With every stride they took, they drew closer and closer to the junction, the same intersection leading to the other wing and back to the lobby.

The same lobby swarming with monsters.

“There!” Hallie said, panting as she pointed at a distant recess in the wall.

Russell had to squeeze his eyes to see it. A dozen doors before the junction, inconspicuously placed between two similar-looking doors, stood another alcove. Another stairway?

A weak aftershock rocked the ground, followed by a pop of a gunshot in the distance. But no one seemed to care, not when they were so close.

“We’re almost there!” Hallie glanced over her shoulder, face beaming. But Russell couldn’t share the young woman’s enthusiasm. The hair on the back of his neck had stood on end.

The song was his first warning.

The dark form to their left—loping outside in the courtyard, keeping parallel with them, growing bigger, getting closer—was his second.

Russell seized Hallie by the shoulder of her uniform and spun her behind him.

The patio doors ahead of them exploded into the hallway, blasting splinters and glass shards everywhere, his companions crying out in surprise.

And in the middle of the wreckage stood another monster.

[Scaletooth Savage - 6th Shard / Level 2]

“Get ready to run,” Russell whispered as he pushed Hallie back to the others. The glower she shot him melted away into fear once she spotted the hulking beast mere yards in front of them.

The monster spread its feet and shook off the dust and debris from its azure scales.

He approached the beast with slow steps, his flashlight flipping in his hands. He needed to distance himself from the others, keep the monster’s attention solely on him and not on the stunned crowd packed together behind him. Not unless he wanted the hallway to resemble a bloody bowling alley.

The monster didn’t wait long. It hunched on its hind legs, its rear scales bunching together—and Russell threw himself forward right when the monster lunged.

Sliding on his knees, he timed his swing, smashing his flashlight above him as the beast flew past.

Whether through his increased Agility, Dexterity, Perception, or some hidden luck attribute, or maybe even all of the above—his blow caught the monster right in the stomach in a clang of metal.

The others jumped away as the beast crashed back on the ground and scraped across the carpet, wailing a high-pitched cry.

He didn’t draw blood. His short, blunt weapon failed to break past its scales. But from the way the beast writhed on the floor, his strike had done more than enough internal damage.

“Justin! The cabinet!” Russell called out from the floor.

“W-What?” Justin asked as he stood closest to the monster by chance.

“Drop the entire thing on it!” Russell pointed at the antique cabinets lining the wall as he sprang back up.

Justin gaped at him, at the monster, back at Russell, and shook his head so hard he nearly whipped his glasses away.

“For fuck’s sake!” Caleb shoved Justin aside and did it himself. Slotting his fingers behind the highest shelf of the display case, Caleb growled as he wrestled the cabinet from the wall.

Russell arrived, helping him from the opposite end. They tipped the entire cabinet over and sent it crashing down on top of the monster.

Another shattering of wood and glass echoed in the hallway, this time with porcelain mixed in.

The monster’s piercing cry followed right after.

“O-Oh, no…” Justin whispered. “I…I think it’s calling for help.”

“You think?” Caleb said, shouldering him aside as he rounded past the monster.

“Let’s go!” Hallie called out to the others, taking point once again. Russell had to make sure Justin wasn’t left behind when the other jocks kept shoving the scared guy out of their way.

Someone squealed behind them.

A club employee had tripped right before the ruined patio doors. Russell slowed to a stop, surprised, finding the guy oddly familiar.

“There’s…There’s another one!” the guy exclaimed, and Russell whipped his gaze outside.

Beyond the gaping hole, another monster had heeded the first one’s call.

[Scaletooth Savage - 8th Shard / Level 3]

The monster had the same eyeless head, the same spines on its back, the same dark blue scales, and yet it was somehow different.

Instead of molten red, the skin underneath its scales glowed greyish-white. Its mouth gaped open but no fire flickered to life. Its chest expanded as if it was taking a deep breath. It drew the air around it and the wind gathered inside its maw, swirling between its fangs, compressing into a single point.

Russell’s own breath caught in his throat.

A blast of wind shot out of the monster’s maw, blurring through the air, indistinct from its surroundings.

Then it ripped through the opening in the corridor in a whirlwind, tearing the guy apart like invisible blades, shredding the carpet, the wall, the ceiling, and splattering blood and dismembered body parts everywhere.

Justin whimpered beside him, his legs wobbling at the gory sight. Russell swallowed, the new kind of devastation shaking him to the core.

“Go! Go! Go!” someone said, jolting Russell back to reality, back to fleeing, Justin already yards ahead of him.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The song rose in volume.

Russell glanced over his shoulder even as he ran. The first monster was upright now, staggering atop the remains of the cabinet. Then the other Scaletooth emerged from the gaping hole, sliding into view without so much as a sound, its figure cloaked in a thin fog.

His gaze snapped back to the front, willing his feet to move faster as he muttered curses under his breath.

Hallie peeked over the edge once everybody else had ducked inside the alcove. “Get inside! Hurry!”

He sensed the threat coming for him like a foreboding he had never felt before.

He didn’t think. He didn’t hesitate. He poured whatever strength he had into his legs and leaped behind the wall, shooting past a squat opening.

Right before a tempest tore through the hallway and Hallie slammed the door closed.

Russell rolled across a cold, hard floor and forced himself upright against a wall. Hallie released a pent-up breath, sliding down against the closed door. Seconds passed before the commotion outside died down.

“I remember you now,” Russell muttered, calming his ragged breathing and his racing heartbeat.

Hallie’s brows furrowed, her features veiled in the dimness with everyone else.

“You were that scrawny kid in the trailer park,” Russell said, “the one who used to run around screaming all the time like the whole neighborhood was your own playground.”

Hallie snorted and closed her eyes. “I’m not a kid anymore, Red.”

“Red? What happened to ‘Mr. Flynn’?”

“You were always Red to me,” Hallie said. “Just ask Rose.”

“You’re close with my sister?” Russell asked.

“We’ve been neighbors for life. Rose is good people.” Hallie cracked her eyes open. “She always tells me how I grew up to become such a fine lady.”

Someone in the room snorted.

“I knew you were familiar.” Russell smiled before recalling what they had been through. The mutilation. The carnage. He shoved the nightmare somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere his conscious thought wouldn’t find, leaving behind only the image of the male employee’s face.

Russell finally remembered how he knew him. “The guy who was…” He forced down the bile rising to his throat. “He was the bartender from the lounge bar, wasn’t he?”

Hallie dipped her head. There had been a time, seeming so long ago now, when Russell had sought to trade places with the guy, to hide behind the bar, escape the absolute torture Serena made him go through.

How laughable that sentiment was.

The terror of mingling with strangers was nothing compared to this.

“His name’s Mack.” Hallie bit her lip. “Kind. Soft-spoken. Lives only a few streets from—”

“What? Mack’s gone?!” one of her colleagues cried out.

“Shut it!” a jock said before studying their new location. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”

They found themselves hiding in a deep, narrow room. A row of wooden partitions lined one side. Sinks on marble countertops occupied the other, large mirrors outlined by a gilded frame hanging over each sink, wall sconces interspersing between each mirror. A lemon scent hung in the air, and the only source of light came from the opposite end of the room since all the sconces were dead, including the crystal chandelier suspended from the high ceiling.

From Russell’s vantage point sitting on the tiled floor, he could see under the partitions all the way to the far wall.

There was no sign of any monster.

“Is this the restroom?” Caleb’s gaze wandered across the room before he stomped his way to Hallie. “Does it look like we need to take a shit and pee? Why the hell did you bring us here, woman?”

“I told you I knew another way,” Hallie said in an even tone.

“Another way?” Caleb asked, his jaw spasming. “You brought us straight into a dead end!”

“Keep it down, you fool!” one of his teammates said.

“Stop calling me that!” Caleb snapped.

Another jock got in Caleb’s face and grabbed him by the lapel of his suit. “Keep. It. Down.”

“Yeah, why don’t you keep it down, chump,” Hallie said from the floor before pointing over their broad shoulders. “And this place isn’t a dead end.”

Caleb swiveled his glare behind him, then above him, toward the window up high on the far wall, the source of paltry light illuminating their surroundings. “That small fucking window?”

“That ‘small fucking window’ is our ticket outside,” Hallie said, hopping to her feet. “Every other room in this clubhouse has windows large enough for those monsters to pass through. Every room except—”

“T-The restrooms,” Justin mumbled, huddled in the corner under the hand dryers.

Hallie nodded. “The restrooms here were all built halfway below ground. Made the ceilings look higher, probably to give the comfort room experience some kind of a fancy-pants vibe.”

”Extravagant,” one of the older club patrons said as he smoothed out the wrinkles on his suit. “The word you’re looking for is ‘extravagant.’ You can’t expect us members to pay exorbitant monthly fees only to make us use drab, white-tiled public restrooms. Or locker rooms reeking of unwashed socks.”

“I guess the restrooms here are ‘dope’ enough for Clayton,” Justin said, standing over Russell. “I wonder how he’s doing now.”

Russell thought about their friend as well. Did Clayton make it to somewhere safe? Did Serena?

“Well, shit…” Caleb laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the window. “How do we climb all the way up there?”

“Why don’t you come up with a plan, for once.” Hallie crossed her arms. ”Or are you gonna let a woman do all the thinking?”

“Wait a minute!” Hallie’s colleague interjected, the one with the ponytail. “Aren’t we supposed to be heading up to the second floor? When did we decide we were going outside?”

That started a round of bickering, and Russell blew out a breath. He wondered why the door he had jumped through earlier appeared closer to the ground. Unlike the conference room he had glimpsed earlier, the space they were in had been built as a semi-basement, with what should’ve been a short flight of stairs leading down to it from the hallway outside.

Russell got to his feet and examined the room’s only window. It was small, an awning window that opened outward, twice as long as it was tall, though it barely spanned two feet in height, if at all.

And it was a good twelve feet from the ground.

Freakin’ high ceilings.

“The least we could do is check it out,” a jock said as everyone headed for the end of the restroom.

“I’m the smallest, let me,” Caleb said, only to be pushed back by his teammate.

“You may be small, but you weigh heavier than a donkey.” His teammate thrusted his chin toward Justin standing at the back of the group. “Let that pipsqueak go first.”

Justin looked behind him before pointing to himself. “M-Me?”

“C’mon.” Russell clapped his friend on the shoulder. “You don’t even have to go out there. Just look out the window. Check if the coast is clear.”

Tipping his head back, Justin gaped at the awning window twice his height, his throat bobbing. “I…I…I don’t think—”

“For goodness’ sake!” Hallie exclaimed, pushing her way through the crowd. “Let me do it!”

“Keep your voice down, Hal!” Ponytail hissed.

Two of the jocks let Hallie stand on their hands, their fingers steepled, and like a cheerleading squad, they hoisted her up toward the window. Grabbing the window sill, she peered outside for a moment before easing the window open. Her head poked through the opening followed by her torso, her feet swinging on the wall. Turning back to the room, she gave everyone a toothy smile and a thumbs up. “All clear.”

“Hell, yeah! Let’s go!” Caleb pumped his fist in the air.

“We told you to keep it down,” one of his teammates said as he cuffed him at the back of his head.

“What a dumbass,” another said with a shake of his head.

Hallie had already crawled out of the window and peeked back inside. “Well? Who’s next?”

One of the jocks prepared to climb over his teammates when someone in the crowd grabbed for his suit and yanked him down.

“Hey! Watch it!” the guy exclaimed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a club employee asked. ”Big guys like you should help the rest of us up the window first.”

“And why the hell should we do that?” Caleb asked.

“He’s right.” A middle-aged woman in a white blazer dress cut in line. “Let us paying members go first. The help can follow right after.” Not waiting for anyone to correct her, she shot orders to those around her as she climbed for the exit next, heels in hand.

Caleb gaped at the woman’s back and exchanged glances with his teammates. “The help?”

And in that awkward silence, the song returned.

Shoulders tense, Russell cocked his head to the side and focused on his senses. The din of the ongoing argument continued around him, bouncing against the walls of the cramped space, ruining his concentration.

“Get on with it!” he barked as he tracked the monster’s approach behind them through the hallway. The jocks exchanged heated murmurs until Russell stared them down, and they decided to simply go with the flow.

The evacuation got underway, the pompous club members going first. The jocks alternately worked in pairs boosting others up the wall, proceeding without a hitch—when sporadic gunfire echoed from the open window.

Then a high-pitched noise blared in the distance.

Everyone froze, even the ones stuck in a human pyramid. Seconds ticked away, but the wailing sound showed no signs of stopping.

Hallie shoved her head back inside. “It’s the town siren!”