“If it was like this for us, how bad is it up top?”

“Don’t know,” Amos said. “Let’s go see.”

She sat up. Her left hand was already swollen to about twice the size of the right one, so something in it was busted. In her prison gown, she looked like a ghost. Something already dead that hadn’t stopped moving yet. Which, he figured, might be accurate.

“We’re on lockdown,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Thing is, for us to be in lockdown, this has to be a prison. For this to be a prison, there has to be, you know, a civilization out there. I think this just turned into a big hole in the ground with a bunch of dangerous people in it. We should leave.”

He kicked the door. It was like punching a bulkhead with a bare fist. He moved over and tried the shattered window. It was only a little bit better. He tried three more times before a voice shouting from outside interrupted him. “Stop that immediately! We’re in lockdown!”

“Someone doesn’t know this isn’t a prison anymore,” Clarissa said. She sounded a little drunk. Might be a concussion to go with her broken hand.

“In here!” Amos shouted. “Hey! We’re stuck in here!”

“We are in lockdown, sir. You have to stay where you are until —”

“The wall’s cracked,” Amos shouted back. “It’s gonna collapse.” It might even have been true.

There was a long moment of quiet, and then a click from the doorway. The door scraped open a couple centimeters and jammed. The escort looked in. Dim emergency lighting from down the hall turned her into a grayscale outline. Even so, he could see the fear in her expression. There were other people behind her, but he couldn’t make them out.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but this facility is —”

Amos put his shoulder against the door, not pushing out, but not letting her close it again either.

“In lockdown. I got that,” he said. “Here’s the thing, though. We need to evacuate.”

“You can’t, sir, this is —”

“Not just us,” Amos said. “You too. You need to get out of here too. Unless you’re really looking to die at work, which I would find disappointing.”

The escort licked her lips. Her gaze cut to the right. He tried to think what would convince her the rest of the way, but the best he came up with was punching her in the jaw and hoping he could push his way out before anyone shot him. He was cocking back his arm when Clarissa put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve got people on the top, don’t you?” she said. “Friends? Family?”

The escort’s gaze lost focus, seeing something else. Someone else. Probably someone dead but not cool yet. “I can’t… I can’t think about that right now.”