The door shouldn't have been there.
She knew every inch of these halls—studied them until the shapes haunted her dreams—burned escape routes into her nervous system for nights she couldn’t sleep, memorized blind corners and camera patterns for the rare moments they blinked. She was sure of it: this door was not in any pattern or map her mind held.
But here it was anyway.
Tucked at the end of some dim hallway she’d never seen, barely visible in the gloom, half swallowed by a piece of wall designed to blend in. Same faded, sterile gray as everything else—meant to exist, not to be seen.
RESTRICTED ACCESS.
The words weren’t paint. They didn’t even seem printed—something pulsed red under the skin of the panel, like a warning coming from somewhere deeper.
She stopped. Heart hammering, bre
