Page 167 of Immune

The tower entrance smells like old smoke, stale water that’s been sitting for six years, rot, and the sour reek of bodies that have been dead too long to be useful but not long enough to be forgotten. A row of mailboxes lines one wall, most of which have been pried open. Names sit under cracked plastic labels.

Haynes.

Webber.

Rivera.

Park.

Norton.

All people that once used to come home carrying their shopping bags and school projects and takeout. They would argue over the bills, wives spending money on too many books when they have a case full they haven’t touched, forgotten birthdays or anniversaries, lost keys and phones, shoes left by the door.

Now the lobby is stained with old blood and the clear sign of dragged footprints. And this is why I hate residential buildings. There are always too many ghosts that haunt them now. Not real ones, of course. Imagined ones, and those are always worse.

Ewan pauses next to the elevator doors, and I mutter, “Lift’s out.”

He gives me a look that I would normally give him, and he says, “Looks like you’re wearing the captain’s hat now.”

I shrug, unfazed. “Figured you might try to do that stupid optimistic thing again. Stopped it before you could get ahead of yourself.”

“Optimistic about elevators? In the apocalypse? Gimme a bit of credit,” he says.

I raise an eyebrow at him and point at the headphones around his neck. “You literally have headphones and a death wish.”

“Both of which are considered very in right now. It’s called End of the World Chic,” he counters, giving his voice a little girly sass that makes me want to close my eyes and pray for patience.

Instead, I point at the narrow corridor tucked behind the dead lifts. A rusted sign hangs crooked from the ceiling.

SERVICE ACCESS.

“Maintenance corridor,” I whisper. “Less likely to be full of everyone who tried to escape at the same time.”

Fletcher nods. “That works.”

We leave the lobby before the building realizes we’re even inside. The service hallway smells of damp concrete, old wiring, and mold instead of decay and old bodies. It’s better, but not by much. It curves behind electrical rooms and abandoned maintenance cupboards, past a wall of meters with half of the covers torn off. The floor is slick in some places, water dripping from the pipes up top. Every sound is smaller here. Closer, somehow. Less echo and more breath.

Naturally, I still hate it.

The hallway ends at a narrow steel staircase that is no wider than my shoulders. It climbs up behind a locked maintenance gate toward a door marked SECOND FLOOR ACCESS.

I stare at it like the universe put it there to conspire against me.

Fletcher glances at me and quietly says, “I know.”

“I hate that you know,” I whisper back.

He nods. “It only goes up one floor.”

“Still stairs, though,” I point out.

“Ain’t arguing that.”

Sighing harshly through my nose, I eye the stairwell before muttering, “Fine. But these don’t count.”

“That’s a convenient rule,” the southern asshole quietly notes.

“I survived six years on convenient rules,” I grumble almost silently, glaring at the side of Fletcher’s head.