I want to take a moment for a deep breath, to ease the thundering of my heart and calm the images racing through my mind. I know that acting frantic is an easy way to end up dead or infected, but my body screams at me that I don’t have any time to spare.

The Recruiters will find me soon. They can’t be that far away.

I’m drenched in sweat and my breath is shaky as I reach for the last doorknob. This one’s stuck, the wood swollen, and I kick at it several times until there’s a crack wide enough for me to see inside.

Holding my breath, I hope for stairs only to find a tangle of bones draped in stained strips of tattered cloth. What used to be fingers and teeth are scattered across the floor. Their tomb is my dead end. I spin away, needing to figure out where to search next.

For a heartbeat I think about crawling through that last door and hiding behind the skeleton. Just wishing the Recruiters would never find me. But I know that even if they didn’t, the dead would. The Unconsecrated will inevitably push their way inside.

I sprint down another dark hallway, the wrinkled and rotting carpet tearing underfoot as I run. There are several more tiny empty rooms, and as I race past I wonder if this is what the rest of my life will be: dark hallways, empty rooms, terror.

Just then I stumble into an alcove and find a large metal door with rust spots bubbling up through flaked white paint. I throw all my weight against it. I shout at it as if it were human, as if it can grant me mercy and let me in.

With a loud protest of rusted hinges, the door pops open. I’m greeted with a gust of cold musty air. The darkness is deeper here, older, and my lantern fights to illuminate it. There’s a set of stairs leading down, and just as I’m about to follow them I hear a loud crack. A cascade of shattering follows.

I hesitate, trying to locate the noise, and then I hear men shouting. Moans filter through, no longer muffled by the hasty barriers over the windows and doors. A deep voice booms, “Run! They’ve breached.”

My throat closes. They’re here. The Unconsecrated and the Recruiters, both catching up. I have to push forward, it’s my only hope. I throw myself into the dark, forcing the door closed behind me. I practically fall down the steps and stumble into a smaller room. As I turn the corner a figure clutching a lantern lunges at me from behind a long gleaming slab of wood.

I cry out, stumbling over a broken table as I wave my machete wildly.