The ceiling lets go like a lung collapsing. I don’t hear the sound so much as feel it—pressure first, then grit in my teeth, a roar rolling forward as if the building decided it was a river. Dominic’s hand hooks my collar and yanks; I hit the floor and slide on my knees, shoulder screaming. The world becomes dust, heat, and the taste of pennies. Someone is shouting my name. Someone else is praying in a language that sounds like stone.
“Move,” Dominic says, voice under the roar, right at my ear. His palm is a wall at my spine. I move because he’s right and because the corridor in front of us is still a corridor, narrow and mean, not a grave—yet.
Behind us the steel shutter howls under new weight. A drone slams into it on the other side and scrapes along the metal like a god with a hangnai
