Murphy shook his head. “I . . . don’t know. This is all just happening now.”

“Okay,” I said, “but if anyone gets some reliable intel on this thing then we have to get it out to everyone. Bunny, call your theory in to Pruitt. Top, watch our backs.”

All of the hotel’s power was still on and the fires were in the other tower. Murphy said we could trust the elevators, so we crammed inside. When the doors opened on seventeen, Torres nearly blew the head off a terrified room waiter. The poor little guy staggered backward, let out a cry like a kicked seagull, whirled and fled.

After the door closed Top nudged me and touched his hand. I nodded. I’d seen the bloody bandage, too. Poor bastard.

We stopped at four other goddamn floors. Twice people tried to get on. They were scared, crazed, but we could not let them in. One of them held a baby in her arms. It was slack and smeared with red, and when the door closed Top leaned his forehead against the wall, eyes closed, and cursed God. Bunny stood with his hand on Top’s shoulder but didn’t say anything. Really, what the hell can you say to that?

The last time the doors opened on the wrong floor we saw a scene out of some kind of nightmare. Two completely nude women knelt on the floor eating the face off a third. I don’t know what the story was. They all looked like they’d been beautiful. They were all too young for what happened to them.

We shot them before the doors closed. Call it a mercy. That’s what we told ourselves. Didn’t really help all that much.

Then the doors opened on the top floor and suddenly there were guns everywhere. Pointing out from the inside of the car; pointing at us from the hall. A mix of Secret Service agents and cops. All of them disheveled, splashed with blood that was more black than red, with eyes that were too wide and showed too much white around the irises.

“Okay, let’s all calm the fuck down,” I said. When nobody moved, I showed good faith by raising my pistol barrel to the ceiling, and told my guys to stand down. The door started to close and I put my foot against it. “We’re U.S. Special Forces. Who’s in charge here?”

A tall Asian woman pushed past the others, snapping at her people to lower their weapons, which they did grudgingly and with hands that visibly shook. She wore a black suit over a torn white blouse spattered with blood. She looked to be about forty but there were deep lines around her mouth that aged her. I suspected they’d been carved there over the last day or two.

Guns were lowered but nobody holstered anything. I stepped out of the elevator and faced the woman.

“Mary Chang,” she said, “assistant special agent in charge.”

“Where the AIC?” I asked.