Poorva’s key card died the second the elevator doors closed behind her. The tiny red light blinked once, then stayed dead. She stood in the narrow service corridor on the eighth floor of the old business hotel, the one that still used physical key cards and smelled faintly of floor polish and air-conditioning coolant. The corridor was empty. The night manager’s office was two floors down and a long walk through the main lobby. She pressed the card against the reader again, harder this time, as if pressure would revive it. Nothing.

She had just finished a late client dinner that had stretched past midnight. Her feet ached in the low heels. The corridor lights were dimmed to night mode, casting long shadows across the beige walls and the rows of closed service doors. She pulled out her phone to call the front desk. No signal. The concrete walls blocked everything.