The next impact made Mara's decision everyone's.
The locker bent inward with a long metallic groan. It did not break, but the gap beside the barricaded door widened by the width of two fingers, and Daren felt the shift through his shoulder before anyone else saw it.
"Now," he said.
Mara was already moving.
"Eli, take what we can carry. Not everything. Jonas, with me. Lena—"
"No."
The word came out of Lena before Mara could finish.
Her hands were still on Kael's side. The gauze beneath them had hardened around the sealed wound, stiff with blood and something darker, and her fingers had gone numb from holding pressure too long.
She did not lift them.
"He just stopped dying."
No one corrected her.
No one had the courage.
The locker screamed again as something struck it from the hall. Daren shoved back, his boot sliding through blood and broken glass.
"He can stop dying somewhere else," he snapped.
Lena looked at him.
For one second, her face emptied so completely that Daren seemed to regret the words before they finished reaching her.
He did not apologize.
There was no room left in the night for that kind of thing.
Mara stepped between them, sword angled low.
"If we stay, the door chooses when we move."
"If we move him wrong, he opens again."
Jonas was staring at Kael.
Not at the wound this time.
At his hand.
"Lena."
She did not look away from Daren.
"Not now."
"Lena."
This time, something in Jonas's voice made her turn.
Kael's right hand had moved.
Not toward the broken jar.
Not toward the empty glass.
Down.
His fingers pressed against the wooden panel beneath him, slow and shaking, trying to push against a weight his body had not remembered owning for hours.
His face had gone grey with the effort. His mouth opened, and for a moment nothing came out but breath.
Then one word scraped free.
"Help."
Lena froze.
It was not strong. It was not brave. It was not enough to make him safe.
But it was him.
And Mara saw the difference at the same time Lena did.
"Daren."
"I'm holding the door."
"Then stop holding it badly and help us leave."
Daren cursed under his breath.
Another blow hit the locker, smaller this time and farther away. Whatever pressed from the hall had been forced back by the axe handle, or had lost interest, or was gathering itself for another try.
None of them trusted the difference.
He shifted his weight off the locker for half a heartbeat. It slid inward an inch before he slammed it back with his hip.
"Thirty seconds."
"Take twenty," Mara said.
Eli had not moved. The bent IV pole was still raised in both hands, and he stood beneath the torn-open vent with his eyes wide, waiting for something to drop through it again.
"Eli."
He flinched.
Mara pointed with her sword.
"Bag. Cloth. Anything sealed. Leave the glass."
"What about the jar?"
"No."
The answer came from Mara, Lena, Jonas, and Kael at once.
Kael's was barely sound, but it reached them.
Eli swallowed and turned away from the empty glass as if it had teeth. He grabbed the half-torn supply bag from beneath the counter and shoved in a roll of gauze, two packets of disinfectant wipes, a cracked bottle he did not have time to read, and a plastic water bottle with blood on the side but the cap still sealed.
His hands shook so badly that he dropped the bottle once.
Jonas picked it up before it rolled toward the broken jar.
"Enough," Mara said.
"It's not enough."
"It never is."
That ended the argument because everyone knew it was true.
Lena finally lifted one hand from Kael's side.
The wound did not open.
She stared at it.
The gauze pulled slightly where her palm left, but no fresh blood welled beneath it. The seal held, badly and wrongly, like flesh forced to remember a shape it had not earned back yet.
But it held.
Her breath caught.
Kael saw her expression and understood just enough of it to be afraid.
"Bad?" he whispered.
Lena looked at him.
A dozen answers crossed her face.
"Yes," she said.
Then, after one beat, she added, "Better."
That seemed to cost her more than the first word.
Kael closed his eyes, not from relief, but from the effort of staying inside his own body.
Daren left the locker.
The barricade immediately shifted, but Mara was there before it could fall inward, shoulder against metal, sword still in one hand.
The locker moved less under her than it had under Daren.
Not because she was stronger.
Because she had found the angle.
"Move," she said.
Daren reached Kael in three steps. He looked down once, and his face did not soften.
Good.
Kael did not think he could survive softness right now.
"Right side," Lena said.
"I can see that."
"Not his left arm."
"I can see that too."
"His ribs—"
"Lena."
Daren's voice cut hard, but not cruel.
"I'm going to hurt him. There isn't a version where I don't."
Lena hated him for saying it.
Then she moved to help.
Jonas took the other side, careful where Daren was blunt. Between the two of them, they slid Kael toward the edge of the wooden panel.
Pain rose so fast his vision went white.
His right hand clawed at Daren's sleeve. His left arm hung uselessly, bright and wrong, a thing attached to him only by accident. The sealed wound pulled beneath the gauze with a deep, tearing pressure that did not quite become tearing.
Not yet.
"Stop," Lena said.
"No," Kael breathed.
The word surprised everyone, including him.
His stomach turned. His chest locked. For one awful second, he felt certain something inside him would split apart and spill out between Lena's fingers.
It did not.
The pain stayed.
The wound held.
Kael understood both facts with equal terror.
Daren hooked an arm under his right shoulder, and Jonas took his weight from the other side without touching the broken arm. Lena stayed close, one hand hovering near his side, ready to become pressure again if the wound changed its mind.
"On three," Jonas said.
Daren ignored him and lifted.
Kael came off the panel with a sound that emptied the room.
His feet hit the floor and failed at once. For one breath, he was only weight, heavy and loose between Daren and Jonas, his head dipping forward as if his neck had forgotten its purpose.
Then his right foot dragged beneath him, found tile, slipped in blood, and caught again.
His left followed late.
Not standing.
Not really.
But not falling.
Lena stared.
Daren felt it too, because his grip tightened.
"Well," he muttered. "That's new."
Kael tried to laugh.
It became a cough.
The cough bent him forward hard enough that he nearly tore out of their hands. Lena caught the gauze at his side, not pressing, only bracing, eyes fixed on the stain.
No fresh blood spread beneath it.
"Move," Mara said from the door.
The locker jerked again. Her shoulder shifted with it, and this time the metal did not come all the way back.
Eli slung the supply bag over one shoulder and grabbed the IV pole again. He looked at the vent, then at Kael, then at the door.
"I don't know where to stand."
"Behind us," Mara said.
"Which us?"
"All of us."
He nodded too fast.
Daren half-dragged, half-carried Kael toward the exit while Jonas adjusted with every step, murmuring warnings that no one had the breath to answer.
"Left foot. Glass. Lift. Again."
Kael heard the words from far away. His body answered some of them, but not all.
Every step shook loose a different injury. His ribs pulled, his left arm burned, and the seam at his side throbbed with a cold pressure that did not match the heat of his skin.
Under it all, deeper and quieter, the hunger remained.
It did not pull him anywhere. It did not ask for the glass. It only watched from beneath his ribs while his heart kept moving around it.
Thock.
Step.
Thock.
Pain.
Thock.
Still here.
They reached the barricade.
Mara looked at Daren.
"Ready?"
"No."
"Good."
She pulled away from the locker. Daren shifted Kael's weight onto Jonas for half a second and drove his boot into the metal side. The locker scraped outward, just far enough to free the door from the bent edge.
Something beyond it struck again at the same moment.
The door slammed inward.
Mara met the opening with her sword.
Not a swing.
A threat.
The blade came up into the gap, and whatever pressed from outside stopped before the edge touched it.
For one second, the hall beyond was only dark shape and breath. Then a thin limb withdrew into the corridor.
Not fleeing.
Making space.
Mara did not chase it.
"Go."
Daren moved first because he had Kael. Jonas matched him badly and almost tripped over the threshold. Kael's shoulder struck the doorframe, and pain burst through him so cleanly that his legs vanished beneath him.
Daren caught him with a grunt.
"Stay up."
"Trying," Kael whispered.
"Try harder."
Lena followed close enough that her shoulder brushed Kael's back. Eli came after her with the IV pole raised and the supply bag bouncing against his hip.
Mara left last. She did not turn her back on the break room until everyone else had crossed the threshold.
The hall smelled worse than before, thick with smoke, dust, wet plaster, and the sour trace of old fear. The thing that had been pressing at the door was gone, or hidden, or waiting somewhere beyond the reach of the flickering emergency light.
Mara looked left.
Then right.
Nothing moved.
That should have helped.
It did not.
"Left," Jonas said.
Mara glanced at him.
"Why?"
He pointed down the corridor with two fingers.
"Less blood."
Daren barked something close to a laugh.
"That's our standard now?"
"Yes," Jonas said.
No one had a better one, so they went left.
The corridor forced them into a slow line. Mara walked ahead with her sword low, checking each doorway before she passed it. Daren and Jonas carried Kael between them. Lena kept to Kael's injured side, one hand never more than an inch from the gauze. Eli stayed behind, turning every few steps to watch the break room door.
The door did not follow them.
The vent did not follow them.
The empty jar did not follow them.
Kael wished that mattered.
His breath came better than before. Not well, and never without pain, but better. Each inhale still hurt, yet it no longer felt like his body had to decide whether to allow the next one.
The difference was small enough to be terrifying and obvious enough that Lena noticed.
Of course she did.
"You're breathing easier."
Kael tried to look at her. The motion pulled at his side and made him regret having a neck.
"Am I?"
"Yes."
She sounded angry about it.
He understood.
He was not sure he liked it either.
They passed an open office. Inside, a desk had been shoved against the window, and a broken chair lay beneath it. Someone had written HELP on the wall in black marker, then crossed it out so violently the plaster had split beneath the lines.
Eli stopped looking at the break room after that.
A few steps later, Kael's right knee buckled.
Daren hauled him back up before he hit the floor.
"Still with us?"
Kael tasted blood that might have been old.
"Unfortunately."
Daren looked at him.
For half a second, his mouth twitched.
Then another sound came from somewhere behind them.
A scrape.
Not close.
Not far enough.
Mara raised her hand, and everyone stopped.
Kael swayed between Daren and Jonas. The hallway stretched ahead in broken strips of emergency light. A ceiling panel hung loose, and water dripped somewhere steadily enough to sound intentional.
One drop.
Another.
Another.
Eli whispered, "Please tell me that's a pipe."
"No," Mara said.
Eli's face went pale.
"I don't know," she added.
"That was worse."
"It was honest."
The scrape did not repeat. Mara waited three breaths before she moved again.
They did not speak for a while after that.
The campus around them felt less like a place than a body learning which wounds were fatal. Doors hung open like loose teeth. Lockers leaned at angles. Papers stuck to wet tile. A vending machine blinked between two prices, unable to decide what anything cost now.
Kael tried not to look too long at the bodies.
Some were human, some were not, and some had been both badly enough that guessing felt cruel.
He focused on feet instead. Mara's boots. Daren's heavy steps. Jonas adjusting around every piece of glass. Lena's shoes slipping once, then catching. Eli's uneven shuffle behind them. His own right foot dragging and his left following late.
A pattern.
Almost a march.
Almost not.
They turned at the end of the corridor and found a row of classroom doors.
Most were open. One had blood beneath it. One had the handle torn off. One had scratch marks around the frame from the inside.
Mara stopped at the fourth.
It was closed. There was no blood under the gap, no sound behind it, and no vent above it, only a flat square of ceiling tile stained brown at the corner.
Daren shifted Kael's weight and exhaled through his teeth.
"If this one has teeth, I'm quitting."
"No one is accepting resignations," Mara said.
She put her ear near the door and waited.
Nothing.
Then she tried the handle.
Locked.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Lena said, "Good."
Daren looked at her.
"Locked is good?"
"Locked means something didn't open it already."
Daren considered that.
"Fine. I hate that it makes sense."
Mara stepped back.
"Quietly if we can."
Daren looked at the axe in his hand, then at the lock, then at Kael.
"Quietly is going to be a matter of opinion."
Kael's hand tightened weakly around his sleeve.
"Wait."
Everyone looked at him.
He hated that too.
He nodded toward Eli.
"Card."
Eli blinked.
"What?"
"Student card."
For one second, Eli only stared. Then he fumbled at the lanyard still half-hidden under his ruined hoodie.
"My card doesn't open classrooms."
Kael's eyes shifted to the door. A sliver of the latch showed between the old door and the warped frame.
"Door latch," Kael breathed.
Jonas understood first.
"Maybe."
Eli looked from one face to another, then down at the plastic card in his hand.
"This is a terrible use of tuition."
No one laughed, but something in the hall changed for half a second.
It was not safety.
Not hope.
Just enough room for a stupid sentence to exist.
Eli slid the card between the door and the frame while Mara held the handle. It took three tries. On the second, the card bent so hard he nearly gave up. On the third, the latch clicked.
Everyone froze.
The sound was too small to deserve that much fear, but it got it anyway.
Mara opened the door an inch.
Dark classroom air breathed out, carrying dust, dry marker, and nothing rotten.
She opened it wider.
Rows of desks waited inside, crooked and empty. A projector hung from the ceiling. Posters about exam schedules curled on the walls. Someone had left a half-eaten sandwich on the teacher's desk before the world ended, and somehow that was worse than another body would have been.
Mara stepped in first. She checked the corners, beneath the desks, and the ceiling before she lowered the sword.
"Inside."
Daren and Jonas carried Kael over the threshold.
This time, when his feet crossed into the room, they did not give out. They trembled, dragged, and needed Daren and Jonas to keep him upright, but they remained beneath him.
Lena saw.
So did Mara.
No one said anything.
They lowered him into the space between the teacher's desk and the wall, not onto the floor at first because Lena said no, then onto two pushed-together chair cushions because that was the best the old world had left them.
Kael sat badly. His breath shook, and his right hand stayed clenched around nothing.
But he was sitting.
Not lying flat.
Not strapped to a wooden panel.
Sitting.
Eli shut the classroom door. Jonas helped Daren drag a desk in front of it, then another, then a filing cabinet from the corner, empty enough to move and heavy enough to matter. Mara watched the hallway through the narrowing gap until the last inch disappeared.
Only after the door was blocked did anyone lower their weapons.
No one sat at first.
Their bodies did not trust the idea.
Then Eli slid down the wall and covered his face with both hands. Daren leaned on the axe. Jonas stood in the center of the room, staring at the desks as if their arrangement might explain what came next.
Lena knelt in front of Kael and checked the gauze.
No fresh spread.
Still bad.
Still closed.
Her fingers hovered over the black stain and did not touch it.
Kael watched her watching him.
"How bad?" he asked.
Lena's mouth pressed thin.
"Bad."
He waited.
She exhaled.
"Better than it should be."
Mara turned from the door.
"That is not the same as good."
"No," Lena said.
Her eyes stayed on the wound.
"It really isn't."
For a while, the room had only breathing, the soft drip somewhere beyond the wall, and the single tap of Daren's axe handle against the floor before he stopped it with his boot.
Then Mara looked at the sealed water bottle in Eli's bag.
"One room," she said. "A few hours if we are lucky. Then water. Food. Medicine. Clean cloth. Anything that helps him stay closed."
Eli lowered his hands from his face.
"Anything that helps all of us stay closed would be nice."
Mara nodded once.
"That too."
Kael closed his eyes.
The room smelled like dust and old lessons. There was no blood under the door, no vent above him, and no glass waiting beneath his hand.
For now, that had to be enough.
Under his ribs, the quiet hunger curled smaller.
Thock.
It did not ask.
Thock.
Kael did not answer.
Thock.
And for the first time since the clinic, he was moved by hands instead of carried by wood.