But Marcus only registered Elena, her body pressed against his, her heart hammering so hard he could feel it through their clothes, her dark eyes wide with shock. She was shaking. "Are you hurt?" Marcus demanded. His hands moved over her shoulders, her arms checking for injuries.
Did the glass hit you? "I'm fine." Elena's voice trembled. "You—how did you know?" I'll explain later.
Right now, we need to Security surrounded them, pulling them apart. Voices shouting questions and orders. Marcus caught a glimpse of figures fleeing from the catwalk access. Saw guards racing after them. Amanda appeared, her professional composure cracked with genuine terror.
She helped Elena to her feet. "I'm fine," Elena said again louder now, authority returning to her voice even as her hands shook. "Everyone calm down. Clear the auditorium in an orderly fashion. Amanda get security to on it."
Amanda was already coordinating on her phone. Elena's eyes found Marcus. He was still on the stage floor, his shoulder screaming where he'd absorbed their combined impact. Glass scattered around him. Blood ran from a cut on his arm where a shard had caught him.
"You're bleeding," Elena said. "It's nothing. It's not nothing." She moved toward him, but Amanda intercepted her gently. "We need to get you to a secure location until security sweeps the building.
Please, Elena." For a moment, Marcus thought Elena would refuse, but she let Amanda guide her toward the exit, looking back at him one last time. Her expression was something he'd never seen before. Shock, gratitude, something deeper that made his breath catch. Then she was gone.
Security personnel surrounded Marcus asking questions he barely heard. His mind kept replaying those seconds on a loop. The weight of Elena in his arms, the terror in her eyes, the absolute certainty that if he'd been one second slower, she would be dead. And somewhere in the chaos, Marcus realized that invisible was no longer an option. He'd thrown himself into the spotlight to save her.
Nothing between them would ever be the same. The security office became command central within minutes of the auditorium evacuation. Marcus sat in a hard plastic chair while a paramedic cleaned the gash on his forearm. The sting of antiseptic barely registered against the adrenaline still flooding his system. Guards spoke in clipped tones into radios coordinating a building-wide lockdown while reviewing security footage on a wall of monitors.
"You're lucky," the paramedic said, applying butterfly bandages. Another inch, and this would have needed stitches. Marcus didn't feel lucky. He felt like his entire body was vibrating at a frequency just below visible. The head of security, a former detective named Marcus Webb, pulled up a chair.
"Mr. Cole." His expression was grave. Walk me through what happened. Start with why you were checking the auditorium in the first place. Marcus explained everything.
The morning briefing, his decision to personally verify the systems, finding the frayed safety cable and loose mounting bolts, fixing them, documenting everything. He showed Webb the photos on his tablet timestamped from hours before the presentation. You fixed it, Webb said, studying the images. Secured everything properly. So, how did the light still fall?