from the conference room, stumbling through the dim fog that had descended over them all.
Weller looked around, saw Hawke and led Young to him. “Get her out,” Weller said, coughing into his sleeve. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“What?” Young said. “No—”
“Go! Now!” Weller left them standing there, stumbling through the smoke. Hawke grabbed Young’s arm, ignoring her protests, and dragged her toward the suite doors as the fire alarms started blaring. Vasco followed after they had entered the hall, along with Price, the systems analyst, who had helped Kessler to her feet and was half-carrying, half-dragging her along. Kessler’s eyes had lost focus, her face ghostly white, and blood still pulsed thickly between her fingers as she gripped her own neck with both hands. Vasco got his arm around her waist from the other side to help, and she sagged against him as the two men carried her toward the exit.
Young clutched Hawke’s arm, her nails digging into his skin through his shirt. The alarms were piercingly loud in the hallway, emergency strobe lights flashing. Someone was screaming about the building being on fire, but the sprinklers hadn’t triggered and the smoke thinned as Hawke took the lead past the broken elevator toward the stairs. He started to open the door, then remembered something about fire and heat and oxygen levels and touched the surface lightly, finding it cool.
He hit the bar and shouldered the door open, revealing a flood of other people from the building in the stairwell, rushing toward the lobby. Disjointed and terrifying images from 9/11 flashed through his mind as Hawke stood for a moment, trying to judge whether to wade in. There were at least five floors above them, maybe more, and the people coming down from above were out of control and panicked, taking the steps two and three at a time, stumbling into walls, several of them falling as the others ran past.
But they had no choice, and he entered the fray, trying to clear space for Vasco and Price, who were still carrying a now-unconscious Kessler between them. Young was shoved by a large man in a business suit who barreled down the stairs, and Hawke steadied her, keeping his own balance, hearing others coming from above and gaining fast.
They were three flights down when the lights went out.
The stairwell was plunged into blackness, and screams and shouts echoed up through the dark as bodies fell, bones or heads cracking against concrete as Hawke fumbled his way blindly to the wall, heart thudding fast as the emergency lights kicked on and bathed everything in red. Things speeding up now, he grabbed Young’s hand and led her down, abandoning any effort at restraint, moving as fast as he could go while still keeping his feet, stumbling around the same man in a suit who was lying on the stairs and groaning, trying to get up.
They reached the lobby, busting into open space. Hawke took several deep gasps of air, only now realizing he’d been holding his breath for most of the last two floors. The power was still on down here, the alarms screeching relentlessly. A group of about twenty people was already at the front doors, which seemed to be locked or jammed shut. Someone rattled the handles; a woman pounded on the glass and shouted that the building was going to fall, panic lighting up her voice into a high, keening wail, and Hawke thought of a mother he’d once tried to interview who had just lost her baby to a house fire. The sound of panic and despair was similar here, a repetition of words and actions where human restraint and logic disappeared into something mindless and instinctual.
Hawke looked around, didn’t spot the security guard or the building manager. There was nobody in charge. The entire world had suddenly gone insane. Who had locked the doors, and why? It made no sense.
Vasco and Price came out of the stairwell and put Kessler down on her back. Hawke’s stomach rolled greasily as he watched Kessler’s hands flop lifelessly away from her neck to reveal a deep slash like an ugly, lipless mouth, blood slowly bubbling up and oozing across the tile floor. Price’s shirt was soaked with red. He clapped his own hand down over her neck wound, pressing hard, and started shouting for someone to call 911.
Vasco was pacing, pressing his phone’s screen and cursing. “Check your cell,” he said to Young over the sound of the alarms, and she pulled out her own phone.
“No service,” she said.
“Check it again!” He whirled, questioning, to Hawke, who shook his head. He couldn’t take his eyes off Kessler, the blood spreading out below her body in spite of Price’s frantic efforts to stop it. Hawke thought of the electrocution of Bradbury; how had that much power come through the lamp’s cord? The breakers should have popped.
Vasco was in Hawke’s face, breathing hard and smelling like sweat. “Check your fucking cell,” he said.
“It’s bricked,” Hawke said. “Happened upstairs.”
“Fuck!” Vasco whirled again, suddenly looked around the lobby. “Where’s everybody else?”
“Bradbury’s dead,” Hawke said. “I saw him… he was electrocuted. Weller, I have no idea. He was supposed to be right behind us.”
“He’s still up there,” Young said. She looked at the door to the stairs. When she started toward it, Hawke grabbed her. Her pupils were dilated, her breathing fast and shallow.
“You can’t go back,” he said.
“He might be trapped,” she said. “We can’t just leave him. You don’t understand; they’re going to—”
“
More people came tumbling out of the stairs and into the lobby, none of them familiar; they barely glanced at Hawke and Young but went straight for the doors, joining the others. The noise level increased as more of them pounded at the glass, rattled the handles. “What the hell is going on out there?!” a man shouted. “Let us out!” And someone else screamed as a screech and rending crash came from somewhere on the street, some kind of accident.
The alarms were relentless, drilling into Hawke’s head. Young pulled herself away and he let her go, noticing something else strange; the security cameras mounted in the corners of the lobby that normally panned slowly back and forth were now moving deliberately, as if someone was controlling them.
He watched one of them swing around in his direction and stop, the camera’s unblinking eye fixed on his location. The effect was both eerie and menacing. There was nobody at the front desk, and he walked toward it, hypnotized by the eye, peering at the monitors behind the counter and watching himself reflected back through the camera.
The big man in the suit who had fallen in the stairwell came up next to him, shouldering him aside and breaking his trance. “Get the fuck out of the way,” the man snarled, panting hard. Hawke caught a glimpse of a purple, knotted welt above the man’s left eye as he picked up the desk chair and lifted it over his head, the chair wheels spinning as he turned and ran toward the lobby entrance.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” he shouted again, and the crowd parted just before the man heaved the chair at the glass doors.
The chair was heavy, solid metal and leather, and it caught the impact-resistant glass pane at its center, leading with one leg like a spear. The glass groaned and gave way with a tremendous, shattering crash, spilling out onto the sidewalk as the chair went tumbling and bouncing into the street.
It was like a dam had broken. The crowd surged forward, knocking away the rest of the glass that still hung from the frame, pushing and shoving one another to get through the opening.
Hawke looked around the lobby, trying to find familiar faces among the people who kept coming from the stairwell. He couldn’t see Weller or Young. Price was crouched over Kessler’s lifeless body, hands still clapped hard against her neck. A woman hit Price’s shoulder as she ran by, nearly knocking him over; he reached down and pulled Kessler to him, cradling her against his chest.
Hawke fought his way against the rushing crowd, pushing through to Price’s side. Price looked up at him, his face white with shock. “Call nine-one-one,” he said. “She’s bleeding. Someone has to help her.”
Kessler’s face was slack, her eyes open and fixed. The wound in her neck had stopped bubbling. “She’s gone,” Hawke said. He could smell smoke. “We need to get out of here.”
Price looked down at Kessler, shook his head. “No,” he said. But he set her gently down and let Hawke help him to his feet. His shirt was soaked in Kessler’s blood.
One arm around Price’s waist, Hawke followed the others out through the broken glass doors, away from the noise of the alarms and into hell.
