Finally, up goes Jasper’s arm and I try the door. Still locked. I count one one thousand. And then try again. Two more tries. Nothing.

“Hey, you!” a voice calls out from the darkness behind me. A security guard maybe, at least someone official—and officially unhappy—from the sound of it. Pretty far away still—far enough that he might not even be talking to me. Except that I know he is. “That’s a secure area, you can’t go in there!” I tug the door again. “Hey, get away from that door!”

Definitely talking to me. Jasper has seen him too. Because he’s jogging back from the street over to me.

Jasper reaches me before the guard, and just when there is finally a buzz. The sound of the lock opening. And when I tug, the door moves. I can hardly believe it.

“Holy—” Jasper whispers.

“You can’t go in there!” the guard shouts.

“Come on!” I call to Jasper.

We leap through and pull the door shut. Pray that it locks behind us. Sure enough, when the guard rattles the door a second later, he’s locked out like we were. Still, we have to move fast now. It won’t take him long to warn the right people. Soon they will know exactly where we are.

UPSTAIRS ON THE third floor, I brace myself for another locked door. But it is open, too, and a moment later we are in. The hospital hallway is utterly still at this hour. Not a soul in sight, not a sound. Just as we had hoped. Though I wish I felt better. Like things were going as planned. Because I feel just the opposite and I’m not sure why.

I try to focus instead on the task at hand: warning the girls. Each of us is in charge of waking half of them, then we will all run down and out the fire stairs. Not everyone will get away. But all we need is enough of us to prove what has happened. After that, they will have to let everyone go. This is not the best plan. But there are no better options. There are no other options at all.

I nod at Jasper and mouth the words “good luck” before we peel off in opposite directions, toward the sleeping girls at either end of the hall. As I walk on, the quiet feels so very heavy, my dread so high in my throat that it’s hard to swallow. I am worried about not getting the girls out, definitely. Worried about the possibility of running into “fake Kelsey,” too. I don’t want to find out what she’s really up to. Definitely don’t want her to know what I know, and I don’t trust myself to be able to block her well enough to hide it. I hope that she got out. For my sake now, not hers.