The second floor was future conference rooms and office suites, walls framed but not finished. A bathroom where the toilets sat wrapped in plastic.
“Third floor,” Snake Eyes said, reading the stenciled numbers on the landing as we kept moving.
We cleared the next few levels in a pattern that got old fast—framed-out hallways, plastic-wrapped toilets, dropped clipboards, somebody’s half-eaten food having gone down hard on a folding table. No voices. No footsteps. Just the sense that whatever had been breathing in here had already moved on.
We worked methodically. Each level had its own flavor of incompletion. Some had carpeting rolled out but not cut. Some had light fixtures stacked in boxes. On one, the walls were painted but the ceiling was still open, guts of the building exposed.
On the sixth floor, we found the first obvious mark.
A smear of blood along the stairwell wall at shoulder height. Not huge. Just a swipe. Like someone had grabbed for balance and left a part of themselves behind.
Beneath it, something small and dark lay on the step.
I crouched, keeping my gun hand up, and plucked it up with two fingers.
A gold earring. Delicate. Expensive. Shaped like a tiny vine with leaves.
“Roman’s wife?” Jersey asked.
“Or his daughter,” I said, turning it in the light. “Either way, not a mere construction worker’s.”
I slipped it into a vest pocket. Evidence. Proof. Something to hand back if we got the chance.
“You’re on six?” Miami’s voice came through. “Still can’t see anything. But a few cameras higher up aren’t out yet.”
“You sure?” Spade asked. “This place is a maze. They could be playing hide and seek with our heads.”
“Trust me,” Miami said. “If there was a crowd up there, I’d know. I’ve got cams on eight, ten, and twelve flickering. Looks like someone cut power to parts of the system but not others. But… fuck.”
My grip tightened. “What?”
“That van on the street side?” he said. “It’s gone.”
“Gone how?” Jersey asked.
“Gone as in I looked back at that camera to see if I could read a plate and now there’s just an empty curb,”Miami replied.
“Could’ve just driven off quietly,” Turnpike said. “These streets are a clusterfuck. You can slip away quick.”
“Or they’re on the way back with help,” I said.
We kept climbing.
Seven. Eight.
Every floor we stepped onto, I expected to hear something. A voice. A cry. A cough. The metallic clack of a gun being handled. Even rats. Something.
All we got was the steady hum of systems and the uneven thud of our own boots.
On nine, Snake Eyes held up a hand, head tilted.
We froze.
For a second, all I heard was my heartbeat in my ears.
Then, faintly, a metallic clink from somewhere above us. A door shutting. Or something being set down.
“Direction?” Priest whispered.
