I looked over her head, taking stock of the office.
Two monitors hung on the wall—one dead with static, the other cycling through a shaking camera feed from the garage ramp. On the grainy screen, I counted shapes. Five. Seven. More coming up from the lower levels. A desk. A rack of keys. An emergency radio in its cradle, power light a steady red—dead.
The stale smell of old coffee cut through the sharp, copper tang of blood drying on my clothes.
Outside, the pounding continued. Patient. Tireless. No frustration in it, no flagging—just the same force applied again and again, like a heart beating.
I rested my head against the cold steel and closed my eyes, trying to slow my breathing to something that felt like calm. I couldn’t quite get there.
Fiona’s heartbeat hammered against my chest—fast and desperate—and I focused on it, counting the beats, willing it to slow even as my own refused.
“Not like this,” I murmured against her hair.
She exhaled a long, shaking breath and pressed closer without a word.
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling.
If the streets of Boston already looked like this, then this room was the safest place on earth, yet every instinct told me it was already a tomb. We couldn’t stay here. The door wouldn’t hold forever.
Three
Jackpot. Enough Ammo To Fill My Magazines -Finn
“How far is your place from here?” I asked, still holding her.
Fiona didn’t answer right away. Outside the door, something slammed into the metal.
BANG.
She flinched against me, pulling back enough to meet my gaze. Her eyes, swollen, and her face, blotchy and stiff from crying, showed grime on her cheeks that had cracked as it dried.
“Four blocks,” she rasped, her voice raw. “My room’s on Hanover.”
I pulled up the city map I’d saved to my phone, relieved it was accessible offline, and found her street. “Doable. The hotel was farther.”
“You came all the way here on foot?” Disbelief sharpened her voice, cutting through her exhaustion. “Finn, the streets are insane.”
“Didn’t have much choice. Everything’s gridlocked.” I let out a slow breath. “The streets are a parking lot.”
Her eyes scanned my face, neck, and arms—the way a doctor searches for injury, or simply the way she always had, looking for what I wasn’t saying.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. A couple of close calls. I’m good.”
Another thud rattled the door behind me, and we both jumped.
Three or four seconds of silence passed, then a soft drag against the steel. A pause, followed by a blunt impact and a low, wet, continuous sound underneath it.
Fiona swallowed hard, her gaze snapping back to mine.
“They were patients,” she whispered, as if in a daze. “The first ones.”
I studied her face. “What do you mean?”
“They brought them in this morning.” A tremor ran through her voice, but she forced it down, the doctor in her taking over. “From an incident downtown. The report said violent attacks, but it was wrong.” She paused, looking lost in thought. “One of them bit a nurse before security could restrain him.”
I glanced at the door, the scraping sound outside a constant reminder. “And the nurse?”
