“How?” I asked.
“There’s a service access panel on the top floor,” he said. “Leads to the lower maintenance section of the roof. It’s not the main exit, but it’llget us up there.”
I nodded.
It made sense. Everything he did always made sense. That was the infuriating thing about Callan. Even when I wanted to argue with him, even when I wanted to push back, he was almost always right. He just was.
We walked together through the upper corridors—just stillness, only our breathing and our footsteps, and nothing else.
We reached the top floor. The air was slightly warmer up here, stifling in a way I could feel in my lungs.
Callan stopped in front of a narrow maintenance panel built flush into the wall. It was painted the same flat, institutional gray as everything around it, the thing you’d walked past a thousand times and never noticed unless someone pointed it out.
He crouched down, fingers working at the recessed latch with a practiced efficiency that told me he’d opened this panel before. Probably dozens of times. The latch gave with a quiet click, and the panel swung open to reveal a narrow vertical shaft with a metal ladder bolted to the interior wall, disappearing up into the darkness.
He looked up into it. His body tensed.
“I’ll go first,” he said.
Of course he would. He paused and looked back at me.
“If it’s secure up top, I’ll call down,” he said. “Then you come up.”
I nodded. My heartbeat was louder than it should have been.
“Okay.”
He climbed without hesitation, his boots clanging against the metal rungs, the sound growing fainter as he movedhigher. I watched him until the darkness swallowed him, with nothing left but the sound of his hands and feet on metal, growing smaller and smaller above me.
Then silence. I stood there alone, staring up into the opening.
My stomach tightened.
I hated this. The waiting. The not knowing. Being down here by myself with nothing but the sound of my breathing and the steady awareness that if anything went wrong up there, I would hear it happen and be able to do absolutely nothing.
A few seconds passed; in reality, it seemed longer.
Then his voice came down, steady and clear, bouncing off the walls of the shaft.
“It’s secure. Come up.”
The relief hit me harder than it should have. My hands were shaking slightly as I grabbed the ladder and started climbing. My muscles burned, everything still punishing me for the night on the floor. The metal was cold beneath my palms.
I climbed and tried not to look down.
When I reached the top, Callan was already standing on the other side of the hatch, holding it open with one hand. Daylight—gray and overcast—spilled in from somewhere beyond him.
His other hand hovered near my arm as I pulled myself through the opening and onto the roof. Not touching me, but close. Close enough that if my foot slipped, if my grip gave, he’d have me.
I found my footing and straightened up.
He lethis hand drop.
I tried not to think about it, not to let it register as anything. This was Callan, and now he was making sure I didn’t fall.
I just stepped forward into the light and looked out at the world.
Twelve