Red Alert

The fire alarm was the worst sound in the world.

It wasn't a bell; it was a shrieking, electronic pulse designed to induce panic. It cut through Arthur’s noise-canceling headphones like a knife.

The strobe lights in the hallway began to flash.

Arthur was in the break room on the third floor, retrieving a print job, when it happened. The sudden assault of noise and light triggered a hard reset in his brain.

His breath hitched. The walls seemed to tilt. The crowd of employees surging toward the stairwell became a terrifying, indistinct mass of movement.

* Too loud. Too bright. Can't breathe.*

Arthur backed into the corner, sliding down the wall. He pressed his hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut. He knew, logically, it was a drill. There was no smoke. But his nervous system didn't care about logic. It was in fight-or-flight, and it had chosen freeze.

"Arthur?"

A voice cut through the panic. Not loud, but grounded.

Arthur cracked one eye open.

Benji was crouching in front of him. He wasn't frantic. He wasn't looking at the exit. He was looking at Arthur, blocking the view of the chaotic hallway with his body.

"Hey," Benji said. "Sensory overload?"

Arthur nodded jerkily, unable to speak.

"Okay. We’re going to move," Benji said calmly. "There’s a service stairwell just around the corner. It’s concrete. No echo. No strobe lights."

Benji didn't grab him. He held out a hand, palm up, waiting.

Arthur stared at the hand. He reached out, his fingers trembling. Benji gripped him firm and steady.

They moved. Benji guided him through the crowd, using his shoulders to carve a path, shielding Arthur from the worst of the jostling.

They slipped into the service stairwell. The heavy door slammed shut, muffling the shriek of the alarm to a dull throb. It was cool and dim.

Arthur sank onto the bottom step, gasping for air. "I’m sorry," he wheezed. "I’m sorry, I’m pathetic."

"Nope," Benji said, sitting down next to him—close, but not touching. "You’re reacting to a stimulus designed to be awful. It’s a design flaw in the alarm system, really."

Benji reached into his pocket and pulled out a fidget spinner. He spun it, the soft *whirrr* cutting through the silence.

"Did you know," Benji said conversationally, "that the original *Enterprise* warp core sound was made by recording a Hammond organ fan?"

Arthur blinked, his breathing hitching. "What?"

"Star Trek," Benji said. "The hum. It’s just an organ fan layered with some other stuff. I read it on Reddit. I bet you’d know exactly how they mixed the audio frequencies."

Arthur focused on the spinning toy. He focused on Benji’s voice—light, rambling, safe.

"It... it wasn't just a fan," Arthur managed to say, his voice shaky. "They superimposed a sine wave."

"A sine wave!" Benji exclaimed softly. "Of course they did. See? You know everything."

Benji kept talking. He talked about tribbles. He talked about how illogical Spock’s 3D chess board was. He filled the space with harmless, nerdy data until Arthur’s hands stopped shaking.

"Better?" Benji asked after ten minutes, when the "All Clear" finally sounded.

Arthur looked at Benji. The man had missed the drill. He had stayed in a stairwell to talk about warp cores.

"Yes," Arthur whispered. "Thank you."

"Anytime, Spock," Benji smiled. He stood up and offered his hand again. "Let’s get you back to the Batcave."