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other holding area had received damage, too, but not nearly as much. In neither pen did she see any survivors. She divided her team into two, leading her half into the more devastated holding area.
    “Hello?” she yelled after she’d crawled through a tear in the fence. “Is anyone here? Are you all right?”
    The ground felt unstable under her feet, and her mind screamed that she should turn around or her next step might be her last. Ignoring the warning, she ran toward the dorm building that sat precariously close to the hole they had ripped open.
    She yanked the door out of the way and raced in. “Anyone here?”
    Bunk beds lined either side of a central aisle, but the room appeared deserted.
    “Hello,” she yelled as she moved farther into the dormitory. “We’re here to get you out!”
    A sniffle and a fearful breath from somewhere toward the back.
    Midori picked up her pace, her gaze swiveling back and forth between the bunks, making sure she didn’t miss someone. She found the girl three beds from the back, pressed against the wall, terrified. In her lap sat a young boy.
    “Are you okay?” Midori asked. “Are you hurt?”
    The girl’s lip trembled but she said nothing.
    As Midori moved toward her, the girl shied away, wrapping her arms tightly around the boy.
    “I’m not here to hurt you,” Midori said. “I’m here to get you out.”
    “Earthquake,” the girl whispered.
    “It’s over,” Midori said. “But the building’s not safe, so we have to leave.”
    “I don’t want to move. If I move something bad will happen.”
    “No. I promise. It won’t.” Midori held out a hand. “Come. I’ll help you.”
    A few silent moments passed before the girl uncoiled an arm from around the boy and took Midori’s hand.
    “What’s your name?” Midori asked as she helped the girl to her feet.
    “Noriko.”
    “And your friend?”
    “My brother,” Noriko said.
    “Your brother?” Midori smiled at the boy. “You’re very lucky to have a big sister to watch over you.”
    He buried his face in his sister’s shoulder.
    “His name’s Katsuro,” Noriko says.
    As Midori led them to the door, she asked, “Were there any others in the holding area with you?”
    Noriko nodded.
    “Where are they?”
    “I don’t know. Katsuro wanted to take a nap so I brought him in here. And then…the earth…”
    “It’s all right. It’s over.”
    Midori guided them outside, where they joined the rest of her team and twelve survivors who had been discovered hiding in the second building.
    “Is this everyone?” Midori asked one of the survivors. “Just the fourteen of you locked up here?”
    “There were another fifteen yesterday,” a man said. “But they passed their quarantine period and were taken to the safe zone.”
    Midori cringed inside. She had heard about the false stories the survivors were told about the nonexistent safe zone. If she and her team had been able to come just a day earlier, they would have been able to save twice as many.
    “We were supposed to get the vaccine today,” the man went on, worried. “Does this mean it will be delayed?”
    “No,” she told him. “You’ll get it soon. But we need to take you off-site to someplace safer.”
    There was only one survivor in the other holding area, a man in the early stages of Sage Flu. Midori was hopeful they’d be able to save him, but just in case, they isolated him from the other survivors as they walked through the ruins toward the gate.
    With the thought of the fifteen people who’d been sent to the “safe zone” the day before fresh in her mind, Midori half wished the Project personnel they passed on the way out would give her an excuse to finish the job the explosives had started.
    But either they knew to do so would be a death sentence or they no longer cared, for not one person tried to stop Midori’s team and the rescued survivors.
     
    GUANGZHOU, CHINA
    2:29 PM CST (CHINA STANDARD TIME)
     
    T HE TEAM IN Guangzhou was