“Come on!” I grabbed her hand, because no matter what happened between us, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if she didn’t make it out safely.

“I know the nearest exit,” she said and took the lead. “In the upper-level basement.”

We ran together, my heart going double time from desperation, from holding Daiyu’s hand in mine, and the corridor stretched longer in front of my eyes, expanded, as if in some fun-house nightmare.

“Thank you for exiting in a timely manner,” the female voice said above the alarm.

Time was up.

We dashed up one flight of stairs, side by side.

Pummeling against the emergency door on the landing, I pressed the exit bar and slammed against it like a brick wall. Locked. Gods. Flinging her arm out to push me back, Daiyu unholstered her gun. The barrel lit in red and she pulled the trigger. Her arm jerked upward from the explosion of the shot. A neat round hole the size of a fist appeared where the jamb would be. The air was tinged with smoke. I pushed against the bar again just as a deafening boom erupted above us, shaking the building to its core. The exit door wouldn’t give. Another long boom followed immediately after, and Daiyu and I fell into each other. She tucked her head into my shoulder and I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tight against me, the glass of her helmet cold against my cheek.

The ground rumbled beneath our feet as the entire building shifted and groaned, like a monster awakening. My ears rang, even after the building quieted. With one arm still wrapped around Daiyu’s shoulder, I shoved at the door again.

“It’s useless,” Daiyu said. She sounded as if she were speaking to me from the other end of a long tunnel. “Jin Corp’s in lockdown, and these doors are impenetrable. I just got the company-wide message in helmet.”

“We’re trapped, then?”

“No,” she replied. “I know a way out.”

She slipped away from me, and I followed. I watched her straight back as she pushed a door, which opened into the main corridor on the ground floor. The golden ambient lighting I had seen during my tour had dimmed, replaced by red lights that pulsed, casting the wide hallway in a macabre bloody glow, like some horrific scene from The Shining. The fire alarm had ceased, and there was no sound except for our echoing footsteps and the monstrous moaning of the building. A distant ringing still filled my ears.

Daiyu half turned to glance back, and a rush of conflicted feelings surged through me when our eyes locked: chagrin that she had fooled me so completely, relief that she at last knew the truth, but most of all, fear. Fear that neither of us would make it out of this building alive. I had signed up for this from the start. She hadn’t.