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"Wait, what?!" Kevin stood up straighter.

Mary next to him gasped in shock and frightened alarm, as did my father, who appeared as if he were on the verge of collapsing backwards on the bed. Mom, however, didn't hesitate to grab their suitcases left in the corner.

"Adam, you better go join him and grab your clothes." She motioned over to Lowell, "I want you to help him and join us downstairs, can you do that, Lowell?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Lowell turned to me. "Adam, let's go!"

He grabbed my paws and pulled me with him out into the hallway, the shock wearing off as soon as I noticed my reflection in the elevator's chrome door. I looked haunted, disconnected from the whole experience. The whites in my eyes were bigger, the fur on my face standing up on end, as if my instincts knew about an incoming threat I couldn't even see. How in the world did the Devout government suddenly know where we were?

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" Lowell stomped the ground of the elevator. "C'mon, get up!"

The door finally dinged open.

"This can't be happening." I murmured over and over after we burst into our suite's bedroom, then made a beeline for our clothes and the emergency suitcases beneath the bed, piling them in. "This can't be fucking happening!"

"Well, it is, sweetie!" Lowell grabbed his poetry book and stuffed it right into his jacket's pocket. "Johanna wouldn't be running this unless it was a planned drill!"

Have you ever had an out-of-body experience before? It feels akin to watching a movie in a solitary theater, except the audience member could feel the motions and bubbling stress crawl under the poor protagonist's skin and fur. I couldn't fully remember the motions, but I did remember seeing various things. The elevator door opening and closing. The abrupt jerking motion of it landing on the ground floor. A quiet hotel lobby. Olivia and Lucius pushing a frantic Oscar in his wheelchair from the neighboring elevator doors. Each of them carried bags, with Oscar covertly, frantically typing on his flip phone.

Lowell pulled me hard down to the bar and grill restaurant suddenly packed with several hotel staff. The restaurant's manager Daniel, a couple barista girls, Matt the bellboy. The front manager and a few other staff members. All of them wore stern expressions as each of them stacked various furniture in front of the windows. I almost said something when a sudden noise cut through the white noise, and I returned to reality again.

It was the fire alarm. The fire alarm!

"Won't they come for this place?!" I shrieked over the blaring siren and shouts as we went for the restaurant's back kitchen, behind the bar. "Firefighters and police!?"

"Not for another ten minutes!" Lowell answered me in the same volume, then swiveled his head to a familiar bear. Lowell appeared wracked with flickering worry as he cried out, "Hey Matt, it's...it's been an honor knowing you. All of you!"

"Will do, Low!" The bar cackled.

Daniel quipped, "Live another day, and it'll make up for stolen liquor, boy!"

That was when it struck me. The hotel staff did not plan on joining us in evacuating.

"W-Wait!" I pulled my paw away from Lowell's, pausing mid-step. "You can't! You'll get killed! They'll shoot you all dead!"

"We fucking know that kid!" Daniel shouted. "Hey, Marie, put the table over there on its side! Pete, make sure each of us have rounds!"

"Yessir!"

I tried stepping towards one of them, tears forming in my eyelids. Lowell firmly snatched my wrist holding onto my luggage case, frantically telling me to follow. As I started stepping back, feeling like the wolf's arm around my waist was practically lifting me from the floor, I saw Matt offer me a glance. He seemed determined and content. He also appeared more eager than ever as he cocked a shotgun produced from behind the bar's countertop.

"Don't give us that look now, Adam!" He smiled at us. Lowell paused his insistent pulling to let me hear his convincing words, "We're saving this country. My job's to keep the place clean, help guests, pretend to be something I'm not..."

"Our job now's to buy you all some time," Daniel mentioned before glancing to a female bellhop turning over a table in the lobby. The graying timber wolf ordered, "Lana, make sure those doors going to the gym aren't locked!"

She bolted out of the small restaurant, moving out of the way of guests tiredly fleeing the building. I couldn't tell if she was a rabbit or a minx. Or even what her full name was.

Years later, I would try to rationalize my inability to remember their faces or species as maybe some form of facial agnosia. Then again, perhaps so many emotions were running through my system during those few minutes, it made my memories blur together. However, I did remember seeing Matt. That bear bellboy who was among the first of the hotel staff to act friendly in my first say roaming the Maverick's corridors. I could remember him clear as day.

"Yeah. Fight another day." He smirked down at me, then cocked his shotgun. "Go."

"It was nice knowing you, Dan." Lowell glanced back to the fellow, older wolf.

"You too brat!" He barked, snarling. "Just get outta here, Low! Go, now!"

Years later, one of my biggest regrets was not finding the opportunity to know the Maverick's staff. I never even had a full-fledged conversation between me and Matt. I never knew if the bear in his thirties had a wife, girlfriend, some kids, or family to mourn him. His likes, dislikes, interests, beliefs in the Almighty or beliefs in the lack of an afterlife. I never asked Matt if he had passions that went beyond the hotel's sanctuary walls, or at what point he realized how fucked up the Devout States happened to really be. I never got to know him as anything more than a martyr for the Defiant, living forever in my memories.

TO BE CONTINUED...