The shelter did not so much appear as lurch into existence: a low jaw of concrete in the floodlit rain, its mouth swallowing people two at a time. My shoes skidded on algae-slick steps. Behind me, metal screamed—sheeting torn loose, a gate buckling, the storm wrenching at anything upright.

“Keep moving!” a woman barked, palm to my shoulder. Her hand was cold through my wet shirt, but steady.

Inside, the air changed instantly. Outside was knives and sirens; here it was damp breath, wool, iodine, and the sour sweetness of panic. Emergency lamps hummed with the tired yellow of old teeth. Water ran down the walls in glistening veins, finding cracks the way grief finds soft spots in a voice.

I was pushed deeper, into the press of bodies. A child clung to a plastic carrier; inside it, a cat’s eyes shone hard and green. Somewhere, a radio muttered wind speed and tide level.

Then the lights flickered.