The shimmering light held for a heartbeat too long- bright enough to burn afterimages into Eanna's retinas, bright enough to stain the backs of her eyelids with phantom shapes, then folded in on itself like a curtain being pulled closed, like reality deciding this particular special effect had run its course.

  And sitting in the space where the shimmer had been was…

  A cat.

  Not just a cat. A ridiculously fluffy white cat, the kind that looked like it had been assembled out of clouds and bad decisions and possibly several different animals that had never actually met. It perched on the cracked tile as if it owned the room- as if it owned the building, tail curled neatly around its paws, ears forward with cheerful interest.

  Like it was waiting for applause.

  It blinked at Eanna.

  Slow. Deliberate. Almost smug.

  She blinked back, because her brain had completely stalled out somewhere between "supernatural entity" and "adorable murder fluff."

  Somewhere behind them a soldier made a strangled noise that might've been a curse or a prayer or the sound of a worldview shattering in real-time.

  The cat's mouth did not move, didn't so much as twitch- but the voice came again, bright and delighted and far too pleased with itself.

  Found you~ I finally found you!

  Still inside her head. Still bypassing her ears entirely, speaking directly to some part of her brain that wasn't meant to process language this way.

  Ben's forearm tightened over her head like he could physically block whatever this was with muscle and spite and the sheer stubborn refusal to accept the impossible.

  Gabe's voice was a low rasp, tight with the kind of control that comes from forcing yourself not to panic. "What the hell is that."

  Not a question. An accusation. Like the universe owed him an explanation for violating the laws of physics in his presence.

  Slim didn't answer. He was staring at the cat like he'd just found the single variable that explained every impossible thing that had happened since the vans showed up- the roundup, the facility, the bullets that shouldn't have ricocheted, all of it clicking into place in some framework Eanna couldn't see but he apparently could.

  His jaw was tight. His knuckles white on his weapon.

  The soldiers recovered from shock the way people always did when fear had nowhere to go but sideways into anger.

  A barked command, sharp and furious. Boots shifting on tile. Rifles lifting with the mechanical precision of training overriding terror.

  "Shoot it- !"

  They fired.

  The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, a wall of noise that made Eanna's ears ring and her teeth ache. Muzzle flashes lit the room in strobing bursts.

  The bullets hit the air in front of the cat and rang off it like hail against glass, like stones thrown at a windshield, snapping away in bright arcs and sickening angles that made geometry into a suggestion.

  Two soldiers went down immediately, the ricochets punching back into the line with meaty impacts and startled screams. Another stumbled backward, clutching his shoulder, blood welling between his fingers. A fourth- eyes wide with the kind of terror that bypasses thought- threw his rifle like it had burned him and bolted for the hallway like the devil was offering overtime and he'd decided minimum wage wasn't worth this.

  The cat's ears flicked.

  A small gesture. Almost dismissive.

  Then it stood.

  Not fast. Not dramatic. Just… stood, like it had decided the room had become tedious and it was time to address that.

  Then its body rippled.

  It stretched in a way that made Eanna's brain stutter, as if the concept of "cat" was being revised on the fly by a committee that had never actually seen a cat. Its fur flared outward, lengthening, thickening, turning into a white mane that caught the fluorescent lights and threw them back as cold, clean radiance. Its spine arched higher and higher, vertebrae clicking audibly, shoulders broadening into something that could carry real weight. Paws swelled into something that could have cracked bone with one casual step, claws extending like curved knives.

  In three breaths it was no longer a cat.

  It was the size of a tiger- then bigger. Then bigger still.

  And the fluff stayed, somehow, which made it even worse. Like if a blizzard decided to become apex predator, like if winter itself had teeth and had decided to take exception to being shot at.

  It opened its mouth.

  Eanna expected a roar- something primal and animalistic, something that belonged in nature documentaries.

  What came out was a sound like thunder being dragged across stone, like tectonic plates grinding together, like the earth itself clearing its throat before speaking.

  It lunged.

  The first soldier it hit didn't so much fall as fly, body ragdolling through the air, slammed hard enough into a table that the metal shrieked and buckled, legs collapsing with the screech of tortured steel. He didn't get up.

  Another raised his rifle in a last desperate attempt at defense and the creature swatted the weapon aside like it was a toy, like it was nothing, claws flashing pale and cruel. The rifle clattered across the floor, barrel bent at an angle that made it useless.

  Blood splattered on concrete and tile.

  People screamed- their people, the ones who hadn't yet broken into motion, who were still frozen in that terrible moment between recognizing danger and responding to it- and surged away from the walls, away from the soldiers, away from everything that looked like a threat.

  The crowd became a living thing, crushing inward, trampling, desperate.

  Slim moved with the kind of precision that spoke of muscle memory older than thought. He fired short, controlled bursts into legs and shoulders when he had clean angles, when he could be sure he wasn't hitting civilians. Not killing shots. Disabling. Buying space and time and the possibility of escape.

  "Move!" Gabe shouted, and suddenly a hand was on Eanna's upper arm and Ben was hauling her upright like her bones were optional, like gravity was a polite suggestion he could ignore.

  Her feet barely touched the ground.

  Gabe darted down to a fallen soldier- one of the ones the creature had dropped, unconscious or dead, it didnt matter. He snatched up a rifle with the kind of efficiency that spoke of training so deep it was instinct. He yanked the spare magazine off the man's tactical vest with practiced hands, checked it with a glance, slammed it into place.

  Ben grabbed a sidearm from another body- someone who wouldn't be needing it anymore, checked the magazine with a flick Eanna had only ever seen in movies, racked the slide, then shoved it into her hands.

  It was heavier than she expected. Cold. Real. The weight of it dragged at her arms like gravity had suddenly remembered she existed.

  "I- " she started, because her brain was still stuck on the fact that a cat had turned into a murder-blizzard and was currently dismantling armed soldiers like they were made of tissue paper, and Gabe cut her off.

  "Don't argue," he snapped, not looking at her, eyes scanning for threats. "Just hold it. Point it if you have to. Safety's here." He tapped a spot on the frame without slowing down.

  Slim shoved a rifle off a shoulder and caught another weapon mid-fall like he'd been juggling guns his entire life, then looked at her- really looked, sharp and assessing in a way that made her feel like she was being cataloged, evaluated, assigned a threat level. Mentally a memory of her father was telling her to assume that the safety was already off. Pointing it down at the floor.

  "Can you do that again?" he asked, voice taut as wire.

  "Do what?"

  "The shimmer." His eyes were bright, intense, the kind of focus that burned. "The barrier."

  Eanna swallowed hard. Her mouth was desert-dry, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. Her heart was trying to climb out of her chest and run away without her.

  "I don't know," she said, and hated how small her voice sounded. "I didn't- I wasn't trying to do it the first time. I just- "

  Another burst of gunfire cracked through the room, sharp and vicious. The cat-thing- no, the creature, because "cat" no longer applied to something that size- took it like weather, like rain it couldn't be bothered to notice. Bullets struck the air near it and deflected, skittering off into walls and ceiling with that same crystalline snap, leaving holes and cracks and the smell of cordite.

  Concrete dust rained down from fresh bullet holes, making the air thick and choking.

  The smell of cordite stung Eanna's nose, acrid and chemical. People cried- high, keening sounds that spoke of sanity fraying. Someone near the back sobbed like they couldn't stop, like they'd forgotten how.

  Slim's gaze flicked to the hallway, calculating distances and odds. "We're leaving. Now. Eanna- eyes up."

  Her name in his mouth jolted her like a physical shock; it wasn't gentle. It wasn't comforting. It was a hook, sharp and demanding, yanking her back to the present.

  How did he know her name?

  Ben pushed her toward the corridor with a hand on her shoulder, not rough but not gentle either. Gabe fell in right behind with the rifle low and ready, scanning corners and doorways. Slim took the rear like he'd done this in worse places than a derelict mess hall, like he'd extracted people from hot zones before and knew exactly how to move.

  They ran.

  The hallway swallowed them in fluorescent flicker and echoing boots, the sound of their footsteps bouncing off walls and coming back wrong. Behind them, the roar-and-thunder of the creature smashing into soldiers faded into a chaos of shouts and screams and breaking things.

  They turned a corner and met two more uniforms coming the other way.

  They raised their weapons without hesitation, without question, without giving them a chance to explain or surrender.

  Eanna's body reacted before her mind did, before conscious thought could catch up to instinct.

  The air in front of her shimmered- thin at first, like heat over asphalt on a summer day, then thickened into that impossible, glassy distortion. She could feel it this time, the shape of it, the way it responded to something inside her that she didn't have a name for.

  Like pushing air into a shape it didn't want to hold.

  Shots cracked, sharp and brutal.

  They hit the shimmer and ricocheted back with brutal precision, every angle perfect, every deflection exactly calculated to send the bullets back toward their source.

  One soldier went down screaming, clutching his leg. The other dropped his rifle and fled, slipping in his own panic, boots skidding on tile as he scrambled away.

  The shimmer held for two seconds longer- wavering, uncertain, then popped like a soap bubble.

  And something inside Eanna pulled.

  Not pain. Not exactly.

  Like her lungs had suddenly remembered they were starving, like she'd been holding her breath underwater and had just broken the surface to find there wasn't enough air.

  She staggered, catching herself against the wall with one hand, the gun heavy and useless in the other. The world narrowed to a tunnel, edges going gray and soft.

  Ben's hand snapped to her shoulder, steadying her. "Hey- Eanna, breathe."

  She sucked in air and it felt thin, inadequate, like trying to breathe at high altitude. Her stomach twisted hard enough that she almost gagged, saliva flooding her mouth.

  "Hungry," she managed, the word coming out harsh and desperate. "I- haven't… eaten since yesterday morning."

  Since before the hike. Since before the cave. Since before everything went sideways.

  "How long- " Gabe started, then cut himself off with a curse. There was no time for a food timeline, no time to figure out what "hungry" meant in the context of supernatural abilities. He yanked at his pocket and shoved something into her palm: a crushed granola bar, half-broken, wrapper torn. "Eat. Now."

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Her hands shook as she tore it open with her teeth, wrapper ripping, crumbs spilling. The first bite was chalk and chemicals and the most beautiful thing she'd ever tasted. Her body latched onto it like it was life itself, like it was oxygen, demanding more before she'd even finished swallowing.

  Slim watched her with a hard, focused calm that made her feel like a science experiment. "That barrier- front-facing only?"

  She swallowed, forcing the food down past the tightness in her throat. "It- it felt like… like pushing air into shape. Like I could decide where it went."

  "And it reflects," he said, not asking. Confirming.

  She nodded, cramming another bite into her mouth.

  "Good," Slim said, like that was useful tactical information and not a sentence that belonged in a nightmare or a bad sci-fi movie. "You don't have to hold it long. Just long enough."

  Just long enough for what, he didn't say.

  They moved again, boots pounding tile, the granola bar disappearing into her stomach like it had never existed.

  The facility unfolded like a neglected maze, a warren designed by someone who'd never had to navigate it in a hurry. Hallways with missing ceiling tiles, exposing ductwork and wiring and darkness. Doors labeled with faded stencils- STORAGE, MAINTENANCE, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, half of them hanging open, half locked tight. A staircase blocked by a collapsed panel, metal and acoustic tile forming a barrier they had to detour around. A corridor that dead-ended in a chain-link barrier like someone had tried to section the building into safe and unsafe zones and then abandoned the project halfway through, leaving the fence rusting in place.

  The deeper they went, the more the air felt… wrong.

  Not in a supernatural way- not like the creature, not like the shimmer.

  In a pressure way.

  A constant low-weight on the back of Eanna's skull, like a headache she hadn't noticed until it lifted for a moment when she threw up the barrier. Like something here wanted everything inside it to feel tired, worn down, unable to fight.

  Like the building itself was designed to drain you.

  They came around another corner and found a door that looked different from the others- heavier, more official. A thick lock panel sat beside it, more sophisticated than the simple doorknobs and deadbolts they'd been passing. A faded sign above it read:

  COMMAND / OPS AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY

  Gabe gave Slim a look that spoke volumes without words. "That's our best chance."

  For information. For control. For a way out.

  Slim nodded once, economical. "Eanna?"

  She stepped toward the panel out of instinct, then froze because her brain tried to remind her this was not her job. She didn't do doors. She didn't do rifles. She didn't do supernatural barriers that defied physics.

  She did audits and incident response and building access logs and the kind of security that came with policy documents and compliance meetings, not blood and bullets and things that turned from cats into apex predators.

  But her fingers found the keypad anyway, muscle memory from a thousand building entries taking over.

  "Locked," she said, because obviously it was locked, because nothing about today was going to be easy.

  "Then open it," Slim replied, as if that was a reasonable request to make of a five-foot-one office worker who specialized in information security, not physical bypass.

  Gabe shifted position, rifle angled down the hall they'd just come from, watching their six. Ben braced near the corner, weapon up, head tilted slightly like he was listening for the sound of pursuit. Somewhere far behind them there were still distant shouts- either the soldiers regrouping or whatever the hell that creature was doing to them, and Eanna wasn't sure which option was worse.

  She looked around the doorframe, examining the setup with the kind of focus she usually reserved for network diagrams.

  And there- a small camera blister in the corner, lens dark but probably still functional. A card reader beside the keypad, the kind that required both physical credentials and a PIN.

  Her brain clicked into a different gear, the one that had gotten her promoted twice and made her the person they called when access control systems went sideways.

  "Maglock system," she muttered, half to herself. "If it's still on the network… if there's a terminal inside with active credentials…"

  Slim's mouth tightened. "Find it."

  Gabe jerked his chin toward the hinge side of the door, the universal gesture for can we force it. "Kick it?"

  "No," Eanna said automatically, sharply, because her entire career had been built on preventing people from doing exactly that. Brute force was what people resorted to when they didn't understand systems. "Give me- "

  Ben held up a hand, cutting her off. "Listen."

  They all went still.

  Footsteps. Multiple sets. Boot-heavy and purposeful. Coming their way.

  Eanna's pulse spiked, adrenaline flooding back into her system just when she'd started to think they might catch their breath. The granola bar sat like stone in her stomach, heavy and wrong.

  She reached for the shimmer without thinking, without planning, just letting her body do what it apparently knew how to do now.

  It snapped into place, a curved plane in the corridor like a pane of invisible glass, and this time she could feel the shape of it more clearly- the way it curved, the way it responded to her intention, the way it wanted to exist in a specific configuration.

  Gabe and Ben dragged her backward as Slim yanked at the door handle again, swearing under his breath in what might have been Italian.

  The footsteps rounded the corner- and stopped dead when they saw them.

  Four soldiers, weapons raised, faces hidden behind that professional neutrality that was worse than anger.

  There was a frozen moment where nobody moved, where the world balanced on a knife's edge.

  Then weapons rose.

  Shots fired.

  They hit the shimmer and snapped away, ricocheting back into the group with that same terrible precision. Two went down immediately, bodies hitting the floor hard. The others scattered in panic, one sprinting back the way they'd come, the other pressing himself against the wall and shouting into a radio.

  The shimmer wavered, edges flickering.

  Eanna nearly collapsed, legs going weak, the world tilting sideways.

  Ben caught her elbow before she could fall. "Okay. Okay. You're good. Breathe."

  But she wasn't good. Her vision was swimming. Her hands were shaking so badly she couldn't have held a gun steady if she'd tried.

  Slim's eyes were bright now, razor-focused, the kind of intensity that made her think of surgeons and snipers. He leaned in close enough that she could smell the faint cologne under the sweat and gunpowder- something expensive and subtle, normal humanity under violence.

  "Do you have a way into that lock?" he asked, voice pitched just for her.

  "Not without access," she said, words clipped because breathing was suddenly a deliberate act requiring conscious effort. "Unless- unless there's an emergency override on the other side, or if I can access the control system through the network, but I'd need-"

  Gabe swore, creative and vicious. "We don't have time for that."

  "We do," Ben snapped, and pointed down the hall where the soldiers had come from. "They're regrouping. Not rushing us. That means they're getting orders, planning something."

  Planning something worse than bullets, probably.

  Slim made a decision so fast it was almost invisible, no hesitation, just action. He turned his weapon around, reversed his grip, and smashed the butt into the keypad housing- not hard enough to destroy the internal components completely, but hard enough to crack the outer casing and expose the guts.

  Plastic popped and splintered. Screws scattered across the floor with bright pinging sounds.

  Inside: wires in a rainbow of colors, a small circuit board, connections Eanna recognized from a dozen facility upgrades.

  Ben stared at him. "Please tell me you know what you're doing."

  "No," Eanna said honestly, and then, because the universe had jokes and she was apparently the punchline, her hands moved anyway.

  Muscle memory. Training. The instinct that came from years of troubleshooting systems that shouldn't work but did, or did work but shouldn't.

  She pulled two wires loose- the red and the white, because those were usually power and ground in these older systems. Touched them together like she was defusing a bomb in a movie, like she had any idea what she was actually doing beyond educated guessing.

  The lock clicked with a soft, obedient sound.

  Almost apologetic.

  The door swung inward a few inches, latch released, magnetic seal broken.

  For a second they all just stared at it.

  Then Gabe kicked it the rest of the way open and they spilled into the command room like a tide.

  Inside it was colder than the hallway, temperature controlled in a way the rest of the facility wasn't. Darker, too, emergency lighting providing just enough illumination to see shapes and shadows. A bank of monitors lined one wall- most dead, screens black and lifeless, but some still flickering with static-blue screens or frozen error messages. A few desks sat at angles, as if people had left in a hurry and never come back, chairs pushed back, papers scattered. Coffee cups sat abandoned, contents long evaporated, leaving rings and residue.

  A stale smell of dust and old coffee hung in the air, under it the faint ozone tang of electronics left running too long.

  And on the nearest desk, open like it had been abandoned mid-thought, sat a laptop.

  The screen glowed, bright in the dimness.

  Active. Unlocked. Waiting.

  Slim shut the door behind them with a solid thunk that felt too final. Gabe shoved a chair under the handle as backup, metal scraping tile. Ben took up position by the corner, weapon up, eyes sharp, covering the angles.

  Eanna moved straight to the laptop like it was a lifeline, like it held answers she desperately needed.

  The email client was open- some government system she didn't recognize, interface clunky and outdated. No password prompt. No security screen. Whoever had been here had either trusted the building's physical security… or hadn't expected to need privacy because everyone here was supposed to be on the same side.

  Two messages sat at the top of the inbox, highlighted, flagged as important.

  Like the universe wanted her to read them.

  Like someone had left them for her.

  She did.

  The first was terse, blocky, written in that sterile tone that made atrocities look like bullet points and procedures:

  SUBJECT: UPDATE – TARGET ACQUISITION

  FROM: [REDACTED]

  TO: [REDACTED]

  Target located at [REDACTED] building– further specification unavailable due to nature of anomaly. Suggest individual interviews to narrow list of possible subjects. Recommend immediate containment of all personnel until identification confirmed.

  Her stomach dipped, that elevator-drop feeling of understanding something you wish you didn't.

  "Target?" Gabe echoed behind her, reading over her shoulder.

  They'd collected everyone in the building because they didn't know which one of them was the target. Because they couldn't identify it- her? Any other way.

  The second email was shorter and somehow worse because it didn't pretend to be neutral, didn't hide behind procedure:

  SUBJECT: RE: OPERATIONAL RISK

  FROM: [REDACTED]

  TO: [REDACTED]

  Acknowledged. However, chance of successful containment versus size of potential contamination spread to nearby populace suggests swifter action needed. Recommend immediate termination of all collected subjects.

  Will deploy [REDACTED] to create proof of gas leak and subsequent explosion. Collateral damage acceptable given alternative scenarios.

  A cold wave rolled through Eanna, ice water in her veins.

  "They're going to cover it," she whispered, voice hollow. "They're going to make it look like an accident. Gas leak. Explosion."

  Kill everyone and blame it on infrastructure failure.

  Clean. Simple. No questions.

  Ben's voice came harsh, angry in a way she hadn't heard from him yet. "They were going to kill everyone in the building. Everyone they collected. They were going to execute all of us because they couldn't figure out which one was their target."

  Gabe pointed at the screen with the rifle barrel, careful not to actually touch anything. "Contamination. Threat. Size potential- what does that mean?"

  She swallowed hard, forcing down the fear. Her hands were shaking, but not with terror now- with that sharp, crystalline focus she got at work when something was on fire and she had to fix it before the fire spread, before systems failed, before data was lost.

  Her eyes scanned the laptop fast, taking inventory.

  There were icons along the bottom: a remote access client, still connected. A facility network dashboard showing system status. A tab open to what looked like a building control interface- HVAC, power, security.

  Of course there was.

  This place wasn't just derelict. It was wired. Connected. Monitored.

  Slim's voice cut through the rising noise in her head, sharp and focused. "Can you open doors? Lock doors? Shut down cameras? Anything that buys us a path out."

  "Yes," she breathed, because infosec had taught her one thing above all: everything was connected, and most of it was connected badly, and if you knew what you were looking for you could make systems do things they weren't supposed to. Sometimes on accident- spectacularly, with jazz hands.

  She clicked through menus, navigating with the speed of familiarity.

  A login screen popped up- already filled in with a username. No password field. Just a token prompt and a green icon that read ACTIVE SESSION.

  Someone had left this open.

  Someone had left this open for her to find, and she briefly had to stop herself from reorienting the screen, like she did at work to remind people to log out properly.

  She didn't like that thought. Didn't like the implications of it, the thought that anyone could have access to information like this.

  But she liked being shot even less.

  She navigated fast- door controls, camera feeds, alarm systems. Finding the controls was easy; they were clearly labeled, organized by someone who'd actually understood system architecture.

  She opened a facility map that looked like it hadn't been updated in years, still showing sections that had probably been demolished or abandoned. Hallways, rooms, sections blocked off with red X marks. But the core routes were there, the main arteries of the building.

  "Okay," she said, voice quick now, words tumbling out. "If we go through the maintenance corridor two doors down, there's an exterior access point- back fence line, near what looks like a vehicle bay. I can unlock the doors in sequence, clear a path."

  "Do it," Slim said, not a request.

  She did.

  Her fingers flew across the keyboard, clicking through menus, overriding locks. On the screen, security indicators changed. Locks clicked on the display. Green lights turned on where red had been, access granted where it had been denied.

  Then she saw another tab, tucked behind the control panel interface.

  SUPPRESSION / CONTAINMENT GRID

  The words made her skin prickle, made that pressure at the back of her skull intensify for just a moment before she'd even clicked on it.

  Her fingers hovered over the trackpad.

  She didn't know what it was, but her body recognized it the way it had recognized the waterfall sound in the cave- not consciously, but with that deep animal awareness that bypasses thought. Like it had been pressing on her since the vans arrived, since they'd entered the building, since they'd been herded down these hallways.

  Like a hand on the back of her neck. Like a weight on her chest. Like something designed to make you tired, make you weak, make you unable to fight back.

  Slim noticed her pause, the way she'd gone still. "What is it?"

  "I don't know," she admitted, cursor hovering. "But- "

  "Shut it down," Ben said instantly, voice fierce and certain. "If they built it to contain something, it's for us."

  Gabe didn't argue. His jaw was set hard, muscle jumping. "Do it."

  Slim held her gaze for a long moment, dark eyes intense. "Eanna. Now."

  She clicked.

  A warning box popped up, red text on black background: SYSTEM INTEGRITY RISK - DEACTIVATION MAY RESULT IN UNCONTROLLED ANOMALY MANIFESTATION.

  She ignored it and clicked confirm, then confirm again when it asked if she was sure.

  The screen flashed once, twice.

  For a second nothing happened.

  Then-

  The air changed.

  It wasn't dramatic. No lights blew out in showers of sparks. No alarms screamed. No explosions or fire or visible signs of system failure.

  But something lifted.

  Like the building had been humming in a register just below hearing, and suddenly the note stopped. Like a frequency she hadn't known she was hearing suddenly cut out, leaving silence that felt loud.

  Her shoulders dropped without her meaning to, tension bleeding out of muscles she hadn't realized were tight. Her lungs expanded, full and easy in a way they hadn't been since yesterday- maybe longer. The ache behind her eyes eased like a migraine releasing its grip, like someone had turned off a light that had been shining directly into her brain.

  Gabe sucked in a breath, sharp and startled. Ben blinked hard, like he'd stepped from darkness into sunlight.

  Slim went perfectly still, and for the first time his calm looked less like control and more like surprise, like something had happened that he hadn't expected and didn't know how to categorize.

  You could almost see it in the room- the tension thinning, the oppressive weight sliding off their skin like water, the air becoming easier to breathe.

  Something had been holding them down.

  She felt less drained- a little less weak.

  And Eanna had just turned it off.

  Whatever that meant, whatever the consequences were, they didn't have time to unpack it.

  Because out in the hallway, distant but approaching, boots started running again.

  Multiple sets. Organized. Coming fast.

  Slim's voice snapped back into command mode, all business. "Good. We move. Now."

  Gabe shouldered his rifle and moved to the door, checking the corridor through the crack. Ben shifted close to Eanna's side, a living wall between her and potential threats. Slim stayed at her other shoulder like he'd decided she was both asset and liability and he was going to manage the problem personally.

  She grabbed the laptop, fingers closing around the edges.

  Slim's hand came down on hers, stopping her. "Leave it."

  "No," she said, meeting his eyes. "This has information. Emails. System access. Proof of what they were planning."

  "It's heavy. It'll get you killed."

  "It's evidence," she countered, surprised by the steadiness in her own voice. "And I can wipe it remotely if I have to, make sure they can't recover anything. But I'm not leaving it."

  For a moment they just stared at each other, wills locked.

  Then Slim's mouth tightened and he let go. "Your funeral. But if it slows you down, you drop it. Understood?"

  She nodded and pulled the laptop against her chest, folding the screen down partway so it was easier to carry.

  It was heavy- older model, probably government-issued years ago and never upgraded. But she'd carried heavier laptops across campuses, through airports.

  She could manage.

  They slipped out of the command room into the corridor, moving fast but quiet.

  The facility felt different now- less suffocating, more awake. Like it had been sleeping and they'd woken it up, or like something that had been suppressed was now free.

  And somewhere deep in her chest, behind her ribs, the shimmer stirred like it had been waiting for permission.

  Like turning off that grid had unlocked something.

  She didn't know if that was good or bad.

  They didn't stop to wonder.

  They just ran.

  What did you think of the cat? I love hearing your theories in the comments!

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