The door at the end of the hall was open.
Not forced. Just left.
Claire slowed. One hand on the frame.
The room beyond was wrecked — beds overturned, one mattress dragged to the floor, springs bent outward. Claw marks ran the length of the far wall at chest height, deep enough that the plaster had come away in chunks. Whatever made them hadn't been in a hurry.
She stepped inside.
Behind her, Kendo adjusted Emma's weight. Ben went still. Myrel pressed close.
"Sherry?"
Nothing.
Then — soft. A sound from the far corner. Almost nothing.
Claire moved toward it.
The girl was on the floor behind an overturned bed, back against the wall, knees up. Not hiding. Just stopped there, the way something stops when it runs out of somewhere to go. Her hair was in her face. Her breathing came shallow and uneven, like her body couldn't agree on a rhythm.
Claire crouched.
"Hey. It's me."
Sherry's head came up slowly. Then snapped — just at the end, just slightly — to find her.
Claire went still.
Same face. Same everything. Except her left eye had gone yellow at the iris, the sclera threaded with dark red lines spreading outward from the inner corner like cracks in glass. The skin around it was wrong — pale, too tight, the veins beneath it visible and dark in a way they shouldn't be. The infection had centered there. It had been working for a while.
Sherry blinked. The yellow eye moved a half-second behind the other one.
"Cl — claire."
The word came out broken. Not from weakness. Something else.
Claire closed the distance without thinking about it. She got down to Sherry's level, one hand on her shoulder, and Sherry leaned into it immediately — all her weight, like she'd been holding herself upright for hours and had just been given permission to stop.
"I've got you," Claire said.
Sherry's hand found her sleeve. The grip was weak. Her fingers were cold.
"It hurts," she said quietly. Not asking for anything. Just saying it.
"I know."
"My eye — " She stopped. Swallowed. "I can't see right out of it."
Claire didn't look away from her face. "We're going to fix it."
Sherry shook her head. Barely.
"Where's my mom."
Claire didn't answer that.
Sherry already knew. She looked down at her own hand on Claire's sleeve, at the dark lines tracing up her wrist toward the elbow. She watched them the way you watch something that belongs to someone else.
"She's not coming," Sherry said.
Still quiet. Still flat.
"We're here," Claire said. "That's what matters right now."
Ben had moved to the far wall. He was crouching near the baseboard, flashlight low. His hand found a seam in the plaster — followed it up, across, down. He knocked once. Hollow. Moved two inches. Less hollow. He worked the edge with his fingers until something gave, and a section of the lower wall swung inward on hinges.
The air that came out was cold. Chemical. Old.
He put the light through the gap.
"Stairs," he said. "Going down."
No one spoke.
Kendo looked at Emma. At the opening. "You think it connects to something."
"That smell isn't residential." Ben stood. "That's a facility."
Claire looked at Sherry. "Can you stand?"
Sherry's jaw set. She pushed against the floor with her good hand, got one knee under her. Her legs shook. Claire took her weight without comment and got her upright.
They stood there a moment — Sherry leaning, Claire holding, the yellow eye catching the flashlight and not quite letting it go.
"Don't let go," Sherry said.
"I won't."
Kendo went first to check the stairs. Ben held the panel. Myrel stayed close without being asked.
Claire kept her arm around Sherry's shoulders and walked her toward the opening.
At the threshold Sherry stopped. One breath. She looked down into the dark below — then went through.
Claire followed.
The panel closed behind them. The latch caught quietly.
Above, the wrecked room held its silence.
Below, the stairs went down into cold light and the hum of something that hadn't been turned off.
The stairs were concrete, narrow, the ceiling low enough that Kendo had to angle his shoulders. A single conduit ran the right wall, the cable inside it still live — Claire could hear the faint hum of current before she saw the indicator light at the bottom, green, steady.
Someone had been using this recently.
The stairs opened into a short corridor. Clean walls. Sealed floor. The kind of space that had been built to a standard the orphanage above it never was — no cracked plaster, no peeling paint, nothing that aged. Just function. Just purpose.
Myrel stepped close to Claire's other side without a word.
They moved down the corridor in silence. Sherry's weight shifted with each step — not falling, just compensating, her legs working a beat behind her intention. Claire matched it without thinking about it.
The corridor bent left.
Then they saw the doors.
Three of them. Heavy frames, card readers mounted beside each one, the panels dark. Not powered down — cut. The readers had been physically disconnected, the wiring pulled and left hanging. Someone had done it fast, on the way out.
All three doors were sealed.
Ben tried the first one. Handle solid. No give. He tried the second. Same.
Kendo set Emma down carefully against the wall, checked her breathing, then straightened and looked at the third door. Tried it. Nothing.
The corridor held its silence.
Ben crouched in front of the nearest card reader and examined the severed wiring. His flashlight moved across it slowly.
"These weren't locked from a panel," he said. "Someone pulled the power to the readers manually. Which means the locks defaulted to sealed." He sat back on his heels. "Which means someone wanted to make sure nothing got through these doors. Or out."
"Can you bypass it," Claire said.
"Not without the right equipment. Or the card."
Sherry was looking at the middle door.
Not the reader. The door itself. The seam at the frame. The thin line of dark at the threshold.
Claire had seen her read rooms before — exits, threats, distance. This was different. This was recognition.
"You've been here," Claire said.
"My parents worked here." Sherry's voice was flat. Not empty — just finished with something. "I used to wait for them in the break room. There's a couch by the east corridor. Orange. Ugly." A pause. "My dad said he picked it himself."
No one said anything.
"There's equipment inside," she said. "Medical. Whatever they were working on — if it's still running —"
She didn't finish it.
Claire looked at Ben.
Ben looked at the wiring.
Then — from the other side of the middle door.
Footsteps. Not shuffling. Not the dragging gait of infection. Deliberate. Fast. Then stopping.
A woman's voice, muffled through the steel — the words gone, but the tone intact. Controlled. Urgent.
Kendo straightened.
Ben stood.
The footsteps came to the door. Stopped just on the other side. Silence. Then the voice again, pressed close now, directed at the gap at the base of the frame.
One word made it through.
Sherry.
Sherry's breath caught.
Her hand — the good one — came up and pressed flat against the door.
"Mom," she said.
Not a call. Just the word, placed where it might land.
The voice on the other side went still. Then came back faster — responding, moving, something scraping on the other side like a panel being shifted or a case dragged aside.
"She's going for the reader from inside," Ben said, already crouching at the wiring. "If she can restore the circuit —"
A click. Deep in the frame. Mechanical.
The reader on their side flickered. Amber. Then green.
The door unsealed — a soft exhale of pressure — and swung inward an inch.
Light from the gap. Sterile and white. The full chemical smell of the lab behind it.
And a hand gripping the edge of the door from the other side.