Anna.

She was his anchor.

It felt as if he’d been standing in this corner of the observation deck for days, but it must have only been two hours. He checked his watch. Ten fifty-eight. She would be here at any moment. She might be here already.

Taking a deep breath and keeping one hand on the rail in front of him, he turned, searching the crowd. It was hard to focus, the rising panic making things blurry, but as he began to breathe his familiar counts of three, it slowly became easier to fix on one person at a time.

Movement to his right caught his eye and he turned, looking towards the flash of midnight-blue beneath a coat of the same colour. His heart almost stopped.

It was her.

He would have recognized her anywhere, even though he only had that one photograph to go on. She started to smile, to lift her hand in a wave, but then she kind of… froze. The smile died on her lips. Before he could even make out what was going on, she was running. Running back towards the door she’d just come through, the skirt of her coat flying behind her.

Brody’s first instinct was to chase after her. He felt the pull of momentum inside his chest, but his brain hesitated in sending the message to his feet. His hand gripped the railing as if it were welded to it. It took a second or two before he managed to uncurl his stiff fingers and move.

She was out of reach, beyond the sea of people now. There was only one way he’d be able to catch up, and it didn’t involve skirting around the edge of the space nervously, one hand steadying himself against the glass and steel.

He had to find out what was wrong. He took a deep breath and plunged through the mass of bodies, not even caring as he bumped against them, as they turned to give him disdainful looks.

Anna had disappeared down the staircase she’d emerged from, the one that read ‘Emergency Exit and Disabled Only’. He tried to dart after her, but a burly security guard blocked his way and jerked his thumb in the direction of the staircase on the opposite side of the observation deck. He didn’t have time to argue, so he dashed through the people again, circling the central block until he reached it.

His feet pounded on the wooden risers edged with metal and he flung himself around each turn in the narrow staircase until he emerged on the sixty-ninth floor, panting and looking around wildly. His face was beginning to tingle, and his hands felt as if someone was jabbing four-inch pins into them, a sure sign that he was over-breathing, that his stress levels were through the roof. Under other circumstances, he might have found that funny, given that this was the highest point in the city and there was no roof above him save the heavens.