"Now," he said, and they moved—three parts, one animal—down into the dark while the stair above and the stair below gathered themselves.
The rail was the field. Right hand on cold metal, left hand guiding the dull saber crosswise, Gavin counted half steps he couldn't see. Madison's breath worked like a low engine. The woman's fists locked on his shirt.
"Small," he said. "Inside rail."
A barefoot slap landed where his knee would have been. Hot breath on his hip. He cut low; the blade met shin; a body spun and hit metal.
"Don't run," he told the woman. "Running makes you fall."
"I'm not," she whispered.
They matched rhythm: two short steps, one long where the stair sang. Above, three sets hunted; below, one fast and scraping.
"Two flights," he said. Say it anyway.
A hand slid along the rail seeking wrists. Gavin pressed it onto the post; the fingers pinched wood, not him. Madison's poker tapped an ankle. They found the next landing by the sideways draft. The door's push bar was colder than air.
"On three," Gavin said. "We test."
They leaned. The bar gave a fist-width and hit something wheeled at a dumb angle. Air on the far side tasted like fryer and tile—kitchen. They pushed again; the gap grew to a forearm. Gavin shouldered through, cleared the blade, and made room.
"Through," he said. The woman slid in paper-thin between racks. Madison fed himself inch by inch, poker up. The stair door turned to a drum; hinges cried.
"Hold," Gavin said. They played the door with bone, easing when pressure built, slamming when it lurched. Someone's hand got pinched; the scream wasn't language. Then the pressure dropped to thinking quiet.
"Move," Madison breathed.
"Stay on me," Gavin told the woman. "Name?"
A beat of silence. "Later," she said. [CHECK: identity]
"Any bites?" He hated that he had to ask like that was normal.
"No." Then, small and furious: "No."
They edged down the service corridor, one hand on shelf, one on paint bumps. Less dark ahead. Far off, a system hummed—a handler or the outside breathing through a seam. A small, frantic tap-tap-tap traveled the metal skins. Pans.Tools.
At a T they stopped. Left breathed cooler; right smelled of lemon. Cooler meant outside. He signed left. The stair door behind them boomed once, then went silent again. He hated the silent more.
They rounded a column. The saber found a low cart of folded linen, then hooks that tried to take the guard; he turned his wrist free. A door with a push plate cooled his palm; air beyond tasted like night.
"We can't open to a crowd," Madison said.
"Slit only," Gavin said. He put a shoulder to the plate: an inch, then two. Nothing visible—only space, and a plastic whisper that feathered his knuckles. Tape brushed his skin. He closed, then opened again carefully, felt the tape stretch and slide. Something tied beyond tugged and settled.
"Flag," he said. "Caution line."
"Cops?" Madison asked.
If cops, they'd talk. He didn't answer.
From the corridor came a shelf-scrape, a can rolling, breath with a wet hitch. The stair was still thinking.
"We don't stand here," Gavin said. "Madison, brace. On my arm," to the woman.
He opened the slit, slid the saber through like a cane, found concrete. No drop. He widened to a foot. Air moved colder, smelling of cut grass and an electric burn. Tape hissed across the back of his neck as he ducked under. Grit under palm. He held the door with his shoulder.
"Now."
She pulled under, hair catching once, then free. Madison crabbed last, poker flat, exhaled half his lungs to make himself smaller. The tape snapped against his back with a small report that made them all flinch.
Wind swallowed them. Somewhere a generator coughed and held. A siren dopplered and died. Above, the sky was a bruise, not stars. The mansion bulked right—glass, stone, and money acting immortal.
"Eyes adjust," Gavin said. Counting made people human. "One."
By seven, shapes emerged: a fall of driveway, a pale wall edge, shrubs flogged by wind. By ten, a hanging chain-link shadow twenty feet ahead. Plastic scraps worried it. Beyond, the sodium smear of a larger road painted the low clouds.
Behind, hands hit the corridor door. The plate thudded; it held. For now.
"Fast," Madison said.
"Fast and quiet."
They reached the fence. Steel diamonds bit skin; plastic tongues snagged. Low down, a panel bowed and sprang back like it had belly-flopped earlier. "Over?" Madison whispered.
"Under," Gavin said, flattening. Saber through, shoulders, knee in the cold gutter where fence met concrete. He wriggled. The woman scraped a hip and went. Madison made himself smaller than physics liked and followed with the rip of denim giving up a little.
The service lane fell away. Left, a rectangle of deeper dark suggested a bay or garage mouth [CHECK: loading bay vs. garage]. Right, the lane ran toward the road and its bad promises. Sirens there. Shadows maybe. Or wind.
"We can hide in the bay," Madison said.
"Road is ID," Gavin said, meaning language; he didn't trust language tonight.
The woman's voice was sudden and sure. "Not the road. People go toward the flashing. They don't come back."
"Bay," Madison said.
Gavin studied the rectangle: a roll-up stuck half down, a crawl-high slit under it. Scrap leaned nearby—pallet wood, a dead pot, a torn bag of salt. He hated crawl spaces. He liked doors with slams. Pick a field.
"Bay," he said. "We stage at the lip. If it's bad, we back out."
They moved in controlled quick. The bay smelled like rubber dust and old cardboard. A chain on the door clicked in wind. Concrete. Forklift streaks. A scatter of screws scratched the saber tip. No breath, no foot shuffle. He lowered the blade and almost poked his own shoe. Idiot.
"Clear to the first posts," he said. "Behind me," he told the woman. "Madison rear."
They slid into shade. The world shrank and sounds sharpened. The chain tapped. A drip counted somewhere. Pallets rose in low pyramids; a dolly crouched under a tarp.
"Stop," he said at the posts. "Stage."
Madison tested the chain; the roll-up squealed two inches up and bound loud enough to advertise. He let it drop. "Nope."
"Clutter, not noise," Gavin said. He prodded the tarp with the saber, then let it fall. "Sit," he told the woman. "Back to the pallet. If you black out, fall back, not forward."
"I'm fine," she lied.
"Good. We're all fine," he lied back.
Feet took the service lane—light, exact, not scraping. Two, maybe three. They slowed at the fence line. Plastic whispered. One set stayed; one came on, deliberate as a metronome used by a thief.
Gavin raised the blade and aimed it where a chest would be under the roll-up.
The feet stopped six yards out. Silence arranged itself.
Then a man's voice, normal volume, Thursday-casual. "You good in there?"
No hey, no help, no police. Just you good.
Madison didn't move. The woman held the pallet with both hands.
Gavin didn't answer. Language was a net.
The voice waited. Patient. "We can walk you to the road," he said, making road soft. "We've got lights."
"I don't want to be seen," the woman whispered, almost to herself.
Silence held for a beat too long. Something in Gavin—practice field nerve—wanted to fill it with words to control the count. The smarter part of him let the count breathe.
A fingertip tested the edge of the roll-up slit from outside—light as a moth. It didn't push. It mapped. The chain clinked once overhead as wind jogged it; the sound felt like a lie because it covered smaller sounds. Gavin lowered the blade a hair so it wouldn't ring the metal.
Madison's whisper was a tight wire. "If they come, I take first. You take knees if they duck."
"Copy," Gavin said. "No wrestling. If I say 'down,' slide flat," to the woman.
"Okay." Her breath came in measured sips.
Behind them, the service corridor door thudded once, twice, as if the stair had finally taught something to a crowd. It held, then rattled in an ugly long shake that felt like a decision forming. The bay answered with a drip.
"Name's Theo," the voice said [CHECK: identity], friendly, as if introductions were currency. "We just want to get you out of there. Lights make people move out of your way."
Gavin pictured light on a face and what it did to pupils, making you blind to the dark behind the beam. He pictured hands from both sides of the glow. We're not mascots on a float, he thought. We're a play in traffic.
Theo waited. Patient men used patience like a weapon. "Okay," he said at last, still friendly. "We'll help you decide." Footsteps shifted. Gravel cracked. A second voice, lower, said something Gavin couldn't catch. No radio, no police cadence. Just men modulating their breath.
Madison's fingers found Gavin's back in the dark and tapped twice—a habit from the line: ready. Gavin answered with one tap: wait.
The roll-up slit breathed with the wind. Gavin kept the point exactly where a chest would be if a man went to hands and slid under.
From the service door, a new sound: not a hit, a click. The bar had learned. Or hands that belonged to a brain had found the right lever. The plate squealed against the latch, sticking, then easing. The door bumped once, then again, timing the cam. A third bump would do it.
"Up," Gavin whispered, and Madison ghosted to the mouth, weight on the inside of his feet, poker angled across the slit. They were a cover-two in a doorway.
The third bump didn't come. The door only breathed like it was saving its punch. But the knowledge that it could changed the temperature in Gavin's mouth.
He changed the picture. "On my go," he said low. "We shift left along the pallets and widen the cone. If they commit under, redirect shoulders; let them eat concrete. If the corridor breaks, we take the fence again and go right."
"Right is road," Madison murmured.
"Right is options," Gavin said. And risk.
"Copy."
The voice outside smiled inside its words. "We're patient," Theo called. "You'll pick wrong if you pick scared." He let that sit, a chess-clock tick you could feel. Then, almost kind: "One minute."
Gavin didn't know what the minute meant. He knew he wasn't giving it away for free. "Show me your forearms," he told the woman.
She offered them, bare in the dark. He touched where teeth would leave coins—no heat, no weeping. A scrape near the wrist, shallow. "Okay," he said. "Stay small."
"You sound like a coach," she said.
"Tonight I am." Coach to three living people. That's the team.
The corridor door clicked again, more efficient, less lost. The latch bounced. Theo's man shifted gravel. The chain cut a tiny arc overhead. The play collapsed to a single count. He didn't have to like it. He had to call it.
"On me," he said, and the three of them moved as if the night had given them a snap.