Jake's eyes felt like they had sand in them. Gritty, dry, desperate to close. His body swayed slightly where he stood, and he had to brace himself against the tilted corridor wall just to stay upright. Every muscle fiber screamed for rest. His brain felt foggy, wrapped in cotton, struggling to form coherent thoughts through the exhaustion.
His face was a mess. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes. Dirt and concrete dust smeared across his cheeks. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat that had long since dried and become crusty. He looked like he'd been through a war zone.
Which, in a way, he had.
But even through the exhaustion, through the bone-deep tiredness that made his limbs feel like they were made of lead, one thought cut through the fog with crystal clarity: "It's still not over yet. Need to get out of this building. Don't know when another earthquake might hit. Then this entire building might go down too."
The thought sent a spike of adrenaline through his system. Not enough to make him feel energized or alert, but enough to override the part of his brain that was begging him to just lie down right here and sleep. Because sleeping in a tilted building that could collapse at any moment? That was a death sentence.
Jake forced himself to stand fully upright, peeling his back away from the wall. His legs wobbled like a newborn calf trying to walk for the first time. The corridor stretched out before him, but it wasn't a corridor anymore. Not in any way that made sense. What had once been a flat walkway was now essentially a vertical surface—another wall to navigate. The building's tilt had transformed everything.
Flower pots were scattered everywhere. The residents of this floor must have been into gardening because there were potted plants of all sizes dotting what used to be the hallway. Some had rolled and crashed into walls. Others had stayed relatively in place, creating obstacles that Jake would have to navigate around.
One particularly large pot sat directly in front of him, maybe three feet away. Behind him, a few meters back, was the solid wall that marked the end of the corridor. Ahead, maybe ten feet away, was another door—the entrance to the adjacent apartment. The one right next to his. And beyond that, maybe twenty meters in the distance, he could see what looked like the stairway connection. The way down. The way out.
"Just a bit more," Jake muttered to himself, his voice hoarse from disuse and dehydration. "Just a bit more and I can get out of here."
He started moving, using the same careful technique he'd employed in his apartment. Place foot, test weight, shift balance, repeat. The flower pots made it trickier. He had to plot a path around them, sometimes using them as stepping stones, other times avoiding them entirely in case they rolled and took him down with them.
His hands left bloody smears on the corridor as he used it for support. He'd stopped feeling the pain in them hours ago. Now they were just tools that responded to his commands, even if those commands came slower and less precisely than before.
When he finally reached the door to the adjacent apartment, he paused. The sounds were unmistakable now that he was closer. Crying. Children crying. And a woman's voice, strained with stress, trying to soothe them with words that weren't working.
Jake's memory clicked into place. There was a child next door. No, wait—two children. He'd fumbled with his keys a few times when coming home late from work, juggling his laptop bag and dinner takeout, and heard kids playing inside. Small voices, young. Maybe elementary school age? He'd never really paid attention. Always too tired, too focused on getting into his own apartment and shutting out the world.
Now those kids were crying. Terrified. Trapped.
His hand hovered over the door handle. Part of him—the selfish, exhausted, barely-holding-it-together part—wanted to keep moving. The stairway was right there. Twenty meters. He could make it. Get out. Save himself. Let rescue teams deal with everyone else when they finally showed up.
But his conscience wouldn't let him. He'd heard them all night. Their cries for help. Their desperation. And they were right here. Right in his path.
Jake opened the door.
"Anyone there?" he called out, his voice rough and strained.
The response was immediate. A woman's voice, tense and frantic with hope: "Thank God! Yeah! Yeah! Please help us, we are stuck here! "
The relief in her voice was palpable, almost painful to hear. Like she'd been drowning and someone had finally thrown her a rope.
"I'm with my children in the central area and my husband is stuck in the bathroom. Please help us!" Her voice cracked on the last word. In the background, the children's crying intensified, picking up on their mother's distress.
"Shh, shh, it's okay babies. Someone's here to help. It's going to be okay." The mother's soothing voice was strained, barely holding back her own panic.
Jake noticed something odd. The husband. The woman said he was stuck in the bathroom, but Jake wasn't hearing anything from him. No voice. No pounding. No calls for help. He remembered hearing a man's voice yesterday during the initial chaos, mixed in with all the other screams and shouts. But now? Silence.
That silence was ominous.
"Actually, I stay in the apartment next to you," Jake said, trying to keep his voice calm and measured. He wanted to explain the situation, let her know he was just as stuck as they were, maybe have a rational conversation about what resources they could pool together.
But the woman didn't let him finish.
"Jake, right? I know you! I know! Please help us!" Her voice was loud, almost frantic. She knew his name. Of course she did. He'd seen her a handful of times in passing—brief nods in the hallway, that awkward smile neighbors give each other when they're not quite friends but not quite strangers. She must have heard his name from the building manager or seen his mail or something.
Jake opened his mouth to respond, but she wasn't done.
"Please, you have to help us! The kids are scared and my husband—I don't know if he's okay and we can't reach the door and—"
"Well," Jake interjected, speaking louder to cut through her spiral, "I don't have anything with me to come down there or to throw something like a rope to you right now. I need to check and find something."
He tried to keep his tone gentle, understanding. He got it. She was terrified. Her kids were crying. Her husband was potentially injured or worse in that bathroom. She was in survival mode, and survival mode didn't care about social niceties or letting people finish their sentences.
But she wasn't hearing him. Or maybe she was hearing him but her panic was too strong to process it properly.
"Then find it quickly! Please do it quickly! Don't leave us here!" The desperation in her voice twisted something in Jake's chest.
He took a breath, summoning patience he didn't know he still had. Here he was, hands destroyed, feet bleeding, running on no sleep and barely any food, having just spent an entire night scraping concrete with a spoon, and this woman was demanding he hurry up and save her. Without even asking if he was okay. Without even knowing what state he was in.
But then again, anyone in that situation would feel like that and panic. He would too. Hell, he had panicked. He'd just been lucky enough to panic alone where no one could hear him.
"Yeah, sure," Jake said, forcing a reassuring tone into his voice. "I will find something to pull you out. Don't worry. Just wait a bit. I will come back."
He closed the door carefully. The last thing he needed was for something to fall in—one of those flower pots rolling down and hitting someone. That would just add injury to an already terrible situation.
Jake moved on, navigating around the pottery obstacle course. A few feet ahead, the corridor situation got worse. A whole heap of crushed flower pots had formed where they'd all rolled and smashed together. Ceramic shards mixed with dirt and dead plants created a treacherous pile that would be hell to climb over.
He looked up, following the source of the avalanche. There was another corridor perpendicular to this one, coming in from the side. A door to the right marked another apartment entrance up there. Some poor soul was probably trapped in that unit too.
But Jake immediately dismissed any thoughts of trying to reach it. Even if he could somehow scale that heap of broken pottery without shredding his already-destroyed hands, there was no good reason to go up there. It wasn't in his path. The stairs were ahead, not up.
He was only trying to help the people he'd already encountered because they were literally in his route out. That was the only reason. If he was being honest with himself—brutally honest in that way exhaustion makes you—he'd thought about just escaping. Walking past that first door without stopping. Ignoring the cries for help and focusing solely on his own survival.
But his conscience hadn't allowed it. That nagging voice in the back of his head that sounded annoyingly like his mother: "We help people when we can, Jake. That's what makes us human."
He wanted to do whatever he could. Whatever was actually possible given his current state and resources. But he wasn't a superhero. He couldn't save everyone. He could barely save himself.
Jake continued moving, reaching the next door in line. He opened it and called out, the routine already feeling familiar.
"Anyone there? Can anyone hear me?"
Nothing. Just silence. Empty, echoing silence that was somehow worse than crying or shouting. Because silence meant either the apartment was empty, or the people inside were beyond calling for help.
Jake didn't want to think about which option it was.
But from the door opposite—the apartment across the corridor, above Jake's head—voices emerged. Two of them.
"Please help! We are here!" A younger woman's voice, strained with stress. "My mother is stuck! Please help us!"
An older voice in the background added something, too muffled for Jake to make out clearly, but the tone was distressed.
Jake tried to assess the situation logically, pushing through his exhaustion to think clearly. "Stuck in what sense? Is she stuck under any furniture or like in a different room?"
"Yeah, she is stuck in a different room!" The young woman's response came quickly. "The door to it is in the middle of the central area so she is unable to reach it and I am in the central area. I tried everything and there is nothing for me to stack to reach it. Please help!"
Jake understood immediately. He knew the layout of these apartments. This was one of the two-bedroom units—much pricier than his single-bedroom setup. He'd actually seen the interior when he first came to this building five years ago, back when he was apartment hunting. The building manager had shown him several options, including this floor plan, before he'd settled on the cheaper unit that became his home.
In the two-bedroom layout, the doors to both bedrooms opened onto the central living area. With the building tilted at forty-five degrees, that central area had become a pit. The bedroom doors were now essentially hatches in the middle of a slanted wall. If the old woman was in one of those bedrooms, she'd have no way to climb up to the door without help. And if the daughter was in the central area, she'd have no way to climb down to rescue her mother without risking falling and getting trapped herself.
"Yeah, I will come up there," Jake said, his mind already working through the logistics. He needed something to use as a rope. Something strong enough to hold weight but flexible enough to throw down to people.
"Is there anything like a curtain or something which can act like a rope for me to use to come there?"