The room was nearly silent, as if people couldn’t find words important enough to justify using what little air remained in the vault.

“We cannot stay here,” I said to no one in particular. Tilly was past the point of putting on a show of confidence for me. Surely the adults in the room would have come to this conclusion even if I’d not said a word. The walkie-talkies offered nothing but static. The room was hazy with smoke. No one was coming to save us, and we had only one soldier guarding the vault from the outside.

“We have to get to the roof,” the woman with the walkie-talkie declared. The hallway, opaque with smoke, was certain death. Two soldiers worked the bowed hatch, muscling to turn the wheel against an unseen force. They pried it open just enough for a current of air to swirl through the vault. The opening, a waning moon, offered little view of the outside world.

The soldier couldn’t get more than a shoulder out.

“It’s jammed from the outside.” He plunged his arm into the gap. The soldiers switched places. The woman with the walkie-talkie climbed the ladder and took her turn. She came back down the ladder, ruddy and breathless.

I dropped Tilly’s hand and pushed my way through the huddled bodies. Tilly called out after me, but her voice was low and hoarse. I stepped past American men and women in damp shirts. The whole room would perish if we didn’t get that hatch open.

I put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and felt a stabbing pain so acute that I wondered if the wound had torn open again. Hearing my yelp, the soldier put his hands on my shoulders to pull me down. I wrested away from him, climbing and climbing without knowing what lay on the other side of the hatch.

“Be careful,” a voice called after me. “Don’t let go.”

Bending my body into the shape of a crescent moon, I slipped out of the vault and onto the roof of the building. Grunting, I managed to free the piece of rebar that had been locking the outside latch.

“It is open!” I called into the space. I pulled and the soldiers pushed. The door flipped open, and one by one the Americans joined me on the roof. The embassy grounds were charred, smoke billowing up from buildings, flames licking at every window. I felt as if I were standing on the roof of Arg, watching the palace go up in flames.

I knelt by the opening of the hatch door, waiting for Tilly to emerge. She came out coughing, her face glistening with moisture and her hair wild.

“Tilly! You are okay,” I said dumbly, all my words caught up in the smoke.