her research. Her eyes dart toward it despite her efforts to remain outwardly calm.
Erin follows Smita’s gaze and shakes her head. “You still don’t get it,” she says. “I guess that’s okay. It’s not like I’m saying things plainly. That’s how you know I don’t want to do this. I can order a hamburger in eight seconds, but it takes me an hour to decide I’m going to make mashed cauliflower. If you want your phone, you can have it.”
Smita looks at her suspiciously. Erin nods.
“Please,” she says. “I can tell you don’t understand the situation. This will help. Get your phone.”
It’s like something has snapped, some dark compulsion that was forbidding her to move or defend herself. Smita lunges for the plastic rectangle of her phone, feeling relief wash through her as she snatches it off the counter. This is safety. This is rescue. This is—
This is the sudden, crushing realization that she has no service. But that can’t be right. She always has service in the lab; has joked with the chemistry majors, who work two floors down, that they should have gone into genetics to be closer to the cell tower. This is where other students come when they want to make a phone call. And still she has no service; still the little bars that should be gleaming solid and strong are hollow lines, forbidding her contact with the outside world.
“The Hand of Glory has a lot of different uses. Funny thing: which one you’ll get is determined by how the Hand was made, and what order you light the candles. Some people use them for invisibility, or to open all barriers before them. Others use them to lock the doors. You could smash the window and scream so loud you hurt yourself, and no one would hear you. You’re a ghost, Smita. As far as the world outside this room is concerned, you may as well already be dead.” Erin moves her hand, and there’s a knife, long and sharp and matte black, the kind of blade that has no purpose in this world past killing.
Smita looks at the knife and cannot breathe. The air stops in her throat; her lungs are cold weights in her chest. This is her end, right in front of her, swallowing the light.
“This is where you start deciding how you’ll die,” says Erin. “Where’s the research?”
There’s still a chance. Erin—who was supposed to be her friend, not the instrument of her destruction—has a knife, but this is Smita’s lab, and it’s Smita’s life on the line. The phone may be dead, but she is not. Not yet. So she flings her phone at Erin as hard as she can, not looking to see if it hits its mark before she turns on her heel and sprints for the door, running as fast as terror and adrenaline will carry her.
The phone bounces harmlessly off Erin’s shoulder, falling to the floor. She sighs as she watches Smita go.
“I hoped this would be easier,” she says. Knife still in her dominant hand, she picks up the Hand of Glory and pursues.
Smita has never been much for horror movies. They’ve always seemed like a waste of both time and fear: in the end, the monster will be defeated, the survivors will walk into the sunrise, and the only catharsis will be the knowledge of the inevitable sequel. Here and now, she finds herself wishing she’d paid more attention to that endless stream of virginal heroines and rubber monsters. Horror movies are not a substitute for experience, but at least they might have told her where she could be safe.
The elevator at the end of the hall is a tempting trap. Once inside, she’d have no chance of getting away: all Erin would need to do is descend to the next floor and wait. The stairs are safer; the stairs will let her see what’s coming. So she hits the door to the stairwell without slowing, slamming it open and stumbling on the first step. She almost falls before catching herself on the rail and beginning to descend, as fast as she can, down into the building.
It’s late enough that the floor below her should be empty, but the chemistry students are always here: the chemistry students would live in the Annex if they could. They have a shower in their lab, which almost makes up for the lack of cellphone service, and they’re experts when it comes to cooking hot food in sterile