The world didn't just explode—
it tore itself apart.
A roar of white heat swallowed everything, metal screaming as if the building itself had found a voice and was begging to survive.
"Move! Move!"
Julian's voice ripped through the chaos, raw and breaking, as he slammed the medical gurney into the reinforced freight elevator.
I didn't look back.
I couldn't.
Because if I did—if I saw Reid standing there in that blood-red light, gun in hand, choosing to stay behind—
I wouldn't leave.
I would burn with him.
So I fixed my eyes forward and gripped the edge of my mother's bed so tightly my knuckles blanched white, the metal biting into my skin as the elevator doors hissed shut—
just as a fireball devoured the hallway.
The descent was violent.
Not smooth—never controlled.
The entire shaft shuddered as the Shard groaned around us, its bones cracking under the weight of Julianne's "Sampson Protocol."
It felt like we were inside a dying giant.
