“We don’t leave her,” I say, glancing toward Lila.
Maria follows my gaze. Her attention turns to Lila for a moment, studying the tight set of her shoulders and the restless energy she’s trying to contain.
Lila’s mouth tightens, but she nods.
Maria moves toward the door and listens first, her head tilted, one hand braced against the metal. I watch the line of her shoulders as she waits. It occurs to me suddenly that I know almost nothing about her beyond her name and the fact that she has chosen this moment, this risk, and us. That feels like a dangerous kind of intimacy. People step into your life for five minutes and can still leave scars that stay forever.
She turns back toward us. “Now.”
The key is already in her pocket. Her hands shake once as she draws it out and slides it into the lock. The click is loud, echoing in the small room. Then the door opens.
The corridor beyond is narrow and washed in cold industrial light, making everything look slightly colorless. Concrete floor. Cinderblock walls. A steel utility cart parked crookedly near the far corner. For a heartbeat, none of us moves. Then Maria steps out first, and Lila and I follow close behind her.
The air outside the room smells different. Grease, dust, faint chemical cleaner, and underneath all of it the metallic tang of old blood that no one ever fully scrubs out of places like this. Somewhere deeper in the building, a forklift beeps in reverse. Voices rise briefly, then disappear again behind a door that slams hard enough to shudder the frame beside us.
Maria lifts one hand, signaling us to stay close. We move quickly down the corridor. My boots make almost no sound against the floor, but I hear everything else with punishing clarity. The pullof my own breathing. Lila’s breath beside me, slightly uneven. The rustle of Maria’s jacket. The far-off grind of a train outside the building. Every sound feels too loud and exposed.
At the end of the corridor, Maria turns us left through a narrow service passage where pipes run along the ceiling, and the light dims to a yellowed half-glow. The floor here is rougher, stained darker in places, and cold air leaks through somewhere ahead.
“That’s the bay,” Maria whispers.
We keep moving.
A man’s voice rises somewhere behind us, too far away to make out the words, but close enough that all three of us stiffen at once. Maria doesn’t turn around. She picks up her pace and reaches the end of the passage a second later.
The loading bay opens in front of us. The space is larger than I expected, with a high ceiling crossed by metal beams and industrial lights hanging in rows overhead. One loading door is halfway open, letting in a slice of night so black it looks solid. Crates are stacked along one wall. A pallet jack sits abandoned beside a line of shrink-wrapped boxes. Beyond the open door, I can see the outline of fencing and the suggestion of train cars farther back in the dark.
For one impossible second, I think this might actually work.
Maria points toward the side exit. “There.”
The door is set into the far wall beside a rack of safety vests and dented hard hats. Lila starts toward it first. Then a voice cuts through the bay.
“Hey.”
Everything stops.
A guard steps out from behind one of the stacked pallets, his expression moving from confusion to recognition so quickly it barely feels like a transition. His hand goes to the gun at his side.
Maria moves before I do.
She shoves me hard enough that I stagger sideways, my shoulder striking the edge of a crate, and the first shot cracks through the bay an instant later. The sound is enormous in the enclosed space. My ears ring and Lila screams.
Maria jerks.
She stays upright briefly, her body reacting before her mind can catch up. Then the key slips from her hand, clattering against the concrete as her knees give out and she drops hard to the floor. Blood blooms across the front of her shirt.
“No!” The word tears out of me before I can stop it.
The guard raises the gun again. Lila runs toward me instead of the door. That mistake costs us.
The second shot hits her high in the side, just below the ribs. She folds with a sharp, shocked cry, one hand flying to the wound as she crumples against the floor.
Everything after that fractures into motion. I drop beside Lila, grabbing her under the arms and trying to pull her toward the stacked crates while more shouting erupts from somewhere beyond the loading bay. Boots pound against the floor. A door slams open. Men are running now, closing in fast.
“Get up,” I beg, but her face has gone white with pain, and her fingers are already slick with blood.
Maria is still alive. I know it because I hear the wet, shallow drag of her breathing. She turns her head toward me with obvious effort, her face drained of color, and for one terrible second, our eyes meet across the floor.
