Lucía caught the cart handle and heaved.
The wheel came free of the splintered frame with a violent jerk. Rosa's body rolled forward in the cart, head knocking lightly against the side rail. She made a wet sound in her throat and sagged again.
"Go," Abeni said.
Her hand was over the wound now. Blood was already sliding between her fingers and down the front of her shirt.
Joshua kept himself in the doorway with Nia tucked tight against his chest. Borrowed Voice stood on the other side of the broken glass, close enough that the white hood filled half the opening when it leaned in. The blade in its hand was red.
The bald man had given them space again. He was out in the corridor somewhere to the side, cursing under his breath and breathing too hard.
Priya shoved the old man ahead of her. "Move."
Hoodie kid dragged the crawling woman through after Rosa's cart. The teenager stumbled, caught herself on the doorframe, and nearly went down again. The businesswoman yanked her upright by the sleeve and kept moving. Tomasz slipped through the gap with his shoulders turned, eyes already searching ahead for someplace to put other people between him and whatever came next.
The nurse was still on her knees against the wall.
Abeni hooked one hand under the woman's arm and hauled.
The nurse cried out and came up crooked, half hanging on her.
"Abeni," Lucía said.
"Take the cart."
Lucía took the cart.
No argument left in her now. Just motion.
Idris was already outside the office looking for the north junction stairs he'd called. His head kept turning in short, angry cuts, checking signs, checking corners, checking whether the route the terminal gave them was another joke.
Joshua backed out last.
Borrowed Voice moved with him.
Nia screamed when the killer's shoulder hit the door again. The frame jumped against Joshua's back. He slammed the hole-punch through the broken pane at the shape of the hood and felt it scrape cloth and something harder underneath. The killer's head turned with the hit but did not snap away.
It looked at him through the eye cuts.
Then it said, in Xiomara's voice, soft enough that nobody else could've caught all of it under the scraping wheels and crying:
"You can't carry all of them."
Joshua drove the hole-punch into the frame between them and shoved off the doorway hard enough to clear it in one step.
Then he was in the hall.
Idris pointed left. "There."
A green-painted service sign hung half loose above a narrow stairwell door farther down the corridor.
NORTH ACCESS / UPPER SERVICE
Priya moved first. Lucía and Rosa's cart behind her. Hoodie kid and the crawling woman next. The businesswoman had the teenager by the wrist now. Tomasz was near the front where he thought danger would reach last. The old man and the nurse stumbled in the middle. Abeni came out of the office with one arm around the nurse and her other hand pressed flat to her stomach.
Blood marked every step.
Borrowed Voice hit the office door from behind them.
The slab banged wide on the ruined lock, rebounded, and slammed the wall. The sound snapped through the corridor and sent everybody moving faster.
Joshua looked back once.
The killer was coming through the office opening now, not rushed, not theatrical. It stepped over broken glass and the bent cabinet drawer without breaking stride. The bald man showed himself again a few paces behind it, one hand over his cut cheek, bracket still hanging from the other hand. He was keeping his distance from the hooded thing now.
Smart.
Late.
Joshua turned and ran the few steps to the stairwell door.
Idris was there already with Rosa's badge at the access box. The reader flashed amber, then red.
"Again," Priya said.
"I am."
He swiped it slower. The box clicked green.
He yanked the door open.
Warm air hit them from the stairwell, then changed in the same second.
The whole shaft pulled one long breath upward.
It came hard enough to lift loose hair off foreheads, to drag the stale corridor smell out of their mouths and replace it with hot concrete, dust, old grease, and the deeper mechanical smell of something waking up in the bones of the place.
That stopped half the group for exactly the wrong second.
Joshua felt it too. The building had been damp and dead and wrong before. Now it felt like something farther inside had started paying attention.
The lights in the stairwell flickered from dead yellow to a harsher white.
Deep overhead, somewhere beyond sight, metal rolled across metal with a long shuddering clack.
"Move," Priya snapped.
Rosa's cart hit the first stair and jammed.
Lucía swore.
Idris got one shoulder under the side rail. "Lift the front."
They lifted and dragged, the rear wheels banging up one step at a time.
The nurse almost slipped immediately. Abeni caught her under both arms and hauled her back to center.
Joshua took the outside edge of the stairwell, Nia pressed under his chin, one hand on the rail whenever he could spare it. Her crying had changed. Not quieter. Thinner. Tired enough that every breath sounded scraped.
"Stay with me," he murmured.
He did not know why he kept saying that. Maybe because her body was so small against all of this that he needed words just to remind himself she was still here.
The group climbed.
One landing.
Then another half-flight.
Every step cost Rosa a sound. Every other step cost Abeni blood. She was leaving it in dark smears along the wall where her shoulder brushed the paint.
Lucía heard her breathing before she turned.
It was wetting up. Shorter. Wrong.
"Stop," Lucía said.
Abeni kept hauling the nurse.
"Stop."
Abeni looked at her and kept walking.
Lucía let go of the cart and stepped into her path on the next landing. "I said stop."
Priya looked back from two steps above. "We do not have room for this."
Lucía ignored her.
She got both hands on Abeni's wrist and shoulder and pulled the hand away from the wound.
The shirt was soaked through.
Blood had spread down her waistband and along the top of one thigh.
The nurse stared at it and made a small ruined sound.
Abeni took her hand back and pressed it over the wound again. "Pick her up."
Lucía did not move.
"Lucía."
"Sit down."
Abeni gave her a look that had no patience in it. "Move the cart."
"Sit down."
The stairwell hummed around them. Air still pulling upward. Far above, somewhere past two more landings maybe, another lock or shutter or tram segment clanged through the building.
Borrowed Voice had not entered the stairwell yet.
That did not help.
Joshua came down one step. "How bad?"
Lucía looked at him like she wanted to lie and knew she couldn't waste the time.
"It's bad."
Abeni gave a tired breath through her nose. "No shit."
The old man in the coat was crying openly now. The college boy had both hands over his face. Tomasz looked down the stairs once, then back up, doing the math of whether standing still here was worse than climbing with a dying woman in the middle of the line.
It was.
Hoodie kid had his arm around the crawling woman, both of them swaying.
Priya crouched by Rosa's cart and looked at Abeni without softness. "Can you walk?"
"Yes."
"Can you walk the next three flights?"
Abeni's mouth tightened.
That was answer enough.
Lucía put two fingers against the side of Abeni's neck, then lower, then back again. Her face changed.
Joshua knew that face too.
Not because he'd trained for it.
Because people around him had worn it before when something had already tipped too far to be dragged back by wanting.
"Abeni," Lucía said.
Abeni looked past her to Rosa in the cart, not at Joshua, not at the nurse, not at the old man bawling into the rail.
"Push her."
Lucía stayed right where she was.
Abeni finally looked at her. "You hear me?"
"I heard you."
"Then do it."
Lucía's mouth worked once. Nothing came out.
Nia made a small crying sound and then another. Joshua bounced her once out of reflex and kept his eyes on Abeni.
She looked smaller suddenly.
Not physically.
Like the part of her that had been standing in rooms and making people act right had started stepping backward out of her own body.
Priya stood.
Her voice came flat and low. "Lucía. Rosa."
Lucía shut her eyes. Opened them. Put both hands back on the cart handle.
Abeni nodded once like that was settled and tried to step around her.
Her knees went.
Joshua moved before the others did, but he had Nia and the angle was bad. Hoodie kid got there first and caught Abeni under one arm before she hit the landing full force. The nurse dropped to the wall and started crying again, both hands over her mouth.
Abeni was still awake.
Breathing fast.
Too fast.
Blood had run into the grooves of the concrete step under her.
Lucía crouched immediately. "Don't move."
Abeni looked at her with something close to annoyance.
"I wasn't planning to dance."
The line behind them shook with a fresh crash from below.
Not in the stairwell yet.
Close enough.
Tomasz flinched and looked down again. "We have to go."
Priya rounded on him. "Then go."
He stared at her.
She stepped aside from the cart just enough to show him the stairs above. "Go ahead. Use the rest of us as noise and pray you guess the turns right without Idris."
Tomasz did not go.
Of course he didn't.
Lucía pressed both hands over Abeni's wound and leaned in close enough that nobody else could hear the first part.
Joshua caught only the end.
"—with me."
Abeni looked at the blood on Lucía's hands. Then at Rosa. Then at Nia in Joshua's arms. Then at the nurse curled against the wall.
Finally she looked at Joshua.
Not dramatic. Not searching his face for anything.
Just looking.
"You still got her?"
He shifted Nia higher. "Yeah."
Abeni nodded.
The upward pull of air in the stairwell deepened again, harder this time, and with it came a new sound overhead.
Not a door.
Not a tram.
A speaker crackling awake.
The whole line looked up at once.
Static rasped over them.
Then a clipped female voice, flattened by age and bad wiring, came down the shaft:
"Upper service route active."
Everybody froze.
The voice clicked off.
No one breathed for a second.
Then, from three floors below, Borrowed Voice answered in Lucía's voice:
"Joshua."
Abeni's fingers tightened once against Lucía's sleeve.
She was losing color by the heartbeat.
Lucía bent lower over her.
Priya got both hands on the cart handle and looked at Idris. "How far?"
"Two flights. Then the upper corridor."
"Can we push it alone?"
"Yes."
"Then get it moving."
Lucía did not stand.
Priya looked down at her. "Lucía."
Still she did not move.
Abeni's mouth was close to her ear. She said something there, too low for Joshua to catch over Nia's crying and the hum in the walls.
Whatever it was hit.
Lucía's face folded inward for one ugly second.
Then she stood.
Not all the way straight.
Straight enough.
She wiped one bloody hand once on her own shirt, put it back on the cart, and said to Idris, "Lift on three."
Joshua watched her do it.
Watched the way she never looked back down right away because if she did, she might not leave.
Priya shoved the nurse at the old man. "Get her up."
Hoodie kid eased Abeni down against the landing wall, then looked at Joshua like he wanted instructions and hated himself for wanting them.
Joshua looked from Abeni to the stairs above, then down the shaft where Borrowed Voice had called his name with someone else's mouth.
The group started moving again.
Wheels banging. Shoes scraping. Breath tearing in hot pulls.
Abeni stayed on the landing wall, one hand over her stomach, eyes still open.
Joshua had Nia in his arms and the line in front of him and the killer somewhere below and no room left anywhere in him for another choice.
Then Abeni looked at him one last time and said, quiet enough that only he heard it:
"Don't stop for me."