The deadbolt bent first.
A short metal complaint under the handle. Then another.
Nia screamed into Joshua's shoulder.
"Move Rosa," he said.
Lucía and Idris got the cart deeper into the office, wheels jolting over broken tile seams until Rosa's body sat behind the service desk instead of in the line of the door. Rosa coughed wetly and turned her face into the cart rail.
Priya's eyes moved once around the room.
Desk.
Terminal.
Cart.
Cabinet.
One door.
No other way out.
The bald man hit the glass from the corridor.
"Open it!"
The wire-mesh pane shivered in the frame.
Abeni still had one arm around the surviving college boy. He kept trying to fold in on himself, chin to chest, eyes gone wrong with grief. She shoved him upright.
"Sit."
He didn't.
She slapped him.
His head snapped sideways. He stared at her.
"Sit," she said again.
He sat.
The office took another hit.
Joshua shifted Nia higher against his chest. Her face was hot, damp, furious. She had cried herself down into those ugly little hitching breaths that never lasted.
Tomasz looked from the door to the terminal and back again. "So what now?"
No one answered him.
He tried again. "We just stand here?"
Priya pointed to the far side of the room. "Anybody not helping stays behind the desk and the carts."
Tomasz looked at Joshua. "That includes him?"
Joshua turned his head just enough.
Tomasz looked away.
Outside, the bald man swung something metal at the glass again. A white crack ran from one corner of the pane toward the middle.
The old man in the brown coat started praying under his breath. The teenager had both hands over her mouth. Hoodie kid pulled her down lower behind the desk and kept one arm braced around the crawling woman so she wouldn't tip off her bad leg.
Lucía checked Rosa's pulse again. Her fingers stayed there a second too long.
Still alive.
Barely.
From the corridor, right on the other side of the crack, Dae-hyun's voice said, low and close:
"Move."
Lucía shut her eyes once.
Joshua didn't.
"He ain't out there," he said.
That held the room together for one beat.
Then the bald man hit the pane again.
This time the lower corner blew inward. Wired glass bent into jagged metal teeth. Cool corridor air slid through the hole.
A hand almost came through, then pulled back. Testing.
The surviving college boy made a panicked sound and started to rise.
Abeni shoved him back against the floor with one palm on his chest. "Stay."
"He's coming in—"
"No shit."
"Abeni—"
"Stay down."
Nia started crying again.
Not loud at first. Then harder.
Borrowed Voice finally spoke.
In Rosa's voice.
Thin. Weak. Half-breathless.
"Lucía."
Lucía's whole body snapped toward the hole.
Priya caught it. "Don't."
Lucía dragged her eyes back to the real Rosa in the cart. Rosa coughed blood into her own shoulder.
That was enough.
The bald man laughed from the corridor. "You hear that? You all hear that?"
Joshua stepped half a pace closer to the door.
The knob rattled in the loosened lock. The wood flexed inward and sprang back. Someone outside had found the weak points.
Abeni left the college boy and came up beside Joshua.
He glanced at her.
"You got the baby," she said.
That was all.
He looked back at the door. "Stay behind me."
"No."
The bald man shoved a metal bracket through the hole, reaching for the deadbolt.
Idris moved fast, snatched open the shallow side cabinet, and slammed the drawer shut across the bracket. The tool clanged, trapped for half a second. The hand outside yanked it back with a curse.
The next swing blew more glass inward.
Joshua turned his body so Nia was fully covered against his chest.
Glass ticked off his shoulder, his back, the desk, the floor. The teenager shrieked. The nurse flinched hard enough to bang her hip against the wall.
Through the widened break, Joshua saw the bald man's face.
Sweat. Blood already drying under one eye. Too much brightness in the stare.
He had a metal floor bracket in his hand.
He saw Nia and smiled.
Joshua moved before the thought finished.
The hole-punch drove through the opening straight at the man's face. The bald man jerked back, but not enough. Metal scraped across his cheekbone and opened a raw red line under his eye.
He screamed and stumbled sideways.
Something pale slid into the opening behind him.
Borrowed Voice.
Smoke hood.
Maintenance jacket.
Blade down at its side.
The bald man glanced back at it and lost all of his swagger at once. He moved away from the door without meaning to.
Borrowed Voice looked through the broken pane.
At Joshua.
At Nia.
At Abeni.
Then it spoke in Abeni's voice.
"Move."
Abeni didn't take her eyes off it. "Eat shit."
The bald man laughed through blood and pain. Borrowed Voice didn't react.
Its blade came through the hole in a straight low thrust.
Joshua saw the angle.
Not him.
The nurse.
She was still at the wall, half-collapsed beside the mechanism, side exposed.
Abeni moved first.
One hard step and a shoulder-turn. She hit the nurse square in the chest and threw her off the line of the blade. Steel punched through the space where her throat had been and bit into drywall instead.
The nurse hit the floor sobbing.
Borrowed Voice pulled the blade back.
The office breathed once, hard and ugly.
Priya snapped, "Up. Everybody up. We move the second that door gives us anything."
Idris was already at the terminal. The screen had changed.
HOTEL UTILITY CLEARED
SECTION ROUTE LOCK: 1 / 3
MAINT. OFFICE — UPPER LEVEL ROUTE AVAILABLE
"There," he said. "Upper level. That's next."
"Where?" Priya asked.
Idris pointed to the small line map on the terminal. "Back through the corridor, north junction, service stairs."
Joshua looked at him. "That the same stairs the other one got taken at?"
"No. Different sector."
"Sure."
Idris looked like he wanted to say more. Didn't.
The bald man came back into view outside, angrier now.
"You all are dead in there."
He hit the frame with the bracket again.
Borrowed Voice stayed just out of line. Watching.
Nia cried harder.
Joshua bounced her once with the arm under her body and looked at the room. Rosa in the cart. Crawling woman barely standing. Old man, nurse, teenager, businesswoman, Tomasz, the rest of the broken survivors. One door between all of them and the corridor.
"Priya."
She looked at him.
"We can't wait for it to come all the way in."
"I know."
She turned. "Lucía, Idris, Rosa first. Hoodie kid, keep the limping one with you. Abeni, get the nurse moving. Old man, you stay on your feet or somebody leaves you. Tomasz—"
"What?"
"Don't do anything selfish in the next ten seconds."
Tomasz stared at her. "That isn't an order."
"It's the only warning you're getting."
The bald man rammed the bracket through the hole again, lower this time. Borrowed Voice stepped in with him and drove a shoulder into the door from the outside.
Wood cracked.
The deadbolt tore another half inch out of the frame.
The office door opened and slammed back shut.
Not enough yet.
Joshua planted himself directly in front of it.
The hole-punch sat cold and solid in his hand.
Lucía looked at him. "You can't do this holding her."
He didn't look away from the door. "Watch me."
The bald man laughed. "You really think that baby's gonna live?"
Joshua felt that line land. Let it.
Then he said, "Come say it closer."
The bald man started forward.
Borrowed Voice stayed where it was.
That stopped the man. He flicked one glance at the hooded thing beside him and thought better of being first again.
Coward.
The crack in the doorframe widened. Screws squealed.
Nia was crying full out now.
Borrowed Voice tilted its head toward her.
Then it spoke in Joshua's voice.
Perfect.
Calm.
"Drop her."
The room went still around him.
Joshua felt Xiomara's cloth against the side of his neck under the hoodie. Felt Nia's heat in his arm. Felt Dae-hyun's blood stiff on his sleeve. Felt the deadbolt pulling loose under the knob.
He smiled a little.
Not for show. The kind of smile that came when he was tired enough to stop pretending he was not angry.
"Come take her."
The door hit inward again.
This time it opened almost a foot.
A hand came through.
Joshua brought the hole-punch down on the knuckles.
Bone met metal with a crack.
The bald man jerked back screaming.
Borrowed Voice hit the door in the same beat, and the frame blew wider.
Half-open now.
Enough for Lucía to drag Rosa's cart if they committed.
Enough for Borrowed Voice to stab through if they hesitated.
Priya moved first. "Now."
Lucía and Idris heaved Rosa's cart toward the opening.
The old man nearly tripped over the front wheel and had to catch himself on the wall. Hoodie kid shoved the crawling woman forward on her bad leg. The teenager and businesswoman scrambled after them. The nurse was crying too hard to stand straight.
Abeni got both hands under her arms and dragged her.
Joshua stepped into the gap between the door and the frame and kept his body there.
Borrowed Voice hit him with the flat of one shoulder.
Hard.
He held.
Nia screamed against his chest.
The killer's blade flashed up low at his side.
Abeni saw it over the nurse's shoulder.
Lucía saw Rosa's cart snag on the threshold.
Everything happened at once.
Lucía let go of the cart with one hand to wrench the front wheel free.
Borrowed Voice shifted the blade.
Not for Joshua anymore.
For Lucía.
Abeni dropped the nurse.
One step.
No speech.
She hit Lucía full in the shoulder and knocked her clear of the opening.
The blade went into Abeni instead.
Low.
Hard.
Her body folded around it.
Lucía slammed into the desk corner and stared.
The knife came back out red.
Abeni got one hand on the doorframe before her knees fully gave.
She sucked one broken breath through her teeth and looked at Lucía.
Rosa's cart was still stuck half across the threshold.
Lucía was still staring at the blood spreading through Abeni's shirt.
Abeni's face had already gone pale around the mouth.
"Move Rosa," she said.
Lucía moved.