We’re walking up the steps to the entrance when I hear a phone ringing in my ears. I look over at Tyler, who’s shocked, then pissed.

  She taps her earpiece. “Yes? Hello?” she whispers.

  “Hi guys,” says Amir’s voice. “Uh, sorry to interrupt.”

  “What is it?” says Tyler.

  “I’ve pulled up the blueprints of the church they filed with the city?” says Amir. “I thought it might help. I can stay on the line if you want.”

  “How’d you get this number?” asks Tyler.

  “Hacker, remember?” says Amir. “Also, I’ve still got Ochoa’s laptop.”

  “Fine,” says Tyler. “Stay on the line but keep absolutely quiet unless you’re asked a question. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “What are we looking at just inside these doors?” asks Tyler.

  “Stairs up to the second level to the right and left curving up. Big two-story lobby. Coat rooms to the left and right of the sanctuary. Uh, most of the first floor is sanctuary with, like, a backstage area behind it?” says Amir.

  “Things are weird down here,” says Monica. “It’s hot. I think I smell smoke. I see a fire suppression system and lights for the alarms, but it’s dormant. We’re almost to the first set of classrooms now.”

  Tyler and I are at the doors. There are three sets of double doors. The ones in the center are biggest, with the other two are smaller and angled up at each end toward the middle. I realize it’s meant to suggest Calvary Hill and the crucifixion. The doors are glass, the area beyond them is dark, and I don’t see any movement. Tyler pulls on a fancy door handle made to look like a rough wooden cross. Locked.

  We look around and find a panel laid out like the keypad on a phone.

  Tyler points to it and arches her eyebrows at me.

  I sigh, Push, and mash my hand down on the raised keys all at once. It flashes green and there’s a click from the doors. Tyler pulls her gun, opens it, and we’re inside.

  “What’s upstairs, Amir?” says Tyler. She’s right next to me, peering around through the gloom, but I can only hear her over the com.

  “The stores, food court, bathrooms, and there’s this hallway on the far side of you if you go up the stairs that leads back to offices and a couple of conference rooms,” says the hacker. “There’s also doors on either side of that hall that lead up to the balcony of the sanctuary.”

  “If there’s a ceremony of some kind, it’s probably in the sanctuary,” says Monica. “But the records and whatnot should be up in the offices.”

  “We need to get eyes on the sanctuary,” says Tyler. “The sacrifices might be there. Ben and I will go up.”

  Tyler leads the way up the stairs, her gun drawn, finger laid above the trigger. I’ve got my stupid slingshot out, a bullet in the pouch and gripped in my hand. I think it’s one of the steel balls, but I can’t be sure. Lead always feels greasy to me.

  As we get to the top of the stairs, we hear Monica curse. “We have a fire,” she says. “No, two fires. Both classrooms have a bunch of crap stacked in the middle of the room and set alight.”

  “And no alarms,” says Tyler.

  “Moving to the next set of classrooms now…,” says Monica.

  Tyler and I are scanning the second floor. I don’t see any movement. There are no signs above advertising for any of the establishments below, and all of them are closed, their lights switched off. I see the ice cream place decorated in pink and green pastels, the clothing store seems to do a brisk baseball cap business, the bookstore looks like all bookstores with hardbound books placed where all can see the covers. The restaurant’s menu is a big dark panel television screen hanging over the grill and the deep fryers. The food court itself looks like it could seat a hundred people. It crowds against a railing that curves around and overlooks the drop into the lobby.

  Across the way from us is the hallway leading back to the management of the place, long and unlit, though there are a few windows further down with light shining out. To either side of it is another set of double doors which, presumably, lead out into the sanctuary balcony.

  “More fires,” says Monica from the basement. “All the classrooms, I think, are on fire, though they seem to be dying down now.”

  “What about the fire doors?” says Tyler.

  “What?” says Monica. “Oh, they’re open. Magnets, looks like. No, wait. They’re also propped open. They’ve got doorstops wedged under.” I hear her grunt. “They won’t move.”

  “I can’t get mine free either,” says Rigby. “Glued or something to the floor.”

  “I don’t like this,” says Monica. “There’s plenty of fuel. Why’re the fires going out? I even smell accelerant. Gasoline?”

  Tyler and I are moving to the hallway and the doors to the balcony. She pauses and turns to me, points at my chest, and then her eyes, and then down the hallway. She points to herself, her own eyes, and then at the double doors.

  I nod and go to the corner to watch the hall.

  Those lights are still on further down, shining out from windows that look onto the corridor from four small rooms. Each room has a small panel beside the door, but I’m too far away to read what they say. Where there are lights, there might be people, though I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this slingshot.

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  And if there’re fires in the basement, shouldn’t I smell smoke?

  “Amir?” I ask. “If the basement’s on fire like that, why aren’t I smelling smoke?”

  “I have no idea,” says Amir.

  I hear some voices from his end, Candace and Stacy. “Candace knows a little about ventilation systems?” says Amir. “Craig has to know about them a little for his decorating business. Feng Shui and whatever. She’s looking at what they’ve got here in the blueprints.”

  I don’t smell fire. Nope. Not at all, but wait. Is that bread?

  “Candace says the ventilation is more than what they need,” says Amir. “Overpowered. The air and heat…. What?”

  I hear something too, though. Up here. Talking?

  I look over at Tyler. She’s got the door open a fraction, her eye riveted to the slit.

  “Dude,” says Amir. “Some vents from the basement? They don’t even go outside. She’s checking on her phone with some people she knows, but it looks like maybe the reason you don’t smell smoke is that it’s all being sucked out into holding tanks in the walls, uh, along with the air.”

  Tyler’s not saying anything. That’s definitely the smell of bread and those are certainly voices. Maybe crying? I start moving down the hallway.

  “The air?” says Monica. “That would explain what’s going on with the fires and why I’m having trouble breathing. What the fuck?”

  “Uh, you guys ever see that old movie, Backdraft?” says Amir.

  I freeze. Oh my God.

  “The guard outside,” says Monica. “I bet she was there not just to close the door, but to open it when the time was right. Guys, we’re walking around inside a goddamn firebomb.”

  “Candace says the basement might be, yeah. The walls are really sturdy though, so the church might not fall down,” says Amir. “At least not right away. Um, just don’t open any doors outside. The sudden rush of air….”

  “Will flash cook us, yeah,” says Monica. “Until then we just suffocate. My guess is the kids are down here. This is probably the sacrificial method?”

  “Well, they aren’t in the sanctuary that I can see,” says Tyler. “I got eyes on. Armed guards. Vests. Assault weapons. Say, six here on the upper level? I can see down. The priest is conducting some kind of ritual. A rune in candles and I hope that’s paint. The part of this that bothers me the most? These guys aren’t thinking long term.”

  “Excuse me?” says Amir.

  “They aren’t planning for an after,” says Tyler. “They don’t expect to get away and there’s little effort to conceal their crimes here. That could be because they don’t think they’ll have a future.”

  “Copy. The hallway intersects ahead. Amir?” says Monica.

  “Yeah, there’s only the two main corridors down there. Huh, they make a cross,” says Amir.

  “Is there any other way for them to set this off? Any other doors leading outside?” says Monica.

  I’m maybe a foot away from the window now. The voices are louder, coming from this first room. And it’s not bread or yeast I’m smelling. It’s something much sourer. Someone inside is crying. Begging.

  Amir says, “Yeah. There are stairwells that have fire exits that lead outside from the main floor. That would do it if the doors to the stairwell were also opened down there. Sorry.”

  They talk some more, but I’m not paying attention. I’m looking into that room. Just my one eye, at the lower corner.

  Fucking Otter is strapped to a dentist’s chair and struggling. “What the fuck, man?” he’s saying. “So, we didn’t have the kids. We delivered on the guns, right? You can’t do this.”

  Two other men are in the room. They’re wearing lab coats. One of them is manipulating this mechanical arm that has a thick hose running through it. At the tip of the arm, there’s a nozzle that looks like something a giant cake decorator might use. The hose runs right into it. The other end of the hose disappears into a large stainless-steel vat about three feet in diameter.

  As I watch, the man using the arm stabs the nozzle into Otter’s neck, just below his left ear. The hose wobbles and the vat lurches. Otter screams.

  “Ben?” I hear Tyler say.

  I duck down as the two men walk out of the room. They don’t turn my way. Instead, they just stride down the hallway in lockstep and enter a room further down.

  “The bikers are here,” I say and step into the room.

  Otter looks at me, his eyes wide in panic, tears running from his eyes. He’s trying to scream but can’t. They’ve left the nozzle still jammed into his neck, but the hose is now still.

  Otter blinks and when his eyes reopen, they regard me coldly, without expression or recognition. It’s like there’s a completely different man there. He relaxes and leans back, still watching me. Content to wait.

  I have the feeling though that, if he wasn’t strapped down, he’d have his hands around my neck to squeeze the life out of me, and he’d do it with that same blank look. Otter would curse me and relish murdering me, but Otter isn’t there anymore.

  I look into the big bowl beside us. It’s nearly full of this slimy dark green junk that looks like poisoned pesto sauce and smells of foul yeast. I get the sense that it’s fucking regarding me when it pulses and then lunges at me. It’s fucking alive and hates my guts. Wants to pull me inside with it and eat my brain like it did Otter’s. I backpedal toward the door.

  A sick green pseudopod reaches out of the vat to the floor, and I know that it’ll pull itself after me.

  Not knowing what else to do, I fire my slingshot at it and dip into the hallway. As I do, I trip over my own feet, falling, dropping under the window.

  There’s the sound of metal on metal and then the window above blows out, covering me with glass and burning bits of things I’d do better not to identify. Flames lick the walls above me. There’s no sound at all and I know that’s the earpieces kicking on to protect my ear drums. Heat sucks the air from my lungs. The room’s got to be engulfed, but there’s not any screaming I can detect when my hearing returns. I try to get up when there’s a secondary explosion, less intense, and I fall back down, my hands over my head.

  Something clatters against the wall and a dark red shape lands beside me. It’s a blackened, bloody skull.

  I scramble away from it.

  “Ben!”

  It’s Tyler. She’s at the end of the hallway, raising her gun at me. She fires four times.

  Missed?

  Then I look behind me. The two men in lab coats lay face down on the tile, AK-47s in their hands.

  I get to my feet.

  Tyler moves into the hall, using the corner as cover. She fires again and again. “Agents under fire,” she says. “Call it in.”

  She turns as I hear more doors burst open ahead, out of sight. The doors from the other side of the balcony. She fires, moving deeper into the hall. She’s got no cover from that direction and there’s none at all in this corridor. I look behind us. Right now, it’s clear, but that could change any second. We’ve got to get out of here and instead we’re only going deeper into the place. Trapped.

  Tyler turns and runs. The look of horror on her face tells me she knows she won’t be able to make it. Neither of us will. We’re going to get gunned down here right next to Otter’s skull.

  Fuck it.

  I charge past.

  I pluck off one of my pouches full of slingshot ammo, pull open the flap, and throw it ahead of me. Shiny little balls are rolling all over the floor into the food court.

  Two men round the corner and go sliding into each other, guns firing. I leap over them and keep going. More gunmen are coming from the balcony and from the dark corners of the stores. They shoot and I’m in the crossfire.

  I Push, and it becomes my crossfire. People fall as their shots miss me to find their companions.

  I’m rapidly running out of floor, dodging between tables, as gunfire chatters all around me, my hearing cutting in and out. The railing’s coming up fast, and I go in for a slide, like I’m stealing second base, laying down flat to make myself a smaller target, thinking my feet will hit and stop me. Maybe I can topple a table or something, though I’m pretty sure that’s only effective in movies.

  Instead, my feet go over the edge and then my legs. When my lower back and belly go, my chest slams into the crossbar and scrapes against my vest. My momentum slows. If I get stopped here, I’m a sitting duck.

  My hands find the bar and I grab it to pull myself all the way through so I can dangle above the lobby.

  Much better.