A floor plan would have been great. She couldn’t really remember how she’d got to the clinic when she’d visited Rosie here in this Staff Bubble. There had just been corridor after corridor, swirls of cream that all looked the same. Not that there was any guarantee that Rosie would be there anyway.

Were there footsteps behind her?

Skidding to a halt, she listened. Even her swallowing sounded loud and she realized how thirsty she was, recalling how little of that tea she had got to drink back in Delores’s office. Blood pounded in her ears.

There.

Footsteps. Running.

Thea moved, doors flashing past her, some open, some closed, hardly looking as she turned a corner and nearly hurtled straight into a man sitting on the floor.

It was Richard.

The last time she had seen him, he had been in the hospital room next to Rosie with a group of people trying to restrain him. He was dressed in just a pair of pyjama bottoms, his feet dirty and bare, eyes blank. She had seen that vacant stare before, on a laptop screen – Ted sitting next to Moses, silent and empty. It had made her heart jump faster then, but this was real and right in front of her.

Richard did not move.

Slack jaw, slack arms, neck wilting under the effort of supporting his head, he slumped on the ground, eyes dulled and lifeless.

But he was alive. Thea could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

There was no time to stop and wonder how he had got there, nor to think how, if her hallucinations continued, that might be her soon, alone and empty on a cold, tiled floor.

Now she was on an incline, the corridor curving around and up slightly suggesting that this was maybe an outside wall. Everything was so white, so clinical, it felt like a nightmare – running and running and searching through these white corridors and never getting anywhere. At any moment she expected to come to a dead end and get an electrical shock for taking the wrong turn, a zap for her rat-mind.

The footsteps followed her.

These were all just rooms and offices and labs, no sign of a medical wing. Signs! Signs would have been useful! Thea ran past room after room, shoving doors open, glancing in, moving on. So quiet, so deserted. Everyone fled by now. The company made the decision. Delores had told her that, back in her office. Thea didn’t want to find out the decision they’d made.

Another corridor, big double doors at the end.

But this corridor wasn’t white.

Tramlines of red cut a path on the floor. They led from each room and then joined into one track heading straight for the double doors. It took a while to sink in, her brain soggy and flopping about.

Tramlines = dragging.

Dragging = something heavy.

Red = blood.