Page 92 of Stay Scared

“You good?”

My fingers are still hooked into his vest.

“I landed.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Another panel slams somewhere behind us. I look at his mouth before I mean to. The split I left there has opened again.

Cade sees where I looked. His arm tightens.

The floor jolts.

Ash reaches the widening gap just as a steel partition drops. Cade releases me and lunges toward him. The barrier slams into the floor first.

Ash and Owen vanish behind solid metal.

“Ash!”

A fist strikes the other side.

“Keep moving,” he calls through the partition. “I’m finding the release.”

The wall beside me starts inward. Cade’s hand finds mine before I see it coming. He pulls me against his side and drags me clear.

“We can’t leave them.”

“They have the map.”

“I have the key.”

Cade looks at my chest where the cord disappears beneath my jacket. His hand closes harder around mine.

Owen’s voice reaches us through the steel.

“Get to the isolation box. We’ll reroute around you.”

A second barrier drops somewhere behind them.

And just like that, the four-person route Rook opened for us becomes two.

Chapter 14

The corridor closes behind us one section at a time.

Cade keeps my hand locked inside his while we run toward the far door. Metal grinds beneath the floor, driving the segmented walls inward. Each section waits until we clear it before narrowing, swallowing the route back to Owen and Ash while the founder key strikes my chest beneath my jacket. They are still somewhere behind the partitions with the old map. We have the key. For now, those are the only two facts that matter.

Then one wall moves early.

Cade sees it first and yanks me against him, turning so his body takes the advancing panel instead of mine. My shoulder hits his vest as the wall catches him across the back and drives us sideways, tearing his hand from mine. The corridor is no longer closing in sequence. Rook changed the timing.

Cade plants one forearm against the opposite panel while the space tightens around us.

“Get through the gap.”

A maintenance recess opens several feet ahead, barely wide enough for one person. A steel door sits inside it beneath a faded electrical warning sign. It is not the isolation box Owen told us to reach. It is simply the only space the moving walls have not swallowed.

I reach for Cade. “You’re coming too.”