Read Chapter 1: Blackout

Camille was counting vials of insulin when the lights went.

The fluorescent bars above the pharmacy basement shelf flickered once, twice, then died. The hum of the building’s ventilation system cut out with a gasp. In the sudden silence, her own breathing sounded loud. The emergency exit sign glowed green for half a second—then that went too.

She stood motionless in the dark, one hand wrapped around a box of Novorapid. The cold metal of the shelf pressed against her forearm. Her phone was upstairs. Her keys were upstairs. Everything except the box of insulin in her hands was upstairs, and the basement door was a fire door with a push-bar lock that swung shut automatically on a delay. She knew that. She had known that for six years.

She moved anyway. Three steps to her left, hand sliding along the wall, fingers catching the edge of a rolling cart. She knew this room. She could walk it blind.

The push bar yielded. The door swung open into the corridor, and Camille stepped out into a perfect, absolute dark. Not a single emergency light. Not a single exit lamp. The building had gone to black like a stone dropped in a well.

She found the stairwell by touch, climbing from memory, counting steps the way her father had taught her when she was a child and the elevator in their building broke every August. Twenty-one, twenty-two. She stopped when she heard the noise.

It came from the street, muffled by the lobby glass: shouts, the scrape of metal, the high thin wail of a child. Car horns, which was nothing—Parisians honked at everything—but these went on too long, became a chorus, became alarms.

The lobby was lit only by whatever gray light filtered through the glass doors from a sky that shouldn’t have been gray at dusk in July. Camille crossed the marble floor in her sensible shoes, pushed through the heavy door, and stopped.

The street was a photograph in negative. Every window dark, every shopfront blind. The Café des Lilas across the road had spilled its customers onto the pavement, where they stood with their phones held up to the sky like compasses, looking for a signal that wasn’t coming. A delivery scooter had tipped onto its side, its driver standing over it with his hands on his head.

And at the end of the block, where the Rue de la Roquette met the larger boulevard, a fire engine sat angled across the intersection, light bar dark, its crew already dismounted and moving toward the apartment building beside it.

Her building. Number 24.

Camille started walking. The box of insulin was still in her hand. She did not realize she was carrying it until she was already in the middle of the street, and a man in a yellow helmet stepped into her path and said, “Mademoiselle, you need to move back.”

“I live there.” She pointed at the building. He was tall, broad in the shoulders of his turnout coat, with a face half-shadowed by the collar and a voice that was calm in a way that did not match the wailing from the upper floors. “What’s happening?”

“Residents trapped on the fourth floor.” He was already turning away. “Elevator’s dead. Needs to go back to the station. Please move back to the pavement.”

“Fourth floor—that’s Madame Olivier. She’s eighty-two. She has a walker.”

That stopped him. He turned back, and she saw his eyes for the first time: dark brown, clear, focused on her with the kind of attention that made her feel, briefly, like the only person on the street. “She’s your neighbor?”

“I live on the third floor. She lives above me. She can’t manage the stairs without help, and she definitely can’t manage them in the dark.” Camille put the insulin box in her coat pocket. It made a bulge against her hip. “I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not.” The calm voice again, friendly but immovable. “I’m Lieutenant Julien Moreau. And you are not coming into a building that may have a gas leak in a blackout with no evacuation plan.”

“Then give me a better plan.” She felt her voice rise and forced it down. Around them, the street was beginning to organize itself into small clusters of people: neighbors calling to one another from windows, a woman on the pavement cradling her arm, a man sitting on the curb with blood running from his forehead. “I’m a pharmacist. I work at the hospital pharmacy two blocks over. If you’ve got injured people in that building or out here on the street, you need me more than you need a crowd control lineup.”

Julien’s eyes moved past her, assessing the scene she had just described. She watched him count what she had counted: at least three people needing medical attention already, a hell of a lot more to come, no lights, no phones, no power, and one fire truck with what looked like a crew of five.

“Pharmacist,” he repeated.

“Camille Laurent. I’m walking into number 24 with you to get Madame Olivier, and then I’m setting up where I can do some good in the courtyard out back where there’s still daylight and away from the cars. You can use me or you can argue with me, but you’ve got thirty seconds to choose.”

Something flickered across his face—annoyance, maybe, or amusement, she couldn’t tell in the failing light. Then he said, “You stay behind me. You do exactly what I say when we’re inside. And you don’t touch anything.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” He turned to the building and shouted over his shoulder to a crewmate. “Dubois! Take the street scene—start triage, use the bus as a station. I’m going up for the fourth floor.”

“Lieutenant—you want backup?”

“I have backup.” Julien gestured at Camille with his chin. “She’s a pharmacist. Come on, Laurent.”

The stairwell of number 24 was a dark throat. The air was warm, damp, already carrying the smell of cooking oil from an apartment where someone had left a stove on. Camille followed the sound of Julien’s boots on the concrete steps, one hand on the wall, the other pressed against the insulin in her pocket.

“Fourth floor,” she said, as they passed the second-floor landing. “Her door’s the one with the brass 3B knocker. She can’t hear well, so you’ll have to pound.”

“Already have someone on the third floor with a crowbar in case she’s not answering.” Julien’s voice came from above, strain in it now from the stairs. “Your floor, right?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone in your apartment that can’t self-evacuate?”

“My cat.” She said it before she could stop herself, then felt dumb. “He’ll be fine. He knows the food’s in the same place.”

Julien didn’t laugh. “We’ll check on him after. What about your neighbors on the ground?”

“Monsieur Ricci on the ground floor is ninety-one and deaf as a post. He won’t hear door knocks or alarms. And there’s a family in 2C with a kid who’s got asthma, but they know the drill—they’ve got a Nebulizer and they’re usually good with prep.”

“Number 24,” Julien said, more to himself than her. “You know every person in this building?”

“I know the ones with medical conditions. It’s part of the job.” She paused at the third-floor landing, catching her breath. “And I know that if this power stays out more than a few hours, the cold-chain drugs in the pharmacy basement are going to be worthless by morning. So when we’re done with Madame Olivier, I need to go fetch what I can.”

Julien stopped on the landing above her. In the dark, she saw the shape of him turn. “When we’re done with Madame Olivier, you’re not going anywhere alone. We trade favors, Laurent. You help me, I help you.”

“That sounds like a deal,” she said, and started moving again, brushing past him on the narrow stair.

The fourth-floor landing was crowded: two firefighters with a halligan bar stood at the door marked 4B, and through the wood came the thin, angry tapping of a cane. Madame Olivier’s voice, muffled but unmistakable: “I can hear you out there! I am not an invalid! I’m just coming!”

Julien knocked on the doorframe. “Madame Olivier, my name is Lieutenant Moreau with the fire brigade. We’re here to help you downstairs. The power’s out citywide and we have a staging area for residents in the courtyard.”

The tapping stopped. The door cracked open, and a face like a walnut peered out from the gap, over the chain lock. Madame Olivier looked from Julien to Camille, then narrowed her eyes with the particular suspicion of an elderly Parisian who had survived occupation, renovation, and two riots on her block.

“Camille,” she said. “This one yours?”

“No, ma’am.” Julien gave a small, surprisingly patient smile. “She’s volunteered medical support at the staging area. And I assure you, I wouldn’t be here without her.”

Madame Olivier took this in, then unhooked the chain.

“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not carrying the walker down four flights. Someone strong needs to bring it.”

Camille looked down the dark stairwell she had just climbed, and thought about the box of insulin in her pocket, and the family in 2C, and the street full of people already beginning to gather outside where the last light was going fast.

“We’re going to need a bigger staging area,” she said.