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“What the fuck?” Prime shouted.

Smoke started coming through the corridor doors. People pushed away from that side of the room, climbing over chairs while those farther back kept trying to see what happened.

“Move back!” a security guard yelled.

Nobody was listening.

A woman went down near the aisle. The man behind her stumbled over her legs, knocking another chair sideways. I grabbed him by his jacket before he landed on top of her.

“Get your ass up!” I barked.

Quest caught the woman under her arms while I shoved the chair out of the way. She was crying too hard to stand straight.

“My friend,” she kept saying. “Where’s my friend?”

“We gotta move,” Quest told her.

People were trying to squeeze past us from both directions. Somebody stepped on my foot, then slammed into my shoulder hard enough to make me lose my grip on the man.

The music stopped, but the room got louder.

I looked toward the corridor and saw orange light behind the smoke. Something was burning. I couldn’t see what, and I wasn’t about to send people toward it.

“This way!” I shouted, pointing toward the rear doors. “Back exit!”

Prime was already helping clear the aisle. Creed pushed a fallen chair away while Cannon reached down for somebody who had dropped to their knees.

A man shoved past me, nearly knocking the woman Quest was holding back onto the floor.

“Slow the fuck down!”

He kept moving.

I wanted to drag his ass back, but another woman fell against me. One of her shoes was gone, and she was trying to look beneath the chairs.

“Leave it,” I told her.

“My phone...”

“Leave that, too. Come on.”

I took her arm and moved her toward the rear. Smoke was spreading above us, and the alarm had started sounding. I couldn’t see the whole room anymore. Every time I looked back, more people were trying to force themselves into the same aisle.

These people had come here to enjoy a fight. Now I was pulling them off the floor while my casino burned somewhere behind me.

At the doors, a guard was trying to keep people from catching themselves on the overturned chairs. I helped move one while the woman I’d been guiding slipped outside.

A young man stumbled near the threshold, and the crowd behind him kept coming. I caught the back of his shirt and hauled him upright.

“Keep moving!”

He reached for the doorframe to steady himself before going through.

Cold air hit my face when I finally got outside. People were pouring out behind me, coughing and crying as they moved away from the building.

I stayed near the door long enough to help another woman over the threshold. She clung to my wrist until somebody called her name, then hurried toward them.

I looked across the people scattering through the lot.