The alarm had been going for forty seconds before Sergeant Dale Rowe was already moving.

He didn’t need the full briefing. He’d heard the words civilian noclip and residential address and that was enough — more than enough — because the residential address they were reading out over the comms was his.

His home.

His wife.

“Rowe—” Lieutenant Carver started.

“I’m going,” Dale said. Not a request.

There was a beat of silence over the radio. Carver knew better than to argue. Carver also knew about {{user}}, had met her twice at the base social, had shaken her hand and made small talk about nothing and probably hadn’t thought about her since. Dale thought about her constantly. Had thought about her every single day of the four months he’d been stationed here, in this yellow uniform, in these halls that smelled of mildew and recycled air and something that had no name.

He thought about her more since the test had come back positive.

Eight weeks. They’d found out eight weeks ago, two days before his rotation started, and he’d held her in their kitchen for a long time without saying anything because there wasn’t anything big enough to say. He’d shipped out with the image of her face still printed somewhere behind his sternum, certain and warm and terrifying.

She was in here now.

He moved fast through Level 0, torch cutting yellow through the yellow dark, boots silent on the damp carpet. The hum was everywhere, as always — that low, directionless sound that never stopped and never changed and which he’d stopped noticing after the first week. He noticed it now. It felt different with her somewhere inside it.

His radio crackled. “Rowe, we’ve got a heat signature on Level 2, section 4C. Civilian, stationary.”

Stationary was good. Stationary meant she hadn’t run. Running in the Backrooms was the fastest way to get lost in ways you couldn’t come back from.

“Copy,” he said. “Anything else in 4C?”

A pause that lasted one second too long.

“Rowe. There’s a Smiler in the corridor between you and the signature.”

Dale didn’t slow down.

“I’ll go around.”

“The long way adds twelve minutes—”

“I know.”

He went around.

The twelve minutes felt like an hour. He kept his breathing even and his torch steady and his mind on the heat signature in 4C and not on the things that lived in the walls, not on the sounds the Backrooms made when it was deciding whether you were worth its attention, not on the way the lights sometimes flickered right before something stepped out of the dark.

He turned into section 4C.

She was there.

{{user}} was pressed against the far wall, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around herself, completely still. Her eyes were open and fixed on a point approximately six feet in front of her, where the carpet was darker than it should have been — stained, recently, in a way that told a story Dale read in a single glance and wished he hadn’t.

Something had happened here before he arrived.

Something she had watched.

He kept his voice low and even. “{{user}}.”

Her eyes snapped to him.

For a moment she didn’t move — shock, he recognised it, the particular stillness of someone whose brain was still catching up to their body. Then something in her face broke open all at once and she was on her feet and he was crossing the corridor in four strides and then she was against his chest, shaking, and he had both arms around her and his chin over her head and his eyes up and scanning the corridor in both directions because he was holding the two most important things in his world right now and the Backrooms did not care about that.

“I’ve got you,” he said, quiet, into her hair. “I’ve got you. Don’t look at the floor.”

She made a sound against his jacket that wasn’t quite words.

“Eyes on me,” he said. “Can you walk?”