He pounded on the call button long after it lit. The glass pane reading ‘GF’ refused to change. He repeated his assault on the call button, before attempting to pry the elevator doors open in vain. The lights flickered before dimming. A power surge?

He caught sight of the emergency exit. The idea of running down twenty-five flights of stairs to reach ground level reminded him of his exhaustion. He lumbered over to the exit, hoping that he’d feel the resistant barrier of the security shields, but instead found that the door pushed open with a light ‘click’! Staring down the spiralling stairwell, he readied himself for the worst night of his life. Astral was down there now, just as tired and broken as he was, fighting an ancient demon that lurked beneath the Academy compound for god knows how long. She was fighting despite everything. As though…

As though her life depended on it.

It was a mistake to stop to catch his breath when he reached the ground floor. His lungs burned, squeezing in and out as though trying to ring out the last bit of water from a damp rag. Stairs, no matter how fit the victim, were determined to do someone in. He took in a deep breath, held it, stood up, and released. The routine did little to convince his body that he was ready for action.

Through the door into still quiet of the main entrance hall, Seth moved toward the stationary elevator whose doors remained opened as though waiting for its next victim: him.

The dim lights lost their battle, leaving him and the campus in the darkness of the night. Snow pelted the windows. The pale curtain of the shields lit campus in a soft teal hue reserved for his eyes alone. He wondered if Astral could appreciate the beauty of the barriers, if only she knew.

He listened to the quiet hum of nothing. Some part of him hoped to hear the chaos of the raging battle beneath his feet. He dreaded the distant unholy roar of the demon waiting to ascend once Astral removed the final barrier from its path. She was easy to manipulate through her singular focus, but now he needed her to stop. Wait. What?

He could just as well have shifted the central characters of that narrative around. He was easy to manipulate through his singular focus? Did he have it wrong? Was he endangering the lives of his peers? The program may have been manipulated, but it has restricted access. The only people who were going to be exposed to the program were the students playing soldier. It wasn’t like they were fighting real demons, though it would have helped prepare them for the trials ahead.

The elevator lit up, beckoning him forward, lulling him with the promise of safety within its brilliant light. Too bright.

He stepped inside, the doors closing behind him with a gentle sigh. The lights flickered out, bathing him in the dim glow of the red emergency lights. He was trapped. An odd sense of relief washed over him, whatever happened now, it was out of his hands. He might have been a pawn this whole time, attending to the tasks that the demon could not perform himself; a pawn who could move in a world that it could not.

But what if he was right? Then Astral was about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

He touched the glass panel, an action that would have activated the elevator console. Nothing. He swiped his wrist across the screen, triggering the scanners to sense the implant in his arm. A digital screen projected in front of the captain, a secondary system. He couldn’t assume control of the elevator, but he could trigger the release mechanism for the emergency exit. A panel in the back of the elevator released, pushing itself up and out by a few inches, waiting for manual input.

He didn’t need the elevator to reach the chamber, he just needed the access shaft.