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head. He was pale and his eyes were wide.

    “It means no more experiments. This whole sick dream of yours is all over.”
    Piers backed away another step and fell into his chair.
    His hands were shaking. “N-no m-more experiments,” he stuttered. He reached behind a stack of books on the table, pulled out a gun, and without pausing stuck it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
    The sound of it echoed with Elle’s scream and for what seemed like a long time I couldn’t stop looking at the pattern of blood and brains on the wall. But I think it was really only a second.
    “Holy Jesus Christ, Anderson! You were just supposed to convince him to stop the research.”
    “It’s stopped,” Anderson said blandly.
    I wanted to wring his neck right there, but I had to keep it together. We all did. “Hey, you guys,” I snapped, pointing at Rand and Craig. “Don’t you even think about getting sick and leaving your DNA all over this room.”
    “We gotta go,” Karen said. “Now.”
    We’d hardly taken but a few running steps down the corridor when the alarms started to sound. “Someone in one of the rooms hit a panic button!” Karen told us.
    We kept running, with Craig in the lead, back the way we came. Suddenly, he just stopped. “That path just ended,”
    he told us, before taking off in a different direction. I heard a groaning sound coming from above. I looked back to see a fire barrier drop down and block the way we had come. As we ran, more came down behind us. Craig continued to move rapidly, never pausing, sometimes almost tripping over himself as he made a quick turn down a new corridor. Then I heard the groaning sound up ahead.
    “Craig, stop!” Somehow I managed to reach him and yanked him back just in time to avoid seeing him squashed by a fire door.
    We were trapped.
    “Ok, everyone, just calm down,” Karen said.

    “Calm down? What’s there to be calm about?” Craig shrieked.
    “Calm down, or I’ll have Anderson calm you down,”
    Karen said, but she was looking at me. “Elle, can you fix this? Can you return it to its original state of not being in our way?”
    Elle concentrated on the mechanism, and the door began to inch up. “I’m not…sure…I can do this.” Her face was white with the strain and she had broken out in a sweat.
    As soon as there was room, I pushed myself under the door.
    Once on the other side, I started to lift. The other guys came through and tried to help, but it was a ton steel that wanted to come back down. My muscle mass grew as I tried to keep the door up. “Pull. Her. Through,” I gritted out. Rand crawled back under. I knew the moment he had Elle because suddenly it was twice as hard to hold it up, and I prayed, terrified that I would drop it before they were clear.
    “They’re through, Ethan.” I felt Karen’s hands, pulling me away. “You can let go.” She pulled me back as the door crashed down again.
    There wasn’t even time to be relieved. We were back to running. Craig said we had a clear path to the outside, but fire barriers were still coming down and we were barely staying ahead of them. I looked back and saw that Karen was falling behind. Elle was pulling at her arm. I turned to go back for them.
    “Ethan, look out!” One of the fire doors dropped down and almost cut off my toes. I hadn’t even heard it coming.
    And now it stood between me and the girls.
    “Elle!” I called to her. “Can you lift it at all?”
    “She’s trying, but I think she’s pushed too far already.”
    “I know it’s hard, but even just a few inches. Just enough to let me get my hands under it. Can you do that much?”
    “I’m sorry. I just can’t.” Elle’s voice was faint. “Ethan, you’ve got to get the boys out of here.”
    “We’re not leaving you.”

    “No way!” Rand yelled through the door. “We’re not going without you!”
    “Rand,” Karen said, “the guards are mobilizing to come in here and investigate. You’ve got to get out of