Nobody wanted to admit the obvious.
The baby changed everything.
If it had just been thirty scared adults, they still would've been in hell. Still trapped. Still getting hunted by something that wore people's voices like costumes.
But adults could choose wrong.
Adults could panic.
Adults could run, freeze, argue, drag everybody else down.
A baby just cried.
And every time she did, the whole map got smaller.
Joshua adjusted her higher on his shoulder again. She was warm. Too warm. Small face wet and furious, breath hitching against his neck.
He looked at Hana.
"You first."
Her eyes widened a little. "Why me?"
"You know buildings."
"I know real buildings."
Joshua jerked his chin toward the dark service hall behind the storage room. "Congratulations. This one fake. Go see how fake."
Tomasz gave a thin laugh. "That was funny."
Nobody joined him.
Priya was already moving. "Dae-hyun with Hana. Idris with them too. If there's a junction, I want to know immediately."
"I'm not leaving the rest of you in here if that thing comes through the gate," Dae-hyun said.
"It's coming through anyway if it wants to badly enough," Priya said. "The point is not to still be here when it does."
That shut him up for exactly one beat.
Then he nodded once. "Fine."
Lucía stepped closer to Joshua and looked at the baby. "Let me take her."
Joshua looked down at her.
At the baby.
At Lucía's hands.
The baby had gone from hard crying to those ugly little exhausted sob-breaths babies did right before they either calmed down or started all over worse.
"She calmer on me," he said.
Lucía blinked once, like she hadn't expected to hear that answer out loud.
Then she nodded. "Okay."
Abeni dragged both hands down her face. "We don't even know her name."
The room went quiet again for a different reason.
Joshua looked down.
There was a thin hospital band around the baby's wrist, almost hidden in the folds of the little sleeve.
He shifted the blanket edge back with his thumb.
Tiny print.
Tiny name.
"…Nia," he said.
Lucía leaned in. "What?"
"Nia."
The teenager beside her whispered it under her breath like it might keep the room from swallowing her.
"Nia," Abeni echoed softly.
For one second, that made the baby feel more dangerous and more human at the same time.
Not a baby.
Nia.
A person.
Idris pushed through the employee hall door far enough to look into the dark beyond. "Move."
Joshua heard the gate at the front of the store rattle again.
Not hard.
Just enough to say I'm still here.
Then, in the dead man's voice from before:
"Please."
No one reacted except the nurse, who flinched so hard she smacked her head lightly against the shelf behind her.
Lucía caught her. "Hey. Stay with me."
The woman was barely nodding now.
Barely in the room.
Joshua hated that too. Hated that this place could pull people apart so fast.
Priya pointed. "Everyone who can walk, walks now."
The old man in the brown coat wiped his face and pushed off the shelf. The businesswoman straightened her blouse with shaking fingers like that would do anything. The two college-looking boys stuck closer together. The kid in the hoodie kept his jaw locked so tight Joshua could see the tendons in his neck.
Tomasz looked at the back hall, then at Joshua holding Nia.
Then at the front of the store.
He made a face.
"There's too many people."
Joshua looked at him. "Then die alone."
Tomasz's nostrils flared.
Priya cut in before it could turn into something dumber. "Nobody splits unless I say so."
"Oh, you in charge now?"
"No," Priya said. "I'm just one of the few people here not acting like a fucking animal yet."
That landed.
Even Tomasz had the sense to shut up for a second.
Dae-hyun and Hana moved into the back hall first, Idris right behind them. Dae-hyun had to duck slightly under a bent frame at the entrance. The hall beyond was narrower than Joshua liked. Concrete walls. Old electrical conduit. Water along one side in a dark line. Weak red emergency strips down low by the baseboards.
The kind of place sound carried too far in.
The kind of place footsteps made promises.
Joshua turned sideways to get Nia through the crooked doorway without clipping her head. Lucía stayed right on his shoulder. Priya was close too, Abeni with the teenager, then the rest in a clotted line that already looked too fragile.
Behind them, from the front of the store, the copied voice said in Abeni's tone:
"Come out."
No one did.
Idris led them twenty feet down the service hall, then thirty. It smelled worse back here. Hot wires, stale mop water, old rot, something chemical turned sour.
Nia made another weak crying sound.
Joshua bounced her once as he walked.
"Damn, aight," he murmured. "I know."
Lucía glanced up at him for half a second.
Not smiling.
Not even close.
Just seeing him different.
He ignored that too.
Ahead, Hana lifted a hand. Everybody stopped.
"What?" Priya asked.
Hana pointed at the wall.
A painted floorplan board hung cracked and half-torn out of its frame. Most of it was useless—faded colored shop blocks, dead branding, warped plastic cover—but three spots on the map had been painted over with rough black Xs, and next to each one a red square was lit from beneath the glass.
Joshua stepped closer.
One red square blinked under LOADING CONTROL near the parking structure.
One under HOTEL UTILITY on the opposite side of the complex.
One under MAINT. OFFICE — UPPER LEVEL.
"What is that?" the businesswoman asked.
Idris swore under his breath. "Control locks."
Hana leaned closer. "Or power points."
Priya was already thinking. "Three."
"Three what?" Tomasz snapped.
Idris pointed with two fingers. "You ever work in a big place with section shutters, tram gates, freight locks? You lose power or clearances, some shit won't open until the right spots are handled."
Lucía frowned. "You think that's the way out?"
"I think," Idris said, "it looks like the kind of thing somebody wanted seen."
Joshua stared at the blinking red squares.
Three points.
Spread out.
Too clean.
Too game-like.
He hated it.
Nia made a tiny whining sound and tucked her face harder into his hoodie.
Behind them, farther back the way they came, metal hit metal.
Everybody turned.
Not the gate this time.
Louder.
Nearer.
A crash from inside the electronics store.
The nurse made a strangled noise.
Dae-hyun took one step back the way they'd come and clenched both fists. "It's in there."
Another crash.
Shelving maybe.
Or the display counter.
Then the copied voice came drifting down the corridor after them.
Not Abeni now.
Lucía's.
"Joshua."
The whole line of people went dead.
Lucía's face drained white.
The voice came again, dead perfect from somewhere behind three walls and a turn:
"Joshua, wait."
Lucía whispered, "I didn't even—"
"Don't," Joshua said.
She shut up.
The thing behind them had his name now.
That sat in him ugly.
Tomasz breathed, "How the fuck does it know his name?"
Abeni answered before anybody else could. "Because we've all been talking too much."
Nobody liked her for being right.
Priya looked at the map again. "We need a direction now."
"Loading control," Idris said immediately. "Closest."
Hana shook her head. "Closest by normal path. Not if the map folds weird."
"It ain't folding."
"You don't know that."
"I know these hall systems."
"And I know proportions."
Their voices sharpened.
Not loud.
Worse.
The sound of people trying not to crack while doing it anyway.
Joshua was still looking at the floorplan.
The parking structure side gave the killer more room. Bad.
The hotel utility sounded smaller. Maybe tighter halls, more doors. Better for hiding, worse for getting trapped.
Upper maintenance office meant stairs. Maybe a clearer bird's-eye route. Maybe a death sentence carrying Nia.
His head was already moving the lines.
Not fully.
Just enough to know every option had teeth.
Then Nia coughed.
Tiny, wet, miserable.
And something in Joshua's body decided before the rest of him caught up.
"Not the parking side," he said.
Everybody looked at him.
He looked back at the map.
"Too open," he said. "If that thing gets lane on us down there, we're cooked."
Idris frowned. "You don't know where it is."
Joshua finally turned his head. "I know enough."
Idris held his stare.
Then nodded once.
Not agreement.
Acceptance.
Priya pointed at the map. "Hotel utility first, then."
Hana looked like she wanted to argue anyway, but another scrape echoed from behind them, followed by Lucía's copied voice saying, softer this time:
"Please don't leave me."
That settled it.
They moved.
This time faster.
The line stretched ugly and uneven through the service hall. Dae-hyun front. Idris beside Hana now, still muttering under his breath about back corridors and access splits. Priya in the middle where she could see everybody. Joshua with Nia tucked high and Lucía tight on him. Abeni keeping the teenager with her. Tomasz near the back but not last, because of course he wasn't. He wanted bodies in front of him and somebody dumber behind him.
Good luck with that.
The corridor turned left.
Then right.
Then opened into a wider service crossing lined with metal doors and a dead vending machine on its face.
The machine's glass was shattered from the inside.
The old man in the coat stopped breathing for a second.
Joshua heard it.
He heard everything now.
Shoes on concrete.
Nia's little unhappy breaths.
The nurse trying not to break down again.
Water ticking somewhere far down-pipe.
The awful maybe-sound of something moving behind the walls.
Hana stopped again at the crossing and looked up.
"Wait."
Dae-hyun nearly ran into her. "What now?"
She pointed.
A dome camera above the intersection.
Red light on.
Watching.
Nia started crying harder.
Real full crying this time.
The kind that shook her little whole body.
Lucía moved instinctively. "Give her to me."
Joshua tried.
He really did.
He shifted Nia halfway toward her—
and Nia screamed.
Louder.
Harder.
Little body arching away.
Lucía cursed under her breath and immediately pushed her back into Joshua's chest. "Okay. Never mind."
A weak ugly laugh escaped somebody in the back. Stress-laugh. The kind right before you lose it.
Joshua bounced Nia again.
Didn't help.
Her face had gone dark red now.
Priya's eyes flicked around the crossing. "We need to move now."
"No shit," Tomasz snapped.
Then, from the hall to their right, a woman's voice floated out.
Not copied.
Real.
High with panic.
"Please! Please, don't leave me—"
Everybody locked.
Lucía turned first. "There."
Joshua's whole body went cold in a different way.
Because that voice was real enough to hurt.
No distortion.
No dead smoothness.
A real woman.
Crying.
And from farther down the same side hall came something else.
A dragging step.
Then another.
Not fast.
Not trying to hide.
Nia screamed in Joshua's arms.
The crying woman down the right hall started sobbing harder.
And Dae-hyun said, low and ugly:
"We are not alone at all."