Locked Down

Chapter 7: Locked Down

"They're sealing the corridor," Samuel said. "Run!"

They sprinted through the dark, Samuel's hand locked around Ryan's wrist, guiding him past obstacles neither of them could see. Ahead, the groan of the sealing door grew louder, metal grinding against metal as it descended from the ceiling, a barrier meant to trap them on the wrong side permanently.

"We're not going to make it," Ryan gasped.

"We will." Samuel's grip tightened. "Faster."

The gap beneath the door had shrunk to less than three feet, closing steadily, unforgivingly. Samuel shoved Ryan ahead of him, forcing him to drop and slide beneath the descending steel with inches to spare, and threw himself after him a half second later. The door slammed shut behind them with a finality that echoed through the corridor like a gunshot, sealing off the pursuit voices instantly, cutting them off mid-shout.

Silence. Ryan lay on the concrete, chest heaving, listening to nothing but his own pulse hammering in his ears.

"That won't hold them long," Samuel said, pulling himself upright and offering a hand down. "That door's meant to contain a breach from this side, not stop a determined team from the other."

Ryan took his hand and let himself be hauled up, his shoulder screaming in protest, his mind still reeling from the photograph crushed in his fist. Daniel's face, staring up at him from a wall built to erase him.

"Tell me what's in the box," Samuel said, already moving down the corridor at a pace that demanded Ryan keep up. "Whatever Daniel gave you, if it's what Voss thinks it is, we need to know before it costs us everything."

"I don't know what's in it. I never opened it." Ryan's voice cracked with something between grief and fury. "He told me to hold onto it just in case, and three weeks later he was dead, and I put that box in a drawer and never looked at it again because looking at it meant admitting he was gone."

"Where is it now?"

"My apartment. Or it was, before I was arrested. I don't even know if it's still there." Ryan's stomach twisted at the thought of evidence potentially sitting untouched in a room he hadn't seen in over a year, or worse, already found and destroyed by people with far more resources than he had.

Samuel didn't respond right away. They rounded a corner into a stretch of corridor lit by actual working bulbs, ordinary and mundane after everything they'd just fled through, and for a moment it felt almost possible to believe the nightmare belonged to a different building entirely.

"If it's still there," Samuel finally said, "Voss's people will find it before we ever get the chance."

"Then what was the point of any of this? Running, hiding, almost getting shot in a ventilation shaft, if the answer's sitting in an apartment we can't even reach?"

"The point," Samuel said, stopping abruptly and turning to face him, "is that you're still alive to ask that question. An hour ago, you weren't supposed to be."

The words hit harder than Ryan expected. He studied Samuel's face in the better light, the exhaustion carved into it, the guilt he'd admitted to earlier still lingering beneath the surface, and felt something shift in his chest that he didn't have room to examine right now.

"We need Marcus," Samuel said, already moving again. "He's the only person left in this building I trust completely, and if anyone can get a message out to check on that apartment without alerting Voss, it's him."

"Your deputy? The one who thinks I've been manipulating you this entire time?"

"He'll get over it." Samuel's jaw set. "Assuming we survive long enough to have that conversation."

They pushed forward through corridors that gradually became familiar again, administrative hallways Ryan recognized from his earlier flight through Samuel's private wing, and the alarm that had wailed continuously since the blackout began finally cut off, replaced by an eerie, oppressive silence that felt worse than the noise had.

"That's not good," Samuel muttered.

"What isn't?"

"They only kill the alarm once containment's confirmed. Which means either the riot's over, or someone in the control room decided it needed to look over, regardless of what's actually still happening down here."

They reached a junction where the corridor split three ways, and Samuel paused, listening, weighing options Ryan couldn't evaluate himself. Before he could choose a direction, footsteps rounded the corner ahead of them, fast and heavy, and Ryan's body went rigid with the certainty that their luck had finally run out.

Marcus emerged from the dark, breathing hard, a fresh bruise darkening along his jaw, and relief broke across his face at the sight of Samuel that Ryan hadn't expected from a man supposedly loyal only to procedure.

"Thank God." Marcus's eyes flicked to Ryan, wary but no longer outright hostile. "I've been looking for you both since the blackout started. It's not just contained chaos out there, Samuel. Voss pulled every guard loyal to internal security into a coordinated sweep. This wasn't a riot. It was cover."

"Cover for what?" Samuel asked, though something in his voice suggested he already suspected the answer.

"For getting you two somewhere quiet, permanently, without anyone outside these walls ever knowing it happened." Marcus's gaze hardened. "And it gets worse. Voss just issued an emergency directive labeling you a security threat, Samuel. Effective immediately, you're relieved of command."

The words landed like a physical blow. Ryan watched Samuel absorb it, watched the last shred of authority he'd been operating under evaporate in real time, leaving him with nothing but a weapon, a target on his back matching Ryan's own, and a corridor full of men who no longer answered to him at all.

"Who's replacing me?" Samuel asked quietly.

Marcus's silence answered before his words did. "Griggs. As of ten minutes ago. Which means every guard in this building just switched sides, and you two are officially the most wanted men in Blackridge."