Chapter 4 THE CORRIDOR

The pill felt heavy in her pocket.

Ten hours. Maybe less.

Evie walked until her legs ached, replaying every detail of the memory. The steel corridor. The numbered doors. The hum of that machine.

If it was real and not some hallucination there had to be a place like that in the city. Somewhere hidden, but close enough for the man in the leather jacket to know she'd been there.

She found herself at the public library. Not because she wanted to read, but because she needed somewhere quiet, somewhere without security cameras watching her every twitch.

At a dusty computer terminal, she searched for anything that could match: medical facilities, research labs, even underground bunkers. She filtered for locations built before the '90s - older infrastructure, more likely to have steel doors and narrow corridors.

One address jumped out.

Bastion Cold Storage - a decommissioned government facility repurposed as a private archive. Not far from the industrial district.

Her pulse quickened.

She was halfway to the door when she caught sight of him in the reflection of the glass - the man in the red hood. He was standing by the periodicals section, head tilted just enough for her to see the curve of a smile.

Evie's chest tightened. She moved fast, slipping out the side exit into the rain.

By the time she reached Bastion Cold Storage, the sky was bruised purple and the streetlights flickered like nervous eyes. The building was squat, windowless, its steel doors chained shut.

She circled to the back and found a smaller service entrance. Rusted, but unlocked.

Inside, the air was damp and metallic. Her footsteps echoed down a corridor lined with lockers, each stamped with a number. Her stomach twisted. It was too close to the memory.

Halfway down, she froze. One of the lockers was ajar.

She pushed it open and found a bundle of objects inside: a leather-bound notebook, a broken wristwatch, and a small plastic card - the kind used for keyless entry.

The card read: SUBLEVEL 3 – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

A whisper came from behind her.

"Looking for me?"

She turned slowly.

The man in the red hood was leaning against the wall, his face half-hidden in shadow.

"You shouldn't be here," he said. "Not yet."

Her hand tightened around the keycard. "Why not?"

His smile widened. "Because the moment you open that door, Evie... you'll remember what you did to him."

Before she could speak, a loud crash echoed from the far end of the corridor. Heavy boots. Voices.

She didn't think. She ran, the red-hooded man's laughter following her into the night.