Emily remembered her grandmother Margaret Ellis as a woman who made

Panic surged through the small archive room like an electric shock.

"Is there another way out?" Emily hissed, keeping her voice low as heavy footsteps echoed closer down the concrete hallway.

"Only the freight elevator shaft at the end of the maintenance tunnel," Thomas replied, his eyes wide but steady. "It hasn't been used in years, but the manual override latch should still work."

"Move," Emily said, grabbing the black ledger and shoving it deep into her canvas backpack.

They slipped out of Archive Room B just as a bright beam of flashlight swept across the outer corridor wall. Ducking low behind a stack of discarded cabinetry, Emily and Thomas scrambled down the narrow secondary tunnel, their footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust coating the floor.

Behind them, angry voices shouted orders.

"Sector four is clear, but I saw light coming from the old archive vault!" a security guard barked into a radio. "Call the front desk! Lock down the stairwells!"

Emily didn't look back. She pushed herself forward, driven by an adrenaline-fueled determination that felt entirely inherited from Margaret Ellis. They rounded a sharp corner and slammed into a dead end blocked by a rusted wire-mesh partition.

"Damn it," Emily muttered, shining her light around. "It's locked."

"Look down," Thomas said, pointing to a small, waist-high service hatch built into the base of the mesh wall.

Without hesitation, Emily dropped to her knees, unlatched the rusty metal bolt, and wriggled through the narrow opening first. Dust coated her jeans and scraped her elbows, but she didn't care. She scrambled out on the other side and immediately reached back to help Thomas through.

A moment later, heavy boots pounded against the concrete just yards away on the other side of the wire mesh.

"Over here! The hatch is open!"

"Run!" Emily grabbed Thomas’s hand, pulling him upright as they sprinted toward the rusted iron door of the old freight elevator shaft.

Thomas slammed his weight against the manual release lever. With a screech of protesting metal, the heavy fire door popped open, revealing a dark, vertical shaft with an industrial steel ladder clinging to the damp brick wall.

Without pausing to think about the height or the risk, Thomas grabbed the rungs and began climbing upward with surprising agility. Emily scrambled right behind him, pulling herself hand over hand up the ladder as shouts echoed from the depths below.

They climbed three stories in what felt like an eternity, their lungs burning for air, until Thomas shoved open the spring-loaded emergency exit hatch at the top.

Bright, cool night air rushed over them.

They tumbled out onto the loading dock behind the hospital emergency entrance, rolling out of sight just as a security guard burst through the interior fire door with a flashlight sweeping the tarmac.

Gasping for breath, clutching her backpack protectively against her chest, Emily slumped against the brick wall of the loading bay and started laughing—a breathless, hysterical sound of pure adrenaline.

Thomas joined her, a wide grin breaking across his weathered face as he wiped soot from his forehead.

"Remind me," Thomas wheezed, catching his breath, "never to go ghost hunting with you again."