"Desi! Stop!" I chased after her. I’m not a runner. My shoes are Italian leather; they are designed for boardrooms, not sprints across wet floorboards. I slipped, flailed, and barely regained my balance.
Greg followed us. For a guy who moves like a glacier, he was surprisingly fast. He lumbered behind me, his heavy footsteps shaking the floor.
Desi reached the entrance. The neon EXIT sign above the door was flickering, buzzing like an angry hornet.
"I'm going to find a cab," Desi shouted, grabbing the brass handle. "I'm going to find Adam. And then I'm going to punch him in the face for ruining my Friday."
"The door is designed to pull, not push!" I yelled, trying to apply logic to her panic.
"I know how a door works, Leo!"
She yanked the handle. The heavy oak door swung inward with a groan of rusty hinges.
Wind didn't blow in. Rain didn't blow in.
Desi screamed. It wasn't a long scream, just a sharp, choked noise, like all the air had been punched out of her lungs.
I skidded to a halt behind her.
There was no street outside. No sidewalk. No parked cars. No city.
The doorway was blocked solid by a wall of bricks.
Old, red, crumbling bricks. The mortar was gray and dusty. It looked like it had been there for a hundred years.
"What?" Desi stepped back, shaking her head. "No. No, I came in this way. I came in through this door an hour ago! I smoked a cigarette right there on the step!"
She lunged forward and hammered her fists against the bricks. Thud. Thud. Thud. It was a solid, dead sound.
"Let me out!" she screamed, scratching at the rough surface. Her fingernails made a terrible rasping sound. "Hey! Is anyone out there? Help!"
"Desi, stop," Greg said gently. He reached out and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. She fought him for a second, then collapsed against his chest, sobbing.
I walked up to the doorway. I reached out and touched the bricks. They were cold. damp. Real.
I looked closely at the masonry. It wasn't just a wall. It was... familiar. The pattern of the bricks. The way the mortar was sloppy in the corners.
"This is impossible," I whispered. "This is architecturally unsound. You cannot brick up an egress point while people are inside. It’s a fire code violation."
"We're trapped," Desi moaned into Greg's hoodie. "We're buried alive."
"We aren't buried," I said, my mind racing, trying to categorize this new variable. "We are... contained. The system has gone into lockdown."
"Why?" Greg asked. He looked at me over Desi’s head. His eyes were dark pools of exhaustion. "Why would it lock us in, Leo?"
"Because," I said, staring at the bricks that shouldn't be there. "Because someone doesn't want us to leave. Or... someone is afraid of what will happen if we do."
I turned around to face the empty, red-lit bar. It felt smaller now. Claustrophobic. The walls seemed to be leaning in, watching us.
"We need to go back to the table," I said, straightening my tie. It was crooked. I hated that. "We need to regroup. We need to figure out what is true and what is... a glitch."
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.