The heavy oak door swung shut behind them, its thick rubber gaskets seating into the steel frame with a soft, airtight hiss.
The sound was like plunging underwater. The dry, insect-like scratching of four hundred steel pens on cheap blue paper vanished instantly. In its place was the flat hum of industrial fluorescent tubes and the hot stench of ozone, floor wax, and formalin.
Hollis’s red-gloved hand was three inches from the emergency purge toggle.
Because he wore thick acoustic ear-defenders, he hadn’t heard the door click open. He was still watching the glass with the dull confidence of an office bureaucrat who thought the outside world had to play by the rules on his desk. He thought Julian was trapped in the aisle, terrified of making a sound louder than thirty decibels.
He was wrong.
The moment the rubber seal compressed, the ceiling microphones in the Study Hall were cut off.
Julian didn’t tiptoe. He dug his rubber work boots into the linoleum and launched himself forward.
Elena was already moving half a step ahead of him. She had abandoned her slow creep the second she saw Hollis reach for the formalin switch. She cleared the ten feet of linoleum in three sprinting strides, vaulting low over the edge of the zinc sorting counter.
