Francis found an abandoned building after shaking off his pursuers, ducking through three alleyways and doubling back twice before he was certain no one had followed.
The structure sat at the dead end of a collapsed service road, half-swallowed by overgrown weeds that crept up its corrugated walls like fingers.
Inside, old cars sat in silence, covered in dust and thick cobwebs. The air tasted stale — oil and rust and something older underneath, the particular smell of a place that had been sealed too long from the outside world.
One glance told him no one used the area for years. Rusted tools hung on pegboards with empty hooks between them.
Broken lifts sat frozen mid-raise, locked in whatever position they had died in.
He chose the storage area at the back as his temporary hiding spot.
The narrow gaps between shelves broke the space apart — difficult to move through quickly, easy to disappear in.
'Good enough.'
