampon boxes, bricks of soap, shrink?wrapped sleeping bags, and coils of barbed wire jumbled against hand?sawn plywood.

  Anna squatted, popped the lid on a tote, and froze.

  “Is that—?oh?my?God.”

  She lifted a family?sized pack of Dr.?Bronner’s peppermint bars, pressed it to her nose, and squealed—an honest?to?goodness, high?pitched squeal I had never heard from her in all the time I’d known her. The sound ricocheted off cracked plaster like champagne corks in a morgue.

  I couldn’t help it—I smiled. “Figured hygiene might rank over ammunition this run.”

  She dug deeper, found the tampon cases, and hugged one to her chest as if it were a lost kitten. “Joshua, you absolute saint. Women have stabbed each other for less.”

  “Let’s get it shelved before the saint label wears off.” I knelt to slice open another box.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A half hour later soap and first?aid kits filled one cabinet, canned meat another, and the floorboards finally creaked a little less. My back still screamed, but the room smelled faintly of mint instead of mildew, and that felt like a victory.

  I wiped my hands on my jeans and stood. “Hang on—I want to try something.”

  Anna cocked an eyebrow, still cradling a bar of soap like priceless ore. “If this involves more heavy lifting, the answer is no.”

  “Just watch.”

  I crossed to the kitchen sink. The faucet hadn’t done more than drool rust since the first day I arrived, but back in my timeline I’d spent a weekend flushing the whole line, replacing filters, tightening every compression fitting. If my hunch about cross?realm bleed?through held, plumbing here might have listened.

  I twisted the handle.

  The pipes rattled like a bag of bones; a gout of brown, viscous sludge belched into the basin, splattering old enamel. Anna grimaced. “Romantic.”

  “Wait.” I kept it running. The sludge thinned to murky tea, then to weak amber. Ten seconds later the water cleared—crystalline, cold, and shockingly odorless.

  Anna’s jaw dropped. I dipped a finger, tasted metal and nothing else. When I turned back, a smirk had already found its way onto my face.

  “Looks like whatever I fix back home,” I said, flicking a bead of water at her, “the universe patches over here, too.”

  She stared into the stream as though it were silver. “Clean water on tap… soap… caffeine in cans downstairs. If you tell me a hot shower’s next, I might cry.”

  “Give me a few more plumbing weekends.” I filled a chipped mug and handed it to her. “Proof of concept.”

  She drank, eyes closing, shoulders sagging in a way barricades never managed to coax out of her. When she opened them again, the hard lines were softer—still fierce but threaded with something perilously close to hope.

  “Okay,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist. “Operation Cross?Realm Home Improvement. I’m in.”

  I laughed—couldn’t help it—and reached for a second mug. Behind us the faucet kept singing, the water as clear as any suburb’s, while outside the dead city groaned on. Inside, though, the two of us sat amid soap pyramids and canned goods, cups raised to the ridiculous notion that maybe—just maybe—survival no longer had to smell like rot.