Prologue | Four Years Ago.

A violent cough ripped through her chest, her whole body bending with the force of it as she was torn from a dead sleep. K tumbled sideways off of the bed, and landed on her hands and knees, the impact sharp enough to shock her out of breath even more. There was a loud roaring in her ears – a raucous crackling noise that is loud, loud, loud. And the noise couldn't even hold a candle to the heat.

Candle….heat…

Fire.

She tried to suck in another breath, only to breathe in something thick and dirty. Another spasm from her lungs made her cough again, and as disorientated as she was Kaye knew that the building was on fire, knew she needed to get out.

"K! K!"

She squinted in the direction of the call just in time to catch the door that connected her room to the one next to it burst inward with a forceful kick from her friend. Splinters from the doorframe flew toward her, and the open door seemed as though it only served to make the room hotter, nevertheless she scrambled to her feet, and stumbled toward it.

L met her halfway, a wet dishtowel tied around the lower half of his face. His hand was quickly pressing a similarly soaked towel across her mouth. It made each lungful taste less like smoke than the one before it, and K would have sobbed in relief if she wasn't still out of breath.

"Come on, K!" he urged. "We have to move!" Already he was tugging her toward the other door, his grip on her wrist tight enough to stop blood flow. There was an edge of panic to all of his motions, as though he was struggling to keep a cool head.

K allowed him to lead the way into the blazing inferno of the hall. On the side that was closest to his room she noticed that flames had begun to eat their way across the floor, orange tongues frantically licking up the walls for further purchase. Panicked herself she picked up speed, matching L pace for pace as they bolted for the emergency staircase – thankfully located on her half of the floor.

The door opened easily under K's shoulder, and the two of them tripped their way into a concrete stairwell. Below them a horde of people was making their way down the steps with little regard for one another. Some were carrying whatever belongings they had in their arms; others appeared to be just as discombobulated as she was, falling over themselves in their pajamas.

K dug her fingers into L's forearm and yanked him back hard before he could start for the stairs. "The alarm," she said. "Where's the fire alarm?"

There was no shortage of noise. Between the people swarming downstairs, and the crackling of flames – distant now that they were closed off from them, but still very much prevalent – it occurred to K that she couldn't hear the tell-tale sirens of industrial fire alarm. Her eyes scanned the cinderblock walls and noticed for the first time that there were no emergency lights flashing either. How the hell did the fire alarm not go off?

"Someone disabled the alarm!" she declared. She began tugging him in the opposite direction, urging him to follow her up the stairs rather than down. "There's no other reason it wouldn't be going off!"

Even as keyed up as he was, L still managed to regard her seriously. "'This was deliberate then, someone set this fire on purpose!" Already she saw the gears beginning to turn behind his eyes.

"Never mind that, L!" K cried. "I mean…yes, but that's not the point! The fire hasn't reached the upper floors yet – they don't know what's going on!"

It was at that moment that the door above K – and only that door – swung open and a floor's worth of people barreled their way down the stairs in a panic. K shoved against the crowd, fighting her way upward with the kind of single-mindedness she rarely possessed. She squared her elbows and pushed the oncoming people out of the way with her forearms, ignoring the indignant shouts and growled swears.

It wasn't until she hit the landing – slipping through the back end of the crowd – that she realized L's shirt was no longer between her fingers.

-:-

Neither L nor K would ever be sure how exactly they were separated that night. In later years all L would recall were two things: the first, was being knocked backwards by the stampede of hotel patrons trying to escape the fire. Right away he could tell that K was no longer with him, but trampled and unbalanced he had little choice but the follow the flow of the crowd, until he found himself forced into the back of an ambulance by two very persistent EMT's who insisted he be treated for smoke inhalation.

The second was the earth-shattering moment the middle floors of the building exploded.