The late sun found the small hole in the ceiling and dropped a single ray down into the corridor, where it landed in the middle of the hard white light that hadn't gone off since the door sealed.
I walked through it toward the knock.
A knock meant one of two things. Food, or somebody upstairs had something to say to us.
It had been food every time.
The tray was already sitting in the gap at the bottom of the door when I got there.
I crouched and pulled it through, and the moment my hands cleared the gap another one slid in behind it. I pulled that. Another came. I pulled that one too, and the fourth arrived, and then nothing.
Four trays on the floor at my feet.
Not a word through the door. Not a face at the gap. Nobody checking that anybody in here was still alive. The gap was exactly wide enough for the trays and nothing else.
