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“Ah,” Signy said, filing that information away. There was a sister.

Cora hit one last button decisively, then stuck her phone in a pant pocket as she made her way back to the half-finished shelf. “She moved into a new apartment a few weeks ago and she’s already butting heads with one of her roommates.”

“Over what?” Signy asked.

Cora opened her mouth, then closed it, abandoning one batch of words for another. “If I tell you that she’s twenty-two and gets very wrapped up in the kinds of shit everybody cares way too much about at twenty-two, would that explain it?”

Signy chuckled. “Yes.”

Cora shook her head, unmistakable fondness mixed into her exasperation. “Do you have any sibl—”

Their conversation shattered with the arrival of a piercing shrill—a hazard alarm, screeching forth from both their phones. Outside, the pylons on the street began to howl in accompanying chorus. A familiar interruption in the Berth, as was the burst of adrenaline that accompanied it.

“Oh, what now?” Signy sighed. At precisely the same time, Cora groaned, “Ah, christ, now what?” It would’ve been funny, if not for the potential life-or-death of it all. They silenced their alarms and fell into their respective screens:

HAZARD WARNING

LEVEL: SEVERE

TYPE: ERUPTION (Tantrum)

DURATION: UNKNOWN

TAKE SHELTER UNTIL WARNING CLEARS

“Shit,” Cora said, the flatness in her voice the perfect embodiment of the Berth’s exhaustion with this sort of thing. There was no arguing with a volcano, and the abruptness here was entirely in character for Tantrum—abrupt, explosive, violent. The Berth had nothing to fear from Tantrum’s lava fields, but the ash would pile thick, and the acid rain would be worse. Ferries would stop running. Air filters would struggle, and the power grid would do the same in turn. Even the best barrier jacket on the rack might get eaten through. There was nothing to be done but stay indoors until geology got a hold of itself.

Cora looked aside with a concern that seemed divorced from the more pressing situation. Signy suspected they were having the same thought. Building a shelf together was one thing. Sheltering in place was another. Tantrum usually calmed down quickly, but it would likely be a few days before the streets were safe again. Sheltering with family was fine. Sheltering with strangers was also fine, relatively speaking. But this . . .

. . . oh god, this was awkward. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. You were supposed to wake up and have breakfast and maybe have a second go, then give each other a little space for a few days and dance around who would be the first to call the other. You weren’t supposed to immediately dive into rationing food and rationing water and waiting for the power to go out and sharing a too-small bed and doing the calculus of whether one of you should sleep on the floor, or—

“Hey,” Cora said. She tilted her face to catch Signy’s eye. “What’s up?”

“Oh.” Signy put her phone in her pocket and tried to look at ease. “I was just . . . trying to remember if I bought toothpaste, last time I restocked my shelf-stables. I’m pretty sure that I did, and I have at least half a tube open, so—”

Cora put her phone away and placed a hand on each of Signy’s shoulders. “Don’t you think it’s stupid,” Cora said, “that we’re both more worried about making things weird than we are about the fucking volcano?”

Signy stared, then laughed. “Yes,” she said with relief. “Yes, that is stupid.”

Cora let go and gestured around the shop. “What’s your protocol here? What should I do?”

“Go to the airlock,” Signy said, hurrying behind the counter as her brain kicked back in. “Help people inside while I lock things down.” She opened the little protective hatch over the control panel in the wall. First things first, she activated the emergency light, affixed to the outside of the front door. The whole street would be lighting up with these, letting any stragglers know which doors to run for if they needed shelter.

Cora dashed across the shop. “Do you usually get a lot?” Strangers in need of hosting, she meant.

“It depends,” Signy called back. She shut down the water lines, cranked up the air filters, and redirected power flow from the plants’ irrigation pumps to the shop’s backup battery. “Sometimes a few, but only if the restaurants are already full.” Shelter was shelter, in a situation like this, but if you had the time to take your pick, an eatery that would feed you everything perishable in the kitchen before it spoiled was miles better than, well, a plant shop.

Cora parked herself by the airlock door, watching through the porthole to see if anybody came in. A second alert sounded off; a countdown, as per usual. Eight more minutes, and then they’d turn the emergency light off and lower the shield screens over the doors. Seven minutes. Six minutes. Five.

Signy would not have minded in the slightest if anyone had run in from the street. Nothing was more important than providing shelter if you had room to spare. But as the clock ran out and the airlock remained empty, Signy found herself in the presence of the most selfish thought she’d ever had in her life.

Oh, good. It’s just us.

She turned off the emergency light and flicked another switch. Outside, the shield doors thunked down.

“Well,” Cora said. She stood in place for a moment, then began to walk back. Neither said anything as she approached the counter, nor as she stood there with her hands in her pockets.

The wind began to howl, muffled by the heavy windows and walls.