Noa scraped at the bed of her nails while she pinned her phone to her ear with her shoulder. If she didn’t go to the salon soon she’d bruise or entirely lose a fingernail. Her mom was near tears on the other line, and she was trying to be patient while everything lurched to a stop. The elevator settled with a rattle that always made her nervous, and the doors slid open to reveal the long dark hallway with a red exit sign at the end. A single light that stayed on at all times barely lit it. She stepped out, knowing in a few steps the automatic lights would kick on. Somewhere in the distance a vacuum was running.

  “Mom, you can’t drive across Florida every time I miss a phone call. I’ve been at work,” she said, adjusting to hold the phone while she grabbed her keys from her purse. She would lose her nerve if she stopped to think about the hallway, so she walked and searched for her ear buds. Noa just needed to find them, that would make the juggling act easier.

  That’s right, she was charging them.

  Noa sighed and stopped to contemplate the elevator doors still hanging open, illuminating more of the hallway than the lights themselves. Her mom continued in her ear about Noa and Noa’s life. Did she want to take even longer going back for her ear buds?

  Then she scowled, listening, “Mom, I don’t live at work, I’m establishing myself in my career.”

  Never mind that she fell asleep at her desk again and had to email an apology to her boss for messing up her timecard. The elevator door slid shut. Noa hated the dark and she walked forward again, trying to trip the light sensor. Who put a light sensor in the middle of the hallway? She heard her father’s voice in the car with her mother. She closed her eyes just for a moment.

  “Dad, dad, you are just enabling her— noooo, I don’t want her driving here at all.”

  The sound of her flats against the carpet changed to something more solid, rough and scraping on the bottom of her sole. She opened her eyes in pitch black and her phone beeped in her ears. She looked down in confusion at the lost signal lighted up on her screen for a brief moment.

  Noa looked into the dark hall but as the phone screen timed out and turned off she was plunged into cave like darkness. The sound of the vacuum was gone too. Power outage.

  She heard a drip.

  No.

  A power outage wouldn’t have taken out the emergency lighting. Or the exit sign.

  Noa took a breath in and everything smelled wrong.

  She clicked the familiar spot on her phone and the power turned on, the screen blazing bright in this new darkness with her hands shaking. She fumbled with one hand while she clutched her bag to find the flashlight.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Dreaming. She'd fallen asleep at her desk again and this was—Noa clicked the button.

  Light from her phone illuminated stonework. Noa was staring at a wall of rough hewn stone fitted together without mortar. She turned around towards where the elevator was while thoughts raced.

  Not dreaming. Kidnapped. Someone drugged her, moved her to a—but she was standing, she'd been walking, she'd been on the phone!

  A confused sound escaped her lips as she came nose to nose with a wall of the same stone where elevator doors had been behind her moments ago. The cracks between blocks held nothing but deep shadows, and her breath came back sharp, burning her throat. She turned more, light splashing against the walls too fast to gather detail, her arm shaking, and she couldn't make sense of the hallway with no end in either direction. She was trapped and the wide hallway felt like it was narrowing in her panic.

  Her breath didn't seem to want to leave her lungs. Trapped. Hot. The air was thick and she was so hot, sweat prickling at her hairline, and she clutched her keys and purse to her chest, flashing the phone upward. The ceiling was exactly like the floor and walls but thirty meters tall like a passageway for giants. Uniform. Impossible. She wasn't in her office. She wasn't anywhere that made sense.

  Noa spun around again. She tried to breathe but more air wouldn’t fit in her lungs and couldn’t leave because her body wouldn’t let it go. Crazy. She was having a breakdown. Noa pushed too hard, worked too many hours, and her brain snapped. She backed up into the wall, seeking stability of any kind.

  She could feel the rough texture of the wall at her back. The bricks were not cold like Noa thought they should be. They were softly warm under her office cold fingers. The air wasn’t just hot because her heart was racing with panic. It was a tepid, empty hallway. Noa hoped it was empty. Everything was wrong.

  She looked down at her phone's lack of signal and tried to piece together what happened. Her mind was completely blank. Just white noise and the pounding of her heart in her ears.

  No explanation fit. This can't be happening. Not to Noa and her parents still on that phone call, her mom in tears, her dad trying to calm her down, and Noa just—gone? Disappeared. They were driving to meet her and all their nightmares would come true. Her keys slipped from her shaking fingers and clattered against the stone and she flinched hard at the sound, the noise too loud, echoing. She bent down and scraped them off the floor with trembling hands and shoved them into her purse before she could drop anything else.

  "Think," Noa demanded of herself between breaths. The sound of her own voice was weak in the darkness. She needed to do something. Anything. She discarded reason. She needed motion.

  Noa turned off her flashlight and WiFi and Bluetooth and turned on battery saver and airplane mode. Her hands were still shaking but this she could do, this made sense, tap the familiar icons in the familiar order. Her battery was at 98%. Noa needed it to stay full for when she could call someone for help. She could find a signal when she got out of this… basement? But basements didn't—there was no basement like this, no building, nothing—

  Noa needed it to make sense. Her stomach churned, all that cortisol and adrenaline with nowhere to go, and she bent over, trying to get air in her lungs, tasted bile at the back of her throat.

  Operate on what's happening. Her father drilled it into her.

  "You're Doctor Noa Blake," she gasped to herself, a PhD title she didn’t use but needed. She did it herself. No one could take that from her. That was everything Noa needed to reset.

  Clarity snapped into place.

  What was she supposed to do, sit down and cry? That wouldn’t help. Her mom would cry. Noa could only control herself and that meant moving, because there was nothing for her here.

  Idiots stayed where they were.

  Idiots died.

  Walk.