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Jet didn’t need to smell it; she could see it now, dancing in the beam of her flashlight. Smoke creeping out of the carpet beneath their feet and up, gathering into a dark cloud against the ceiling, skulking over them.

‘The building’s on fire!’ Billy screamed. ‘We need to leave!’

Jet’s feet wouldn’t move, rooted there, the floor growing warm through the soles of her shoes, warmer, into hot.

They needed to leave, yes, she knew that, but for some reason she couldn’t make herself move, her brain left behind, back twenty seconds ago when it was still quiet, her heart seized in her chest, so fast, like it wasn’t even beating at all, erased by the blare of that alarm.

The building was on fire? How was the fucking building on fire? Her mind stuck on that part first.

‘Jet!’ Billy screamed over the alarm, in her face now. He grabbed her working arm, pulled her back into life. ‘Run!’

She finally moved, brain back in her body, moving with her, fear taking over.

‘Wait!’ Jet snatched her arm from Billy, doubled back toward Luke’s desk. ‘We need these!’

She grabbed the pile of papers Billy had found, scrunching them around the flashlight, holding it all in one hand.

‘Jet, let’s go!’

‘Right behind you!’

She ran to catch up.

‘No, you go first, I’ve got you!’

Billy caught her, pushed her ahead, his hand pressed to her back, the smoke thickening the darkness around them.

They moved together, past Angie Rice’s desk.

Darting around another.

Steps faster than the repeating pattern of the alarm, racing it to the door.

Billy crashed into it first, grabbed the handle, hauled it open.

A wall of heat slammed into them, clawing at Jet’s eyes, too hot, too bright.

‘Oh my god,’ she said – not that she could hear herself, over the alarm or the growl of the flames.

It was all gone. Nothing but fire, licking up the walls, hungry, crackling, an angry laugh as it destroyed everything, screamed for more. Everywhere. Reaching up toward them, claiming half the staircase. The metal steps screeched as they buckled and bent in the heat.

Not a corridor anymore, just a tunnel of flame, building, growing stronger as it bent around toward the warehouse. The deepest reds and the blackest smoke spilling out in a firestorm, faster, hungrier. Not a warehouse anymore, it was hell broken open, raging right beneath the office.

Jet coughed, the thick black smoke reaching them first, claiming them. But it wasn’t just smoke she could smell. There was something sharper, more acrid.

Gas.

Billy grabbed Jet by the shoulders, pulled her back, kicking the door shut.

The smoke found other ways in, through the cracks, through the floor.

‘Is there another way down?’ Billy screamed, scrabbling at Jet’s neck, pulling her shirt up over her nose. He coughed, then covered his own.

‘Another staircase at the back!’ Jet yelled through the fabric, holding it with her one hand, flashlight and papers still gripped in her fingers.

‘Go!’

Billy pushed her ahead, back through the office. The smoke hovered lower now, eye level, blinding them, stealing everything but each other.

Jet crashed into a desk, a sharp pain above her knee. Kept going.

She couldn’t see, she couldn’t see, the flashlight only found more whirls of smoke, lighting it from within. She wanted to take Billy’s hand, but she couldn’t see it, had no hands to spare.

Couldn’t see, couldn’t see.

She planted her foot and the floor cracked beside it, a fault line of bright glowing orange that she could see.

Could see.

The floor crumbled away, down, an earthquake groan as it ruptured, melting into the inferno below.

Jet stumbled away from the hole, that widening mouth, falling back, crashing down.

She watched as it happened. She could see now, too much, the flames finding their way up here, clambering out of that hole down into hell.

With another groan, one of the desks tipped, lost its legs. It slid into that gaping mouth, lost to the flames below. Angie Rice’s desk, the photo frame tumbling in first.

Jet could see Billy now, on the other side of hell.

‘No, don’t!’ she screamed, too late.

Billy jumped clean over the chasm, crashing to his knees beside her.

He wrapped his arms under hers, dragged her to her feet.

‘This way!’

They ran to the other side, away from the flames chasing behind them, eating up the carpet in widening rings. Finding more to consume. The desks. The walls.

Heat like nothing Jet had ever felt before, bearing down against her skin, pushing from behind, a sharp stab of it against her fingers.

Jet glanced down.

She screamed.

The papers clutched in her hand were on fire.

She dropped them.

The flashlight falling too.

A little white glowing triangle, abandoned behind her.

The floor gave way and ate that too.

‘Run!’ she screamed as she and Billy barreled into the hall beyond, past Dad’s office and the filing room, past the kitchen on the left.

Jet’s dead arm thrashed as she sprinted, a puppet arm without a string, unbalancing her, throwing her off.

‘That door, down the end!’

They were almost there, and Jet could hear herself now. The alarm wasn’t blaring anymore; must have burned, melted away with everything else.

They reached the door together, Billy slamming down on the handle.

‘No!’ he screamed. ‘It’s stuck!’ Tried again, double-handed, rattling the handle up and down. ‘I’ll get this open. Stand back!’

Jet did, clearing the way, choking on the smoke, covering her nose to breathe her own air instead, watching as Billy backed up from the door.

He kicked off his heels and bounded toward the door in three fast strides.

Rammed his shoulder into it, hard.

It jolted but didn’t open.

Billy drew back, three steps, threw himself at the door again.

It buckled, gave him a few inches, not enough.

Billy backed up again and Jet blinked and they weren’t here anymore, on the brink of hell, the world crumbling around them.

Jet was behind a computer and Billy was on-screen, breaking down another door, ramming it with his shoulder.

Screaming her name like if he screamed hard enough, it could bring her back to life.

‘Jet!’ The same scream now.

Jet blinked, brought herself back to hell.

Billy had done it, tumbling through the open door into the stairwell.

No smoke swarming in this way, the stairs clear.

They were out.

Jet took a step forward and it all came undone.

The floor split in front of her with a deafening roar, a gorge opening up.

The wall, the one separating them from the office, folded over, caved in. Shrieking as it fell to the flames, plugging the hole, bringing some of the roof down with it.

Jet looked up, could see the stars, before the smoke stole them away.

She couldn’t see Billy anymore, on the other side of all that rubble.

But she heard him.

‘Jet!’ he screamed. ‘Jet, are you OK?!’

Jet coughed, a hacking sound against her hand.

‘Billy, go!’ she yelled. ‘You’re out! Go!’

‘No, Jet! I’m not leaving without you!’

‘You have to!’

‘No!’

Jet stepped back, the ground groaning beneath her.

‘Billy! Go, now! The whole thing is going to come down!’

‘Not without you!’

Jet’s throat seized, a fist around her heart.

‘Go, Billy! You have to leave! You have to live!’

She stepped back again.

‘Not going without you!’

‘Yes you are!’ she screamed, voice fighting the flames, the sigh of the dying building. ‘I have three days left! I’m already dead, Billy! You’re not, you have to live!’

‘No!’

‘Billy, you go! You leave or I will never fucking forgive you!’ Her voice cracked, not the ground. ‘And I will die hating you, I swear. Go! Please, Billy! For me!’

His voice wasn’t there anymore, just the sound of boots striking the metal steps, doubled up, like a heartbeat.

Good, he was gone, he was safe.

Billy had to live.

But so did she.

Jet’s body absorbed the heat, used it, lit a fire in her gut.

Yes, she only had three days left to live. But those three days were hers, and she was not going to let hell take them from her. They were hers, and she was going to fucking live them, every small moment, stretch each minute into a lifetime.

Jet had to live.

And the other side of that too came crashing in, her breath shuddering with it.

She didn’t want to die.

She did not want to die.

Her heart screamed it and her head too, guiding her feet back.

She was scared to die.

She would not die.

All that fear she thought she’d lost, because the dying didn’t need fear but the living did, it all came rushing back, wearing her skin, roaring in her ears.

Jet flinched, jumping out of the way of a burning ceiling panel, and she ran.

Back down the corridor, charging through the door into her dad’s office.

Shutting the door like it could stand between her and hell, keep it at bay.

To the window at the back.

Jet slammed into it, staring down through the glass, blinking away the smoke.

Yes, she was right.

About ten feet below the window was the tilted roof of a long, narrow lean-to. A covered storage area against the wall down there. Better than jumping out the second story of a burning building and hoping for the best, and that was Option B.

She just had to get the window open. A sash window, only two panes of glass between her and living.

Jet reached up, undid the catch in the middle, the smoke gathering around her, forcing its way into her throat.

She coughed.

She choked.

She grabbed the handle on the lower half of the window and she pulled.

It didn’t move.

No, no, why wouldn’t it move?

The window was stuck, or her left arm was too weak.

She needed both arms, needed two hands. Fuck.

Jet pulled again, straining, through her fingers all the way up through her neck, screaming with the effort.

‘I am not going to die!’ she yelled at the window, at her own ghostly reflection.

She lifted one foot, drove it into the windowsill to give her left arm more power, and she pulled.

The window didn’t move.

‘Fuck you!’ Jet coughed.

Smash the glass, smash the glass, she needed something to smash the glass.