At first the vast, open room was shrouded in darkness, save for the cone of light streaming in from the open doorway. She could make out a concrete floor and ridiculously high ceilings; what she’d thought was a four-story building from outside was actually one big open warehouse, with metal catwalks ringing the upper levels all the way to the unfinished, beam-marked ceiling. Huge shipping crates lined the walls to her right and left, stacked by machines that sat dormant in the shadows; she could see the frame of a forklift on one side of the room, and some sort of wheeled ladder contraption in the far corner, rising up almost to the ceiling.

But when Nick finally found a light switch on the wall close to where they’d entered, Hailey’s attention was immediately drawn to the center of the room. First, because the crates were hard to ignore. A half dozen of them, wooden, lined up next to each other on the concrete floor. The crates were all open, and as she followed Nick deeper into the warehouse, she could see that at least the closest few were empty. Next to the nearest crate was a crowbar, and the shattered remains of one of the crates’ lids. And next to the crowbar—

“Is that a shotgun?” Hailey asked.

She’d never seen a shotgun before, not in real life. You didn’t see many guns at MIT. And even after she’d run away at twelve, old enough looking to pass for sixteen, even older looking when it was dark, and was living mostly in cheap motels by way of the fake ID and what money she could make at odd jobs, she’d managed to avoid the sort of people who knew a .22 from a .38. Guys like Nick, who was already kicking at the shotgun with the tip of his boot, looking it over carefully.

“Still loaded. They didn’t even get a shot off.”

And then she followed his gaze to the two men lying on the floor behind the last crate, right up next to each other. The strange thing was, they looked almost peaceful, side by side, arms stiff as boards. As Hailey took another step forward, she realized that everything about them was stiff—not just the arms, but their entire bodies, rigid and stiff like human statues. Both of their faces looked young, and so similar they could have been brothers. One had blondish hair swept back by too much gel and the other had more of a buzz cut, but their eyes were the same, blue and wide-open, frozen in place. The same as the mouths, open lips caught somewhere between a shout and a scream.

“They look paralyzed,” she whispered, stating the obvious.

Nick went down on one knee to check their pulses. Then he shook his head.