54. Sienna
Sienna
T he lights flicker overhead.
Once.
Twice.
Then everything turns red.
My stomach drops instantly.
No.
No, no, no—
“What?” Jonah snaps beside me while we sprint down the corridor.
“They see us.”
“Yeah,” Ronan mutters. “We figured that out.”
“Not like this.”
I glance up at the ceiling where the lighting pulses again in synchronized intervals.
Recognition slams through me hard enough my chest tightens.
“They’re routing through ORACLE.”
The building hum changes immediately after the words leave my mouth.
Deeper now.
Alive.
Somewhere ahead, metal shrieks violently.
Then doors slam shut behind us one after another.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Heavy steel barriers dropping through the corridors.
Segmenting movement.
Controlling flow.
Herding us.
“Don’t stop!” I shout. “If we stall, they’ll separate us!”
The hallway ahead suddenly erupts with movement.
A steel panel crashes downward from the ceiling.
Too fast.
Way too fast.
I dive instinctively.
Concrete tears across my knees while I slide beneath the barrier with inches to spare.
The metal slams toward my back—
Hands grab me hard.
Jonah.
He yanks me forward just as the barrier crashes shut behind us with enough force the entire corridor shakes.
Too close.
God.
Way too close.
I suck in a sharp breath while Jonah steadies me against him.
“Talk to me.”
His voice comes rough beside my ear.
Focused despite the pain I know is tearing through him right now.
“They’re controlling the structure,” I say quickly. “Adaptive lockdown. ORACLE’s learning our movement patterns in real time.”
The corridor lights pulse red again overhead.
Like the building itself is watching us.
“This place looks abandoned,” I whisper, staring upward, “but the internal system is state-of-the-art.”
“Can you stop it?”
“Not from here.”
A beat.
Jonah checks the corridor ahead and raises his weapon again.
“Then we keep moving.”
Exactly.