Cold.
Confused.
Looking for light.
I was already moving.
“Elena?” Maya called.
“I’m here,” I said.
My voice came out calm.
It always does in emergencies.
That’s something the job gives you after enough years.
Your fear doesn’t disappear.
It just learns to wait its turn.
I pulled the small flashlight from my jacket pocket and clicked it on.
A clean beam cut across the auditorium.
The tech executive stepped toward me.
“Is this normal?”
“No,” I said.
His face tightened.
The man had spoken to five hundred students about the future that morning.
Now he looked like a boy whose nightlight had gone out.
The dean hurried toward me, heels clicking in the dark.
“Ms. Ramirez, do you think this is campus-wide?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But something outside failed hard.”
“We have a facilities team.”
“Good,” I said. “Call them.”
“I can’t get a signal.”
Of course she couldn’t.
Half the room was already holding phones in the air like offerings.
No bars.
No Wi-Fi.
No emergency notification.
Just hundreds of brilliant young minds standing in the dark, suddenly reminded that a campus app doesn’t open a locked stairwell.
A student shouted from the balcony.
“The elevator stopped!”
The room froze.
Another voice came from above.
“There are people inside!”
I looked up.
“Where?”
“East side lobby!”
The dean pressed both hands to her chest.
“Oh no. The accessibility elevator.”
Maya’s eyes widened.
“Aunt Elena…”
“I know.”
I ran toward the side exit.
The tech executive followed.
So did Maya.
“Stay with the students,” I told her.
“No.”
“Maya.”
“No,” she said again, louder this time. “You taught me not to stand around when people need help.”
That hit me harder than I expected.
So I nodded once.
“Then stay behind me and listen.”
We pushed through the auditorium doors into the lobby.
The emergency lights were out there too.
