Nobody spoke above a whisper.
That woman's voice down the hall had ripped straight through the little bit of hard calm they'd built.
Real.
That was the problem.
If it had sounded dead-smooth, too perfect, too copied, they could've kept moving.
But it didn't.
It sounded like somebody's throat had already been rubbed raw by crying.
"Please—" she choked again. "Please don't leave me—"
A hard wet drag followed it.
Then another.
Lucía had already turned her whole body toward the right-side hall.
Joshua saw it happen before she moved.
"Don't," he said.
She looked back at him like he'd slapped her. "That's a person."
"Yeah."
"So?"
"So that's what makes it dangerous."
The hall to their right was narrower than the one they'd come through. Low service lighting. Concrete floor. Pipe shadows. The woman's crying bounced strange off the walls, breaking up in the dark so it was hard to tell distance. Twenty feet? Forty? Could've been more.
Dae-hyun took two slow steps forward anyway, planting himself just ahead of Hana and Idris. Big shoulders. Hands open. Jaw locked.
"If she's real, she's real," he said.
Priya looked down the hall, then at the rest of them. "No one runs in blind."
Tomasz laughed once, ugly and soft. "So we're just leaving her?"
"No," Priya said. "We're deciding whether this is a trap designed by the map, the killer, or another human. Then we move."
The woman sobbed again.
Nia screamed in Joshua's arms hard enough to make his ears ring.
He shifted her automatically, tucking her head tighter under his chin.
"Aight, aight," he muttered. "I got you."
She did not care that he had her.
She screamed louder.
That made everything worse.
Because now the hall had them too.
The woman down it must've heard.
Whatever was dragging behind her must've heard.
And if the thing with Borrowed Voice had circled far enough—
Joshua's whole body felt too tight.
Lucía looked at Nia, then back down the hall. "We can't just stand here."
Hana pointed up without taking her eyes off the right-side darkness. "Camera."
Joshua followed her finger.
Another dome camera, red light live, sitting above the hall mouth like an eye nailed into the ceiling.
Watching this too.
Of course it was.
The woman's crying came again, shakier this time. "Please… please help me…"
And under it—
that dragging noise.
Closer now.
Not footsteps.
A pull.
A shoe sole maybe. Or a leg.
The old man in the brown coat whispered, "She's hurt."
Idris said, "Or wants us to think she is."
"That is a real voice," Lucía snapped.
Joshua's eyes were still on the dark. "Real don't mean safe."
Lucía swung on him. "So what, we leave everybody who sounds hurt now?"
He looked back at her.
Rain from Manhattan felt a million years ago.
The city. Tory texting him. Zuleyka getting on his nerves. Adriel waiting up.
All of that had been normal enough that saying no to saving somebody still belonged to regular guilt.
This place was different.
Here, bad choices killed whole groups.
Lucía saw the answer in his face and hated it immediately.
Good.
He hated it too.
Dae-hyun took one more step toward the hall mouth.
Priya said, "Stop."
He stopped.
Barely.
"We do this clean," she said. "Dae-hyun front. Joshua second."
Joshua looked at her. "Why me?"
"Because you're already making route calls."
Tomasz muttered, "And because he thinks he's him."
Joshua didn't even look at him.
Priya kept going. "Idris and Hana read the space. Lucía comes only if we confirm she's alive. Everyone else stays back at the crossing."
Abeni tightened her grip on the teenager's wrist. The girl was shaking so hard it traveled up her whole arm.
Nia kept crying.
That alone made Joshua want to turn around and choose a different hall, different map, different life.
But the woman cried again, and this one cracked at the end into a sound too ugly to fake.
Dae-hyun exhaled once through his nose. "We go ten yards. No farther unless it's clean."
Joshua nodded.
Lucía didn't like being told to stay. You could see it all over her face. But she stayed.
Good.
He pushed Nia a little higher. Her little body felt hot and wrong with panic. He adjusted the blanket edge around her head to block some of the sound and turned sideways, keeping her tucked in against the wall-side of his body.
"Joshua," Lucía said low.
He looked at her.
"Don't drop her."
He almost said something dry back.
Didn't.
"Wasn't planning to."
Then he moved.
Dae-hyun first.
Joshua right behind him.
Idris and Hana just off to the side, not as far up, but far enough to see.
The hall swallowed the crossing noise fast.
Three steps in, the air changed. Wetter. Colder. Smelled like rust, bleach, and the underside of something left standing too long in dark water.
Five steps.
A metal service door on the left, chained shut.
Seven.
An overturned janitor cart.
Eight.
A streak on the floor that looked black under the emergency wash.
Blood maybe.
Or oil.
Joshua's eyes kept moving.
Ceiling.
Corners.
Door frames.
Pipe shadows.
The dragging sound came again.
Then the woman.
"Please…"
Dae-hyun raised one hand, stopping them.
They listened.
Nia had gone from full screaming to those awful hiccup-sobs that meant she was burning through herself.
The woman was closer now.
And Joshua could finally hear the other part properly—
not a shoe dragging.
A body being pulled.
He saw it the same second Dae-hyun did.
Both of them moved at once.
The woman came around the bend on her hands and knees, hair stuck to her face, blouse torn open at one shoulder, one leg trailing wrong behind her.
She was alive.
Barely.
And tied to her ankle with a thick black power cable was another woman.
Dead.
Or almost.
Hard to tell at first because her head was dragging wrong, chin scraping the floor every time the live one crawled.
The crawling woman saw them and started crying harder out of what looked like relief so strong it hurt.
"Please," she gasped. "Please, please—"
Joshua's stomach dropped.
Because the dead woman behind her had a keycard lanyard and store radio clipped to her chest.
Employee.
And somebody had looped the cable around both of them.
Not the live woman doing the dragging.
Somebody had tied them together.
"Jesus Christ," Idris breathed.
The crawling woman kept trying to haul herself forward, dragging the dead employee inch by inch. Her palms were skinned open. One cheek was swollen purple. There was blood down one side of her neck.
Lucía shoved past the crossing behind them anyway.
"Move," she hissed, already low to the floor as she came.
Joshua almost snapped at her.
Didn't get the chance.
Because the dead employee's hand twitched.
Everybody froze.
The crawling woman didn't even notice. She was too busy sobbing and pulling.
Then the employee's head rolled slightly and Joshua saw her eyes.
Open.
Alive.
Barely.
Not dead.
Just gone enough to look it.
The power cable jerked tight between them.
The employee made a low animal sound in her throat and tried to get one knee under herself.
Failed.
Collapsed.
The crawling woman screamed. "He tied us together— please— he tied us together—"
"Who?" Dae-hyun demanded.
She looked up, face streaked with panic and grime.
"One of the men. One of the men from our group. He—"
A laugh cut through the hall behind them.
Real.
Male.
Not copied.
Everybody turned so hard it almost looked choreographed.
A figure leaned half out from a service doorway farther back near the bend.
Thin. Balding. Shirt damp with sweat. Face too calm for the room.
Joshua recognized him half a second later.
The thin bald man from the stockroom.
He had vanished during the move.
No one had clocked it.
He smiled.
Not big.
That made it worse.
"You all really stopped," he said.
Lucía's face changed completely. "You did this?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "She wouldn't shut up."
The crawling woman made a sound like her insides tore.
The bald man looked at Joshua holding Nia.
His smile widened a little.
"Well," he said. "That's fucked up."
Dae-hyun surged forward two steps so fast the hall seemed to jump with him. "Come here."
The bald man backed up instantly into the service room behind him, still smiling.
Joshua saw the angle before Dae-hyun fully committed.
Bad line.
Doorway choke.
Unknown room.
Maybe a second exit.
Maybe a tool.
Maybe—
"Don't," Joshua snapped.
Dae-hyun stopped hard enough that his sneaker squealed on wet concrete.
The bald man laughed again and disappeared backward into the room.
Gone.
Just like that.
Tomasz's voice floated from the crossing, high and ugly. "What happened? What happened?"
Priya cut back, "Shut up."
The crawling woman was still sobbing on the floor.
The employee she was tied to blinked once.
Slow.
Alive.
Lucía dropped to her knees and went straight to work. Hands on faces. Eyes. Breathing. Cable. Ankles.
"They need cut loose now."
"With what?" Idris snapped.
Good question.
Joshua's hand went to his backpack before he thought about it.
Zipper.
Fast feel.
Drives.
Phone.
Cash.
No knife.
Of course not.
He looked at Dae-hyun. "You got anything?"
Dae-hyun held his palms up. Empty.
Idris swore. Hana crouched near the cable and stared at the knot.
"It's not a knot," she said.
"What?"
"It's twisted through itself. Pulled tight with weight."
Lucía looked up. "Can you undo it?"
"Not fast."
"Then fast enough."
Nia started crying hard again.
From somewhere behind them, deeper in the halls they'd come from, a voice drifted low and perfect in Lucía's tone.
"Joshua."
Everybody went dead for the second time in under a minute.
The crawling woman's face emptied in confusion. "Who—"
Then the copied voice came again.
Closer.
"Joshua, wait."
The bald man's laugh floated out from the room by the bend at the same time.
And Joshua realized exactly how bad this crossing had just become.
Two living women on the floor.
One hidden human lunatic in a side room.
The voice-copying killer behind them somewhere.
Nia crying in his arms.
A full group bottlenecked at the hall mouth.
And every second they stood here, they got easier to kill.
The crawling woman grabbed at Lucía's sleeve.
"Don't leave us," she begged.
Lucía looked up at Joshua.
Not angry this time.
Just full force.
Make the call.
Joshua looked down the hall, at the cable, at the side room, at Nia, at Dae-hyun standing there ready to break somebody's face in, at Hana reading angles, at Idris already seeing how trapped they were.
Then he said the words that made everybody hate him for a second.
"We take the live one first."