No way out

Chapter 4: No Way Out

"It's jammed." Samuel threw his shoulder into the door a second time. Nothing. "Rusted shut. Nobody's used this exit in years."

The boots on the stairwell above them grew louder, closer, no longer hurried footsteps but the deliberate rhythm of men who knew exactly where their target had gone.

"Then we find another way," Ryan said.

"There isn't one. Not down here." Samuel's eyes swept the narrow landing, the bare pipes running along the ceiling, the single flickering bulb that barely lit the space between them. "This corridor was supposed to be our way out."

"Supposed to be isn't helping me right now."

A voice called down the stairwell, calm and clipped, the kind of calm that came from a man who already believed he'd won. "Warden Vale. We know you're down there. This doesn't need to get complicated."

Samuel's jaw tightened. He pressed a finger to his lips and pulled Ryan flat against the wall beside the door, out of the direct line from the stairs above.

"Complicated already happened," Samuel muttered, low enough that only Ryan could hear. "The second Voss decided to send men after a prisoner in my own wing."

"You know that voice?"

"Griggs. Head of internal security." Samuel's hand tightened around his weapon. "He doesn't answer to me. He answers to Voss directly, which means whatever's happening tonight, it isn't rogue guards taking advantage of a blackout. It's sanctioned."

The footsteps stopped a level above them. Ryan's heart hammered against his ribs as he listened to the silence stretch, waiting for the next sound, the next order, the next indication that they'd already been found and the standoff was just a formality before something worse.

"Last chance, Warden," Griggs called down. "Hand over Carter and walk away. Nobody has to explain a body in the morning."

Ryan felt the words settle into his stomach like stones. A body. Not an arrest. Not a transfer. A body, spoken as casually as a man discussing paperwork, because in this place, that's exactly what it was.

Samuel's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did, a decision crystallizing into something Ryan hadn't seen from him before.

"Give me a second," Samuel called back, his voice carrying the same flat control he used on every prisoner in the block.

"You're stalling," Ryan whispered.

"I'm buying us thirty seconds." Samuel's gaze dropped to the jammed door, then to a narrow gap along its bottom edge where the frame had warped away from the concrete. "That'll have to be enough."

He crouched, jammed his fingers into the gap, and pulled with everything he had. The door groaned, resisted, then finally gave with a shriek of tearing metal that echoed up the stairwell far louder than either of them wanted.

"They heard that," Ryan said.

"I know." Samuel shoved him through the opening. "Go. Now."

Ryan stumbled into a corridor thick with dust and the smell of standing water, pipes running low along the ceiling forcing him to duck. Behind him, Samuel squeezed through the narrow gap just as boots thundered down the final flight of stairs.

"There!" Griggs's voice, no longer calm.

Samuel didn't try to force the door shut behind them; there wasn't time. He grabbed Ryan by the shoulder and pushed him forward into the dark. "Run. Don't stop until I tell you to."

They ran. The corridor twisted and narrowed, forcing them through gaps barely wide enough for a man's shoulders, water dripping somewhere unseen, the alarm from the main block reduced to a distant, muffled pulse that felt like it belonged to another world entirely. Behind them, flashlight beams sliced through the gap in the broken door, and the shouting closed the distance faster than Ryan wanted to believe possible.

"They're gaining," Ryan gasped.

"They know this section too. Of course they do." Samuel's breathing was ragged now, controlled fury replacing the calm from before. "Left. Now."

Ryan turned into a side passage without questioning it, trusting a man he'd hated a day ago because the alternative was trusting nothing at all. The passage sloped downward, the air growing colder, damper, until it opened into a wider space that made Ryan stop cold despite the footsteps closing in behind them.

Rows of medical equipment lined the walls. Broken monitors. Rusted gurneys. Cabinets hanging open, their contents long since stripped, except for one drawer near the back that hadn't been emptied, its edge glinting faintly with something metallic.

"What is this place?" Ryan breathed.

"Somewhere I never wanted to bring you." Samuel's voice had gone tight, strained, like the sight of the room cost him something. "Not yet. Not like this."

"Samuel."

"Later." He grabbed Ryan's arm again, pulling him toward a door on the far side, but Ryan's eyes had already caught something on the wall beside the abandoned gurneys. A row of faded name tags, the kind used to label patient files, still clinging to a corkboard nobody had bothered to clear.

Preston. Delgado. Reyes.

And beneath them, half torn, water damaged almost beyond reading, a fourth name that stopped Ryan's heart in his chest.

Carter.

Not his own name. A different Carter, the ink smeared just enough to blur the first name into illegibility, but Ryan didn't need to read it clearly to know exactly whose file had once hung on that wall.

The shouting behind them surged closer, flashlight beams sweeping into the room's entrance, and Samuel's grip on his arm turned bruising as he hauled Ryan toward the far door.

"Move," Samuel ordered, voice cracking with something that wasn't fear of Griggs's men at all, but of what Ryan had just seen. "We are not finishing this conversation here."

Ryan didn't move. Couldn't. His eyes stayed locked on that torn name tag, on the last letters still visible beneath the water damage, D-A-N, and the flashlight beams swept directly across his face a half second before Samuel yanked him bodily through the door and slammed it shut behind them, sealing them both inside a room with no other exit and men who wanted him dead standing on the other side.