"No—" Anand started. The plan had been clear: if anything went wrong, leave. Do not go back in. She had said it herself.
"We go," Rajan said. Not a suggestion. The voice of someone who had spent six years not going back into things for someone he loved and was done with that particular caution. "We go together, we get Vikram, we come out."
They went into the stairwell. The stairwell had emergency lighting — low, red-tinged, the specific light of a building telling you where the exits are. They went up half a flight to the mezzanine. The mezzanine door opened. The mezzanine was dark — just the emergency lighting, the shadows of the empty mezzanine, a conference room with its glass wall, the lift doors.
The lift doors were open. The lift was there. It was empty.
"He's not here," Preethi said.
Meera looked at the lift — empty, the doors standing open as if someone had gotten out and the doors hadn't closed again. She looked at the mezzanine. Nobody. She looked at the conference room through the glass wall. Empty.
"Vikram," she said. Not loud — the building above them was dark and she did not want to make more sound than necessary in a dark building that extended floors it was not supposed to extend.
From the conference room: a sound. Movement, the sound of a person. The conference room door opened. Vikram came out.
He was carrying his bag. He looked exactly like himself — the compact grooming, the precise professional manner. His eyes were the thing that was wrong. Not dramatically wrong. Just — slightly not quite right, the way Rajan had described Suresh after floor ten. The lights were on, and the person running the mechanism was not entirely the same person who had been running it before.
"What happened?" Meera said. "Why were you on the mezzanine?"
"I came down to six," he said. "I tripped the breakers. I came back down in the lift. The lift stopped here — I don't know why. I waited for it to restart. It didn't." He looked at her. "Is everyone here? Are we leaving?"
