People had been dragged – no, not people – bodies had been dragged to that room at the end. There were no handprints on the walls, no signs of struggle, only the odd red footprint where the someone doing the dragging had stepped in blood.

The company made the decision.

The picture popped into Thea’s head; she couldn’t help it. Moira from therapy, with her thick, round glasses – the woman who used to get up at night and eat while asleep. Maybe she had been lost in a hallucination, a nice one perhaps where she was surrounded by fluffy roast potatoes and buttery parsnips all dancing for her. Maybe she’d smiled at the person coming towards her, thinking them a part of her vision, or maybe she couldn’t smile anymore, locked in her own body, unmoving. Like the slaughtered cows Thea had seen once on television, the bolt pistol pressed to their heads, the jolt, their legs scrabbling for purchase as they went down.

No one at home waiting for them to call. No one to care what happens to them.

There had been no boat for the clients. No evacuation. Had she ever really believed there had been?

Those double doors at the end of the corridor waited for her.

There was a fly crawling on them.

If she really was the lab rat scurrying through the maze, she had found the end in that room, the rotten, decaying heart at the centre of it all. She knew what was in there and she couldn’t bring herself to look. There was no getting out. All paths led to that. She was just one more body for a company that wanted to erase what happened here, forget it, smooth it over like a plasterer smoothing over a wall, hoping the blood wouldn’t seep through.

She cowered in the corner of the corridor and was too numb even to cry.

Rosie was probably in there, not that Thea would be able to bring herself to go in and check.

She was the only one left.

No.

There was Richard.

Somehow, he had been overlooked, had wandered out of reach or been forgotten in some way: however it had happened, he was still alive. She may have failed Ethan and Rosie, but maybe she could help him, maybe she could at least try to salvage someone from this charnel pit.

She was not going to cringe in this corner. Instead, she was going to try; get up and keep on trying until they caught and killed her.

Running was not an option anymore for her battered legs, so she staggered back.

Richard was still there, she saw with relief, as she rounded the corner into the corridor. Taking a few steps towards him, she realized how long his legs were and worried about how she would get him up and moving.

That’s when Kyle appeared at the other end of the corridor.