You attack the door to the fourth floor. Open, open, you beg it, and it does open. You sprint through the door and push it shut behind you. The knob jiggles and rattles as Eric tries to open it after you. With a triumphant “Ha!” you see there’s a lock on the handle on this side of the door. You press the lock, make sure it clicks, and back away from the door. 

It rattles in the frame. 

You back away from it. “Why are you doing this?” you scream through the door. 

Eric’s voice is an angry roar. “You have to ask me that? How many times have all of you made fun of me, Tony? This is what you get!” 

You try to make sense of this, of how this statement relates to Maribel, dead with an axe in her chest, to Neo, crumpled on the street below. “Are you fucking serious?” you cry at last. Your voice cracks, dry with dust and fear. “We all make fun of each other!”

“You’re not laughing now, are you? We’re going down together.” The door rattles in the frame and then a swift snap and something thunks against it, leaving an inverted pockmark at chest level. A gunshot? 

You almost laugh with relief. The door is bulletproof. It’s made of double-thick steel, the fireproof kind.

You turn to examine the fourth floor. It’s an office suite like the twentieth, but it looks uninhabited. Is the whole building empty? Did Eric pick an abandoned office building for this? 

You hurry to the windows and look down at a cluster of ambulances and fire trucks. Eric clearly can’t plan to get away with this. He’s doing the mass shooter thing where he takes all of you out with him. 

And then you spot it. On the far end of the corridor. 

A Fire Exit sign.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this deadventure. You’ve shown great fortitude, strength of character, and determination. You’re one step closer to being able to survive a confrontation with a murderous corporate drone.

If you’d like to check out my books, click here. See you soon!