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Then the lights go out.

It's completely dark. I hold my hand in front of my face and can’t see it. I keep blinking, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

I stand very still with my hand flat on the steel.

Okay.

I'm not stupid. I've been in this building a week. I've been locked in one room already, and I spent four days telling myself it was an old door and bad linkage, and last night Tav put his finger on a bolt somebody cut most of the way through. A door that won't open from the inside isn't an accident in this building anymore. Not twice.

Somebody did this. To me. Again.

"You son of a bitch," I tell the door.

I get my phone out of my back pocket and turn on the flashlight. The beam is thin and white and makes the shelves jump out of the dark at me. I've got sixty-one percent battery. I've got one bar.

I call William. It rings once, cuts out, and the bar disappears.

I put the phone in my teeth, go straight to the emergency box, and pull the little metal latch. The door of the box swings open.

It's empty.

Not empty like somebody forgot to restock it. I've restocked first-aid kits behind a bar, and I know what that looks like. This box has three steel spring clips on the back panel, the kind that hold a tool, a flashlight, a radio, and they're all empty. On the inside of the door, there's a laminated card with a diagram of each item and where it goes. EMERGENCY RELEASE KEY. RADIO, CH. 4. LIGHT.

And on the bottom of the box, lying on its side, there's a black zip tie. A blade has sliced clean through it. Next to it, fresh crescent-shaped scrapes around the two screw heads expose bright metal, like somebody slipped with a screwdriver.

I look at that for a long time.

Then I do what Tav did. I take a picture of it.

That's when I notice the quiet.

There's been a hum the whole time. I didn't notice it until it stopped: the air handlers, the low steady breath of the building, pushing air through the vents in the ceiling. Now it's gone. The vault is completely silent. Nothing moves. The air feels thick and close and still, the way a car does in a parking lot in August.

I know a room this size doesn't run out of air in an hour. My lungs don't care.

I kick the nearest filing cabinet, hard enough to hurt my toes.

I bang on the door and yell until I'm hoarse. Nobody comes.

My phone says 8:09. Then 8:15.

I sit down on the floor with my back against the door and my phone's light pointed at the empty box, so I don't have to look at the dark.

He's waiting on the roof, I think. He's going to think I didn't come.

At 8:31, something slams into the door hard enough to jolt me forward. I scramble away on my hands and knees, and then I hear it, through four inches of steel, very low.

"Tara Iverson."

I've never been so glad to hear my own name.

"I'm here!" My voice cracks. "I'm in here! The release doesn't work, and the lights went out, and the air's off..."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. I'm fine. I'm pissed."

There's a pause. When he speaks again, his voice is calm and very even. "Go to the back of the room. All the way back, past the shelves. Get behind something heavy and stay there until I tell you."