The elevator was the sort that had once tried very hard to be impressive. Mirrored interior, brass fittings, and a vertical row of buttons that ended with one labeled Presidential in a font so dignified it practically cleared its throat before speaking. The car rose with a low hum, like a machine that had spent years waiting for a reason to matter and had decided, tonight, that dignity was the best revenge.
Proxy was on the cameras.
"The two from before," he said, watching the feeds roll across his deck. "They reached the basement landing. Spent about four minutes trying the door."
He followed one of them on screen. A woman, compact build. She ran a hand along the door frame, thoughtful rather than frustrated, then stepped back.
"Couldn't get in," Proxy continued. "They're back on the ground floor."
"Are they together?" Nyx asked from his sleeve.
"They're moving together," he said. "Whether that actually means anything is another question."
The man with her moved like protocol had been etched into muscle memory. He checked sight lines before corners, kept his back to walls, the textbook of someone who had cleared rooms professionally. Ex-law enforcement, Proxy guessed. Or close enough.
The woman was different.
"I'll keep an eye on them."
"Anyone else?"
"Not in my coverage. If someone else is in the building besides those two and us, they're doing an excellent impression of furniture."
On the screen the pair settled into a defensible corner on the ground floor.
"We're clear up here."
Nyx made a pleased little sound and turned to face the elevator doors.
The panel chimed.
Presidential.
The doors opened.
Nyx stepped inside like someone arriving exactly where she had always planned to be.
Three steps in, she stopped, looked around.
And made a sound of recognition, like a traveler finally reaching a place they'd been describing in their head for years.
Proxy stepped in after her.
The suite was large. Not tasteful large, but corporate luxury large. The kind of space designed by committees that believed square footage was the same thing as prestige.
A wide main room spread out before them, furniture still arranged in its showroom configuration beneath a thin layer of dust. Heavy pieces chosen more for how they looked on a rate sheet than how they felt under a human body.
The exterior wall was floor-to-ceiling smart glass.
At some point in the last decade the tinting protocol had died quietly, so the glass now simply existed as glass. The island stretched beneath them in the dark.
The ceiling strips and baseboard lighting had come back online when power returned, bathing the room in a warm gold glow that made the dust feel less like neglect and more like atmosphere.
Along the left wall stood a bar unit. Bottles sealed behind glass, labels facing outward with the confidence of products that believed they deserved to be admired.
Integrated display panels were set into the walls. Dark for decades, now awake again, quietly looping corporate screensaver patterns that had been waiting for an audience.
In the far corner sat a neural-link entertainment cradle. The sort of machine that allowed you to spend an entire afternoon somewhere that was not this room.
And through the archway at the far end, visible even from the entrance, the bedroom.
The bed was enormous in the way luxury beds often are. The sheets still covered it, dust settling across them in a faint gray veil. Behind it, another wall of smart glass giving the same panoramic view as the main room.
Nyx saw the bedroom.
She looked at Proxy.
She looked at the bedroom again.
"It has a name," she said.
"The suite?"
"Our place."
She turned toward him with her chin slightly raised, the posture of someone correcting a mistake that had existed for too long.
"It's perfect."
"It's a presidential suite in an abandoned resort where people are actively trying to kill us."
"Yes."
She was already walking deeper into the room, fingers trailing lightly along the back of the main sofa as she passed it. Not absentmindedly. The focused inventory-taking of someone who had already decided something was theirs and was now cataloguing the details.
"Perfect."
Proxy set his pack down and brought the deck fully online, feeding the suite's network nodes into his early warning loop.
He locked the suite door through the building network and set a passive alert on the elevator shaft. If the car moved without his key authorization, he'd know before the doors opened.
Nyx had discovered the bar.
She stood in front of it with her hands clasped behind her back, studying the bottles through the glass with the serious attention she usually reserved for devices that were about to be dismantled.
"There's actual champagne in here," she said.
"Its been there for who knows how long," Proxy replied.
"Is it bad?"
"Depends what you're comparing it to."
She turned her head to look back at him over her shoulder.
The look contained something she allowed him to see very intentionally.
"Open it."
He watched her for a moment.
Then he walked to the bar.
The glass panel used a standard electronic latch. Proxy touched it through the deck.
Click.
The panel unlocked.
He took a bottle from the rack and examined the seal.
Intact.
He held it there for a second, wearing the expression of a man running a quiet cost-benefit analysis.
"We're currently participating in a battle royale," he said.
"Yes," Nyx agreed.
She had already hopped up onto the bar counter and was sitting there now, legs dangling, hands resting neatly in her lap while she watched him.
"There are thirty people left on this island."
"Thirty-two," she said. "Wasn't that your last number?"
"Thirty. Don't count us dummy. Possibly fewer."
"Mm."
She tilted her head slightly toward the bottle.
"And?"
He opened it.
The foil peeled away cleanly. The cork came free with a soft muffled pop that the smart glass reflected gently back across the room. Whatever time had done to the liquid inside, the scent that rose from the bottle was still unmistakably champagne.
Proxy found two glasses behind the bar that had survived the decades without cracking and poured.
Nyx took hers with both hands.
She looked at him over the rim and smiled.
Proxy looked away first.
She noticed.
She always noticed.
"The corner of your mouth," she said.
"My mouth isn't doing anything."
"It tightens a little." She took a sip. Her eyes remained fixed on him. "It did it again just now."
"I'd like to point out that you're still covered in someone else's blood."
Nyx glanced down at herself with the mild concern of someone who had just been told a button was loose. The front of her shirt had dried into a dark rust color. The ends of her hair still carried streaks of it.
She considered the situation thoughtfully.
Then she looked back up.
"There's probably a shower," she said.
"Almost certainly."
"Through there."
She nodded toward the bedroom.
The look she gave him was not technically phrased as a question.
But technically speaking, it was very close.
Proxy found something in the room to look at that wasn't her face.
"I'm going to run a check on the building's camera grid," he said.
"That'll take long?"
"Not particularly."
"So after that."
She slid off the bar counter, lifting her glass as she walked toward the bedroom archway.
She paused in the doorway and looked back.
One shoulder resting against the frame. Glass held loosely in one hand. Hair falling around her face. Dust, dried blood, and everything else included.
She watched him with the certainty of someone observing a future she had already decided was inevitable.
"You should see the view from in here," she said. "It's nicer."
Then she disappeared into the bedroom.
Proxy stood at the bar and looked at the archway for a moment.
He took a sip of the old champagne.
Against all expectations, it wasn't bad.
He was halfway through constructing a sentence about the camera grid that might survive exposure to his own sense of honesty when the sound arrived.
It came from everywhere.
Every speaker across the island at once. Wide-band audio. The sonic equivalent of a hand placed firmly on your shoulder to make sure you were paying attention.
"Good evening, contestants. This is your host."
The voice paused.
Enough time for the word contestants to pay attention. Enough time for the idea of a host to exist. Enough time for the implications of audience, production, and carefully managed spectacle to reach every corner of the island simultaneously.
The suite remained warm and quiet, light resting on dust, smart glass, and the champagne bottle already beginning to sweat a ring onto the bar.
Proxy looked up at the ceiling.
Then at the archway.
"Proxy~"
The voice drifted from the bedroom, soft and expectant.
He picked up his glass.
Then he walked toward the archway.