No one wanted to be the first to say they had to move.
Claire was the first to act anyway.
She crossed back to Kara's side, took a fallen blazer from the back of a chair, and draped it over the body with a care that had already become ceremonial. Ryan stayed by the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, head tilted as if listening through the walls. Noah was crouched beside the access panel with a letter opener in one hand and the panel cover half-pried loose. Julia moved from desk to desk with brutal efficiency, sweeping useful things into a laptop bag.
"We can't stay," she said without looking up. "Not with this much blood. Not if anything comes back."
Nobody argued.
Noah leaned closer to the exposed wiring. "The lock's fried," he muttered. "Or half-fried. I can maybe get it to hold if the power doesn't cut again."
Ryan didn't take his eyes off the crack in the door. "How long?"
Noah gave a short, tired huff. "Inspiring answer or honest one?"
"Honest."
"No idea."
Julia zipped the bag halfway, checked inside, then kept adding to it. Water, crackers, charging cables, the half-used first-aid kit, a box cutter she found in a drawer. She moved like someone who had discovered that fear became easier if it was forced into categories.
Claire rose and looked over at the others. "Where do we go?"
"The break room?" Julia said. "Somewhere internal. Somewhere with one entrance."
"Security office," Noah said.
Ryan shook his head immediately. "Too far if the corridor's bad."
They started talking over each other then—not loudly, but fast, frayed, every word stripped down by exhaustion.
Ethan stood near the center aisle and listened without adding anything.
He could still see the title if he focused on it.
**CLERICAL OFFICER (ANOMALOUS)**
The others had gotten roles that sounded like functions. Scout. Technician. Logistics. Mediator.
He had gotten an office title and a warning label.
And somewhere just behind ordinary sight, that second line still waited.
**WARNING: ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS RESTRICTED**
"Ethan?"
He blinked. Claire was looking at him.
"What?"
"You with us?"
"Yeah." His voice came out thin. "Yeah."
Her eyes stayed on him half a second longer than they should have. Then she turned back.
"We go inward," Julia said. "Not toward the windows, not toward the elevators. Break room first. Reassess from there."
Ryan nodded once. "Fine. I check ahead. Noah stays on doors. Julia, supplies. Claire—"
"I know," Claire said quietly.
Ryan's gaze flicked toward Ethan, and for an instant Ethan could see the question in it: what do we do with you?
But Ryan only said, "Stay close."
It wasn't cruel. That made it worse.
Noah straightened slightly and wiped one hand on his pants. "Give me thirty seconds."
He leaned back into the panel. Sparks snapped once, twice. He flinched but didn't pull away. A moment later the office door lock gave a sharp mechanical click.
Noah let out a breath. "There. Temporary."
Ryan looked over his shoulder. "You can do that now?"
Noah gave him a look. "Apparently."
No one said anything after that. No one had to. The roles were becoming real whether they liked it or not.
Ethan's vision blurred.
At first he thought it was stress, another delayed wave of shock. Then blue text slid cleanly across the edge of his sight.
`CONFIRM PERSONNEL LOSS`
He froze.
The others kept moving. Julia redistributed the bag's contents. Claire tightened the strap on the first-aid kit. Ryan opened the door a fraction and listened. Noah checked the lock one last time.
No one reacted.
The text remained.
A second line appeared beneath it.
`UPDATE LOCAL STATUS`
`SUBMIT BEFORE TRANSIT`
Ethan stared at the words until the letters felt sharp enough to cut.
No one else was seeing this. They couldn't be. Ryan would have said something. Noah would have tried to break it. Julia would have demanded to know what "submit" meant.
Claire—
Claire would have looked at him exactly the way she was already looking whenever she thought he wasn't paying attention.
He looked away too quickly and the prompt shifted with him, patient and fixed.
`CONFIRM PERSONNEL LOSS`
His stomach turned.
Not now.
Not this.
He tried to ignore it. Tried to focus on Ryan whispering that the hallway looked empty. Tried to focus on Julia handing him a flashlight she had taken from a drawer. Tried to focus on Noah saying they had maybe one good shot before the lock gave out for good.
But the text didn't disappear.
It hung there with the bland persistence of an incomplete form.
Ethan's eyes drifted, against his will, toward Daniel's body.
The prompt pulsed once.
He hated that. More than the words themselves, he hated the rhythm of it. It didn't feel like magic. It didn't feel supernatural. It felt administrative.
"Ethan?"
Claire again, quieter this time.
He looked at her, then at the others. No one was paying close attention now. They were all occupied, all balanced on the edge of movement.
Then, because the text was still there and because some horrible part of him had already understood that it would stay there until he did what it asked, he crossed the room.
He crouched beside Daniel first.
Up close, the unreality vanished. Daniel's skin had already lost something essential in the color. Ethan reached out with two fingers and pressed them against the side of his neck.
Cold.
Not fully cold, but cooling.
No pulse.
Blue text flickered.
`1/2 CONFIRMED`
He nearly recoiled.
Claire took half a step toward him. "Any sign?"
The question lodged in his throat. She thought he was checking for life.
He forced himself to shake his head. "No."
His voice sounded wrong to his own ears.
He stood too fast, went a little dizzy, then crossed to Kara.
He didn't want to look at her face. He knelt anyway. Two fingers. Throat. Nothing.
The blue text updated.
`2/2 CONFIRMED`
`LOCAL STATUS UPDATED`
A pressure he hadn't fully noticed released behind his eyes, not relief so much as the grim loosening of a completed task.
Ryan pulled the door open another inch. "We're going. Now."
Ethan turned sharply away from the bodies and followed.
The hallway outside seemed narrower than it had yesterday, though he knew that was impossible. The strip lights in the ceiling flickered at irregular intervals, throwing weak bands of brightness across gray carpet and glass office walls. There were smears of blood on one partition. A shoe lay on its side near the copier alcove. Someone's ID badge was caught in a crack in the floor tile, its retractable cord stretched and snapped.
Ryan stepped out first, one hand raised for silence.
Everyone obeyed.
He listened, then pointed left.
Noah moved after him, staying close enough to the wall to reach the next door panel if he needed to. Julia came next with the supply bag. Claire stayed near the back, glancing between Ethan and the others, making sure no one froze, no one broke rank, no one fell apart in the first ten steps.
Ethan came last.
He hated that too.
The corridor was so quiet that every breath felt intrusive. Somewhere far off, metal scraped against metal. Not loudly. Just enough to make Ethan's shoulders lock.
Ryan stopped at the corner and held up a fist.
Everyone froze.
He tilted his head, listening, then motioned them forward again.
They made it past the first cluster of cubicles. Past the darkened conference room with its glass wall starred by a single impact crack. Past a spill of documents tracked through with bloody shoeprints.
Then, from somewhere ahead and to the right, a voice broke through the silence.
"Help!"
Everyone stopped.
The cry was muffled by a closed door, but unmistakably human. High with panic. Raw.
"Please—someone—"
Claire turned immediately toward the sound. "There's someone in there."
Ryan's jaw tightened. He took one step that way, then paused, scanning the hall instead of moving outright.
Julia said, "We don't know what else is there."
Another bang from behind the door. Then a choked, desperate, "Help me!"
Noah looked past Ryan toward the side corridor. "That's off route."
Claire shot him a look. "It's a person."
Ethan's vision flashed blue so suddenly he almost flinched.
`DO NOT DEVIATE`
`UNVERIFIED PERSONNEL`
`MAINTAIN ROUTE`
His breath caught.
The voice behind the door broke again, weaker now. "Please!"
Claire had already started moving.
"Wait," Julia hissed.
Ryan looked down the side corridor, then back the way they had come, calculating distances, sound, risk. His uncertainty lasted maybe a second.
The blue text remained fixed in Ethan's sight.
`DO NOT DEVIATE`
He knew, with a sick immediate certainty, that if they went, the system would still be there afterward. The task would still exist. The route would still be broken. Whatever this thing was that had settled into him and started assigning functions in the middle of blood and screaming—it had already decided.
And somehow, impossibly, it expected him to agree.
Claire took another step.
"Don't," Ethan said.
The word came out sharper than he intended.
Everyone looked at him.
Claire frowned. "Ethan—"
"No." He heard himself swallow. "Keep moving."
Ryan stared at him. "What?"
The voice behind the door cried out again, louder this time, as if whoever was inside had heard them in the hall.
Ethan could barely hear it over the pounding in his ears.
`MAINTAIN ROUTE`
"If we go off route, we lose time," he said.
The sentence landed dead in the air.
He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it left his mouth. It sounded cold. Mechanical. Like the kind of answer someone gave from behind a desk, not three walls away from something tearing people apart.
Claire looked at him as if she didn't recognize him for half a second.
"There's someone alive in there," she said.
Ryan was still staring, but now his focus had split. His head turned slightly, listening to something farther down the hall. His expression changed.
"Movement," he said under his breath.
Noah swore quietly. "Then we don't have time."
Claire didn't move. "We can at least check—"
Another sound came from the intersection ahead: not a voice this time, but the wet dragging scrape of something heavy shifting over carpet.
Julia's face went white. "We leave. Now."
The decision wasn't Ethan's. Not really. It belonged to the hallway, the timing, the thing making that sound, the raw arithmetic of distance and doors and seconds.
But he had said it first.
Claire stood frozen for one beat longer, then turned away from the closed office door with visible effort, like she was pulling something out of her own chest.
"Go," Ryan said.
They went.
No one ran. Running would have made too much noise. They moved fast, hard, every step deliberate and strained. Ethan could feel the shape of the unopened room behind him like a weight pressed between his shoulders.
At first there was only the sound of their shoes and breathing.
Then, from behind them, the voice screamed.
It was short. A single burst of terror so sharp it seemed to slice the hallway open.
After that came a thud, a crash, and a wet tearing sound Ethan would recognize for the rest of his life.
No one turned around.
Claire's hand tightened so hard on the first-aid kit strap that her knuckles blanched. Ryan kept his eyes forward, face set into something grim and furious. Noah's mouth had gone flat. Julia looked like she might be sick.
Ethan felt his stomach twist violently.
Blue text appeared at the edge of his vision, calm as ever.
`Directive completed.`
He almost stopped walking.
Not because of the words themselves. Because some part of him, some ugly and newly awakened part, had already understood what they meant before they appeared.
He kept moving.
No one spoke for the rest of the hall.
Only once, when they were nearly at the break room door, Claire looked back at him.
Her voice, when it came, was low enough that the others might not even have heard it.
"Did you know?"
Ethan opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Ryan shoved the break room door open. Noah slipped inside first to check it. Julia followed. Claire went in after them without waiting for an answer.
Ethan stood in the doorway for half a second longer, the blue text still hovering in the corner of his sight, and listened to the silence behind them where the screaming had stopped.
Then he stepped inside and closed the door.