Page 96 of Zenith Tower

The annex door slammed again.

One of the bound stewards shouted for help.

I went through first. The passage was scarcely wide enough for my shoulders, with rough stone on one side and the backs of the records shelves on the other. Silver water moved beneath slatted boards underfoot, carrying a thin metallic light into the dark.

Caspian followed with the stolen baton. Hale guided Kieran through sideways, careful of his shoulder, then pulled the service door shut behind them.

The latch had no lock on our side.

“That won’t hold him,” Caspian said.

“It doesn’t have to.” Hale looked down the passage. “Which way?”

I unfolded the map against the wall. The administrator’s ink showed two turns before a stair leading back to the residential level. Beside the final door, she had written,I will meet you here. If I am absent, stay inside.

Expect patrol after the handover bell.

The bell rang overhead.

Its first stroke passed through the stone and into my bones. By the second, boots had entered the processing corridor behind us.

Hale extinguished the small lamp beside the service door.

Darkness closed over the passage. Kieran’s breath caught near my ear. Caspian found my hand and pressed the map back into it before taking his place beside the door.

Voices gathered on the other side.

“Marrow?” someone called.

The annex door opened with a crack of wood.

Orders followed, muffled by stone and shelving. One patrol went toward Kieran’s cell. Another remained with Marrow. I heard the service-door latch lift, drop, then lift again.

Caspian raised the baton.

The latch settled.

“Lower stair,” Marrow said beyond the wall. “They’ll try to regain the residential wing.”

Boots moved away at a run.

Hale relit the lamp. “So do we.”

The passage bent sharply after several yards. Water thundered beneath the boards there, swollen into a deeper channel that made the floor tremble under Kieran’s uncertain steps. Hale kept one arm around him. I walked close on the other side, my hand at Kieran’s back whenever the passage widened enough to allow it.

The bond carried his effort in bursts: nausea, a hot pull through his shoulder, the stubborn refusal to stop. I wanted to take the pain from him. I had done enough to his Markwithout understanding the cost, and the narrow passage was no place to test what else our bond might permit.

At the first turn, voices sounded ahead.

Caspian shuttered the lamp and drew us into a recess cut around a water pipe. We pressed close behind him. Kieran’s shivering traveled through all four of us where our bodies touched.

Two stewards descended the stair beyond the wall.

“Marrow wants every residential door secured,” one said.

“What about the administrator?”

“North desk can’t find her.”