Tap. Tap. Tap.
A sudden burst. Feet. Running.
Away.
I heard it clear—three quick steps on tile, a scraping rush, then diminishing claws against the ground outside. Gone. The sound bled off into the undergrowth, into the dense jungle hush like a stone dropped into a pond.
The last one.
I stayed frozen.
Not because I didn't believe it, but because I didn't trust it.
That's the difference between living and dying in a place like this. Belief is easy. Trust gets you gutted.
But still—I breathed.
Not loud. Not deep. Just enough to keep from passing out again.
Gone.
The raptors were gone.
I sat there, wedged into the cold metal cabinet, soaked in my own sweat and fear, heart thudding slow and heavy now that the immediate panic had dulled. It felt surreal. Like a scene from a horror movie after the climax—when the camera lingers on the final survivor shaking in a closet while the monster slips off into the night.
Except I wasn't final. And this wasn't the end.
It was nowhere near the end.
"Okay," I whispered, so quiet it didn't even echo against the metal. "Okay, Shredder. You didn't die. Not yet."
My voice cracked.
I let my head fall back against the inner wall with a soft clunk, and something about the sound made me laugh. A tiny, wheezy kind of laugh. It barely made it past my lips.
It was ridiculous. The whole thing. Like a script written by someone who loved watching teenagers die badly. The kind of scene where the guy breathes too loud and gets yanked out the window.
"Guess I didn't go full horror movie dumbass," I murmured. "Didn't scream. Didn't run at the first branch snap. Stayed put like a good little prey animal."
I laughed again.
It didn't help.
But it made the fear sting a little less. A tiny distraction. Like biting down on your hand to keep from sobbing. The jokes weren't funny, but they gave me something to hold onto that wasn't just survival instinct.
I glanced to my right.
Or as much as I could, twisted up and braced in this sardine tin of a coffin.
There—tucked into the corner behind the rust-flaked hinge—was a seam. A break in the metal wall. Narrow, but visible. Something had bent the cabinet during whatever wreckage flattened the rest of the lab. A beam, maybe. A tail swipe. Or time itself. Either way, there was a gap.
Beyond it? Nothing but dark.
I reached out slowly. My fingers brushed the edge. Cold. Brittle. I felt a groove where the metal had split open just wide enough for my arm.
I waited.
Counted again. Another full sixty seconds.
Still no sounds. No breath but mine.
Then—silently—I reached forward and touched the door latch.
It whined.
Barely.
A whisper of rust.
I winced. Froze.
Waited.
Nothing.
Then, with the slowest movement I've ever made in my life, I eased the door open an inch. Another. Three inches. Five. Enough to get my legs moving again.
Then I stopped.
Waited. Counted another ten seconds.
Nothing.
One foot forward. Then the other. I slid out like a breath escaping a broken vent, muscles stiff, joints protesting, back cramping from too long in one position. I crouched low, breath thin, and held the cabinet door with both hands.
Then, still crouching, I did something stupid.
Or brilliant.
Or both.
I shoved a broken strip of metal—pulled from the debris inside—to the floor a few feet away from me. Light enough to fly. Loud enough to echo.
Clang.
The sound cracked through the lab like a pistol shot.
I snapped the cabinet shut again and crouched behind it, heart slamming against my ribs like it wanted out.
I waited.
Counted.
Prayed.
Nothing.
No shriek. No screech of claws. No blur of movement slashing across the doorway.
Nothing came for me.
And that silence?
That perfect, unbroken silence?
It was the sweetest goddamn sound I'd ever heard.