Nobody answered her at first.
Joshua turned toward the room.
The door sat open three inches now. Cold air slipped out across the carpet runner and touched the side of his leg. The upper-service corridor had gone so quiet he could hear the badge reader beside Idris ticking softly between failed swipes.
The woman spoke again.
"I'm not talking about me."
Her voice sounded scraped raw and tired. Not smooth. Not shaped. Human.
"The baby," she said. "Can somebody get her mouth wet?"
Lucía looked up.
So did Priya.
Joshua shifted Nia higher. Her face was hot against his neck. She was crying in little torn breaths now, opening her mouth and getting only pieces of sound out.
Idris slapped Rosa's badge against the reader again.
Amber.
Red.
"Come on."
The voice from the room said, "That card won't open it."
Tomasz's head snapped toward the left branch. "Don't."
Priya put a hand out without looking at him. "Quiet."
Joshua kept his eyes on the gap in the door. "Talk."
A beat passed.
Then the woman inside said, "Upper maintenance is supervisor access. Blue won't take it."
Idris looked at the reader, then at Rosa's badge in his hand.
Blue plastic.
He swore under his breath.
"Gold?" he asked toward the room.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"In here."
That made nobody move.
Lucía took one step toward Joshua. "Let me see her."
Priya caught her wrist. "Not alone."
The woman inside the room breathed in sharply like pain hit on the inhale. "I'm in Eight Fourteen. Housekeeping cart tipped over my leg. I can't get to the door farther than this."
Joshua kept listening.
No soft service bell now.
No copied voice.
No footsteps from the stairwell behind them.
That helped less than it should have.
"Show me your hands," he said.
The guest-room door opened another inch.
A hand came into view first.
Palm out.
Fingers shaking.
Then the other.
No weapon.
No impossible smoothness in the movement. Just a woman trying not to move the rest of herself too much.
Priya stepped up beside him. "Name."
"Celia."
"What's your last name?"
"Varela."
"Who's in there with you?"
"No one."
A pause.
Then she added, "No one alive."
The old man in the brown coat made a small choked prayer sound behind them.
Hoodie kid had the crawling woman propped against the wall now, arm still around her shoulders. The surviving college boy stayed near the drinks cooler with both hands over his mouth. The nurse crouched by the stairwell door with her eyes shut and her back to the corridor like if she stopped looking, the building might stop noticing her.
Joshua looked at Priya.
She looked at the reader.
At Nia.
At the room.
"We need the badge," she said.
Lucía pulled free of Priya's hand. "I'm going."
Joshua turned. "You got Rosa."
"She's still breathing."
"That's why you got Rosa."
Lucía looked at him like she wanted to say something uglier than she had time for.
Celia spoke from the room before either of them could keep going.
"The badge is clipped to the cart. Not me."
That changed it.
Joshua looked back toward the room. "How far in?"
"Five feet."
"You can't reach it?"
"If I could reach it, I wouldn't be talking to you through a cracked door."
Her voice shook at the end, not from attitude. Pain. Anger. Both.
Idris held out his hand for Rosa's badge toward Joshua. "I'll stay on the reader. Get me gold."
Joshua shifted Nia, then finally passed her to Lucía.
Nia hated it instantly.
Her face crumpled and a hard cry tore out of her before Lucía even got both arms under her.
Joshua was already moving.
"Keep her up," he said.
Lucía bounced her awkwardly once, then settled her higher. "Go."
Priya came with him.
The room door stood open wide enough now to show a strip of carpet and the front wheel of a toppled housekeeping cart.
Joshua went in first with the metal hole-punch low in his right hand.
The room smelled like hotel soap, stale AC, linen dust, blood, and the sweet-sour drift of melting fruit left too long somewhere warm.
Curtains shut.
Bathroom light on.
Bed half-stripped.
One guest dead on the floor near the bathroom threshold.
Woman.
Older.
One slipper missing.
Throat opened.
Not fresh.
Celia sat on the carpet between the wall and the toppled cart, hotel uniform dark with sweat. One trouser leg had been cut open from mid-calf to ankle. Her lower leg was swelling ugly under the weight of the cart frame pinning it at the shin. She had both hands braced behind her and had clearly been trying not to pass out for a while.
The gold badge clipped to the cart rail hung just out of her reach.
She looked at Joshua, then at Priya behind him.
Then at Lucía in the corridor holding Nia.
"The baby's overheating," Celia said. "Not fever. She's been crying into somebody's body all day."
Joshua knelt by the cart. "You can still talk, so save some."
"Your call."
He got one hand under the cart rail and lifted.
Heavy.
Not impossible.
The bent wheel dragged against carpet and the whole thing shifted an inch.
Celia sucked air hard through her teeth and grabbed his wrist.
"Not off. Just enough."
Priya crouched at the badge clip and started working it free from the bent fabric loop snagging it.
"What happened in here?" she asked.
Celia stared at the dead woman by the bathroom.
"She opened the door."
Joshua looked at the body once and then back at the cart rail in his hand.
The badge came loose.
Priya stood.
"Got it."
From the corridor, Nia's cry cut short.
Not because she calmed.
Because Lucía had done something.
Joshua looked back through the room door. Lucía stood by Rosa's cart with Nia tucked in one arm and the fingers of her free hand wet. She touched a little water from somewhere to the baby's mouth. Nia made a weak angry sound, then latched onto the moisture, sucking at nothing.
Celia saw that too.
"Melted ice bucket," she said. "On the desk."
Joshua looked.
Silver bucket. Half-full of ice water gone cloudy.
Priya was already moving to the door with the gold badge in hand. "We're opening the maintenance door."
Celia nodded once. Fast. Too fast.
"Then go."
Lucía said from the corridor, "We're not taking her?"
Joshua looked at the cart pinning Celia's leg.
At the dead woman on the carpet.
At the corridor beyond Lucía where the others were all trying not to let fear make decisions with their bodies again.
Celia answered before he could.
"You're taking Rosa. You got the baby. You got a stairwell full of people that sound one bad minute from turning stupid. Take the badge and open the door."
Lucía did not move.
Celia met her eyes. "Don't do that thing where you stand there wanting a cleaner version."
Priya was already at the threshold. "Joshua."
He eased the cart rail down carefully.
Celia's face tightened so hard the tendons in her neck stood out, but she did not make a sound.
"You hear anything in the room?" he asked her.
She looked at the dead woman by the bathroom again.
"Bathroom vent clicks every few minutes," she said. "That's all I heard before you."
Joshua stood.
Celia caught his sleeve.
Not enough to stop him.
Just enough to make him look down.
"If that thing gets up here," she said, "don't let it talk to you like you know it."
He pulled free and went back into the corridor.
Lucía handed Nia back without a word.
Nia settled against him and kept making those little broken sounds into the fabric at his shoulder while he shifted her higher and turned toward the maintenance door.
Idris took the gold badge from Priya and swiped.
The reader flashed amber.
Then green.
The lock inside the fire door released with a deep internal thunk.
Everybody in the corridor heard it.
The old man lifted his head.
The nurse opened her eyes.
The surviving college boy pushed off the wall.
Lucía got both hands on Rosa's cart again.
"Open it," Priya said.
Idris pulled the handle.
The fire door cracked inward three inches.
Cold fluorescent light spilled through.
Then every guest-room latch along the left branch clicked at once.
One after another.
Fast.
A line of hard little metal sounds running down the corridor.
Nobody moved.
Not toward the left branch.
Not through the maintenance door.
Every door on that side opened the same inch.
Just enough for black room interiors and strips of colder air to spill across the carpet.
The service bell rang again.
Not one note this time.
Three.
From three different rooms.
Then a fourth.
Then a fifth.
Joshua turned slowly, Nia in his arms, Maintenance Office light on one side of his face and the row of opening guest rooms on the other.
Something inside one of them laughed.
Soft.
Human.
And from Room 814, behind him now, Celia shouted for the first time since they'd met her:
"Get out of the hall."