The first alarm sounded while Yuche was standing outside Rouxi's private room.
He turned toward the stairwell as gunfire erupted from the warehouse below. A second alarm joined the first, followed by the mechanical grinding of security shutters dropping throughout the upper level.
The steel barrier at the end of the corridor slammed downward.
It never reached the floor.
Yuche lifted one hand, and the shutter stopped with its bottom edge hanging less than a meter above the concrete. The motor continued trying to force it down, filling the corridor with the scream of grinding gears, but the steel buckled beneath his power instead.
He closed his fingers.
The shutter folded upward from the center. Metal peeled away from its tracks and crushed into itself, leaving the corridor open beneath a thick knot of twisted steel.
Zhenlan glanced toward the ruined mechanism. "Someone triggered the internal lockdown."
