Rector teetered at the edge. He shook his head, trying to let the blood run out of his injured ear. It didn’t work, just made the pumping of his heart throb louder behind his eyes. But he didn’t hear anyone coming up behind him, so maybe this would be a safe place to stop. To catch his breath. To wait until his pursuer had gotten bored and wandered off.

His breathing was muffled and ragged inside his mask, but in time it slowed. He balanced there, not looking down and not looking back, waiting to hear that voice call out again.

It didn’t.

And after a good five minutes, he took as deep a breath as he dared—there above some precipice on the other side of that last lonely step, the bottom of which he couldn’t even see—and he began a slow, quivering retreat back the way he’d come.

Funny. He hadn’t noticed on his frantic way up how fragile the steps felt beneath his boots. The wobble wasn’t his imagination. They creaked, too. He leaned toward the rail, and to the bit of wall that remained on that side.

Don’t die yet. You ain’t allowed.

“Shut your mouth, Zeke.”

One hand on the splintered, rickety rail, he breathed real slow and kept his eyes on his feet. One in front of the other. One step at a time.

He stopped.

What was that noise? Had the stranger caught up to him? He held still and listened.

Sounded like breathing. Low, wet, and not very healthy. Coming from something pretty big. But he didn’t see anything. The air was too dense; it moved like smoke in front of his lenses, one broken and one still clear.

Someone sighed.

Or something sighed. The gas-poisoned atmosphere whispered and complained, and once again Rector choked on a big gob of fear. It swelled until he could hardly swallow, and his heart caught up with a fluttering skip.

The breathing behind him—yes, behind him … and not his own—grew louder. Closer. So close he imagined he could feel it, warm and dank, against the back of his neck.

Stumbling now, he picked up his pace. He could fall, he thought. He could tumble and roll, and that would be faster, in a way. It’d hurt, and it’d be loud, but it’d be quick. A quick way to reach the bottom. A quick way to die. Wouldn’t it? His ankle turned, almost sprained. But didn’t. The joint kept locking, unlocking, with each stair.

A throaty groan shocked him with its nearness. He spun around, flailing, expecting to hit someone square in the face, but no. There was no one behind him, no one beside him—there couldn’t be. To one side was a drop-off leading nowhere; to the other, a lone wall—a final surviving shred of the old building.