Back on the roof, at the point where their lips are bruised from kissing and Carmen’s eyes are swollen from crying and her voice hoarse from laughing, they have both reached a state of bone-tiredness. Neither knows what time it is, only that dawn has not yet come. There is a last glance at the stars as they stand, under which Carmen spins out in dance and Kierk spins her back, dips her, and they kiss again, bruising a last time. She has not let go of the rose this entire time. Then finally they make their way, still holding hands, to the door, shove aside the cinderblock, and enter the dark stairwell. There’s a clang behind them as the door swings shut on its hinges.

The light from Carmen’s phone illuminates the otherwise pitch-black stairwell, going down like an endless maze below them. They are just half a flight down when the knock comes from behind them.

Explosive, loud, and three times. Carmen grabs at Kierk, the light from her phone frenetically bobbing up and down on the door, which is a metal monolith still reverberating. The sound goes all the way down into the depths and echoes back up. Carmen muffles a scream. Kierk’s heart jumps tachycardic, a thin beat in the dark, a connection stretching out, racing away.

They are both frozen on the steps, looking at the door, waiting in the hot dark.

“It could just be someone trapped on the roof,” Kierk says, unsure, his adrenaline rushing over him like mad already, but Carmen is shaking her head quietly—“How? Who? Behind us? We have to go. We have to go now.”

The booming knock comes again, and Carmen shrieks, grabbing at Kierk. Her hands are randomly clutching at him, her legs shaking. Kierk, his eyes wide and fixated on the door, slowly begins to climb back up the stairwell.