The murmuring grows louder until it drowns out the music in my ears. Person by person, happy turns to mortified; it’s a domino effect. Club security comes barreling toward us as partygoers flood toward the exit. Slade and I seem to be cemented in place. That’s when the music shuts down.

A horrible silence descends among the crowd. I raise my arm and squeeze his shoulder, but still, he doesn’t move. It’s as though he’s in a trance.

The ringing in my ears continues to echo, pounding straight into my heart.

A unified quiet before a mixture of, “What the fuck?” and, “Oh my God,” fills the void.

A voice, dark and heavy, comes on a microphone at the DJ booth. It towers above, in control. We’re the tiny ants below, crushable.

The club, like a collective, tilts their heads upward. A gasp bounces off the walls, the sound rebounding. Slade continues to methodically wring his hands together, left to right. I’m holding on to him, a solid and straight wall.

The man breathes into the microphone, and the sound cracks. His mouth opens as he yells, “There’s only one ruler on these motherfuckin’ streets!” He points a gun to the ceiling.

It dawns on me that I’ve never seen a real gun in all my life. Is that really it? This tiny black handheld can … kill?

He pulls the trigger into the crowd; it’s thunder.

“No!” The word tears from my lips into the world around us. A pit, the size of my fist, flies to the center of my throat. I want to breathe, but I can’t.

The blood in my arteries flashes to molasses.

That’s when the shots begin to spray.

Slade grabs my arm and runs.

“No, we’re going the wrong way,” I scream, trying to stop him.

But he won’t allow me to turn or pause, and it’s as though he’s been taken over and turned into a robot. I’m tripping over my heeled feet, being dragged behind this massive man-machine who won’t let me go. While everyone in the club seems to be going left, we’re moving against the tide.

I keep yelling, “I’m going to get trampled,” but Slade continues to push forward, his hand like a vise around my wrist.

A man dressed like a police officer runs toward me with his mouth foaming white, and I shriek as he makes direct contact with my body, knocking me down and running over me, his heavy feet stomping and running over my arm like he’s hitting a parked car.

Then, more people come toward me, but Slade drops to his haunches, and like a wolf, he raises his huge, muscled arms and knocks people down because anyone who dares to come close will be removed. They’re falling backward from the force of his upper body while I’m still here, on the ground.

His eyes are completely vacant and dark when he says, “Grab my neck,” with a mechanical voice.

A woman to my right drops onto the floor—not from his arms, but from something else, as if she was hit with a bullet. My mouth gapes open, but no sound comes out.