Gretchen’s bearing stiffened. She reached to open his blazer, but he pulled away. “No,” he said. “Tell me.” He’d lost too much blood. He was getting too weak too fast. “Hurry,” he said.

Gretchen pointed across the room to a hallway.

It was sixty feet away. In Archie’s condition it might as well have been the English-fucking-Channel.

He glanced back at the elevator.

“I disabled it,” Gretchen said. “I found a maintenance panel. All I had to do was cut some wires. Looks like we’re on our own for a little while longer.”

He was out of time. Susan was out of time. He had to try. Archie pushed himself off the pallets and staggered toward the hallway that Gretchen had indicated. He couldn’t stand upright. He had to walk bent over, or the pain would overwhelm him. His left leg had started to drag.

He hadn’t made it more than a few steps when Gretchen caught up with him. “Do you want my help?” she asked, flitting at his elbow.

Archie set his sights on the next block of pallets. “No,” he said. His pants were so blood-soaked that the fabric stuck to his thigh as he walked. His left hand was bloody up to the elbow. He could feel his body failing him, his breaths growing shorter, his muscles weakening. He was so thirsty. But he pushed on, the gun clenched in his hand. Ten steps. Fifteen. Thirty. Fifty. He had passed four stacks of pallets. When he got to the fifth, he had to stop and lean against it to gather his strength. The hallway was only ten feet away, almost within his grasp. But he wouldn’t make it. He was too weak.

He had to hear Susan’s voice.

Archie mustered all his strength, swallowed hard, pressed his wound with his hand, lifted his head, and hollered her name.

“Susan!”

His despairing voice bounced off the concrete walls, echoing through the room, reverberating down the hall.

“I’m here!” Susan yelled back. She was cut off abruptly, forcibly silenced. But it was enough. Even with the basement acoustics Archie was certain that her voice was coming from up ahead. It was the motivation he needed.

Adrenaline pulsed into his fists and he heaved himself off the pallets and hobbled, grimacing, toward the hallway’s beckoning rectangle of light. His breaths came in pants now. He could still only move hunched over, hand pressed against his wound. Ten steps—each footfall a painful blur.

Then he was there. He had made it. He leaned up against the wall and lifted his gun. His shooting arm trembled as he pointed the weapon down the empty hall. The fluorescent lights cast a greenish glow. There were two doors about halfway down the left side of the hall, and a steel fire door at the end of the hall, thirty feet dead ahead.