Chelsy found Miles in the stairwell between B2 and B3, sitting on a concrete step with his head in his hands. The emergency lighting painted him in sick green washes, made him look like something already dead that hadn't accepted it yet.
Somewhere above, a ventilation fan clicked against its housing-click, click, pause-the sound of machinery pretending to breathe. The air down here tasted of rust and the distant, constant smell of the furnace that never stopped burning, not even for holidays, not even for the dead.
She sat down beside him. Didn't touch him. In the facility, touch meant something different than it did in the movies-there was always calculation underneath, always the question of what you were bargaining for. But in Theater 3, with the screen flickering and
Miles's hand
