Maya first spotted Lance, still cradling *The Great Gatsby* against his chest. His face was pale, his eyes unfocused, as if seeing beyond the familiar stacks. Maya edged forward, her messenger bag heavy with art materials. The leather strap bit into her shoulder as she navigated between the massive oak tables.
“Lance?” Maya called, her voice urgent in the quiet space.
Before he could answer, a deep tremor shook the building. Books rattled on their shelves, and dust fell from the vaulted ceiling. The few scattered students in this section looked up, confused and panicked. A nearby coffee cup tipped over, spilling its contents across open notebooks.
The tremor intensified. Lance and Maya grabbed a nearby shelf to steady themselves. After a moment longer, everything stilled.
Several students reached for their phones, fingers flying across screens in desperation. “Still no signal,” one said, anxiety clear in his voice. Another student’s laptop showed the WiFi icon cycling endlessly, searching for a connection that wasn’t there.
Lara Mitchell burst through the stairwell door, a stark contrast to her earlier appearance. Her purposeful stride made her copper curls bounce, and her shoes echoed across the marble floor as she approached the center of the room. “Everyone, stay calm!” she commanded. “We need to get organized and figure out what’s happening. Listen to me and try not to panic.”
The library's emergency lights flickered on as the main power went out briefly, casting an eerie blue glow on frightened faces. Moments later, the power surged back, and normal lighting returned, leaving the emergency lights dim. Students began clustering together, returning from other sections, seeking comfort in numbers. The metal shelving creaked ominously as another tremor rippled through the building.
“First things first,” Lara announced, taking charge. “We need a headcount and inventory of supplies. The library has four floors, so form four groups. Anyone with first aid training, raise your hands. Someone take a headcount.”
Lance finally snapped out of his daze. A haunted look flickered across his face as he surveyed the gathering crowd. Maya noticed his hands tremble slightly as he set *Gatsby* aside, though his voice remained steady. “I can help with the count.”
The initial tally revealed forty-seven people trapped inside: forty-three students, a substitute professor, a lab assistant, the librarian, and a visiting alumnus. The number felt both too large and too small in the vast space, their voices echoing off marble floors and wooden shelves.
“What supplies do we have?” a student at the back asked, her voice wavering between concern and disbelief.
Maya coordinated the inventory, her artist's eye useful during resource cataloging. The library held flashlights, basic first aid supplies, and some bottled water. The vending machines offered chips and candy bars—enough to stave off hunger for a few days. Students shared what they had in their bags—protein bars, fruit, snacks. The break room provided a water cooler with three spare jugs and a half-empty box of tea bags. Bizarrely, the toilets still worked, but none of the sinks did.
“We should ration the water,” Professor Chen suggested, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. “We don’t know how long we’ll stay here.”
Lance organized the supplies methodically, creating detailed lists while grappling with knowledge he couldn’t share. Maya caught him muttering about temporal physics and loop variables when he thought no one was listening. She watched him sort protein bars by caloric content, his movements precise but distracted, each action hinting at deeper anxieties.
As the first hour stretched into the second, Lara suggested forming search parties. “We need to understand what’s happening outside,” she explained, drawing from her wilderness training. “But we stay within sight of the library at all times. No one goes alone.”
They split into three groups. Maya led the east team, Lance took the west, and Lara headed north. Each group included one adult and a few students. The south side, with its sheer drop to the valley below, remained unexplored. Each team carried a flashlight from the emergency kit.
Maya's group discovered the media building had aged decades. Its modern glass facade was now crumbled and overgrown. The windows revealed impossible scenes: empty classrooms with antique desks, ultramodern terminals, then ruins, cycling through time like slides in a projector before settling back on an abandoned, dilapidated ruin.
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Lance's team reported a maintenance door that opened onto nothing—a void that made their eyes ache. The darkness seemed to reach for them before they slammed the door shut.
Lara's group encountered footprints that appeared and vanished, accompanied by fleeting voices. They found a student ID card dated 1997, pristine despite its age, lying next to a classic Nokia cellphone with 22% battery.
When they regrouped in the main reading room, the mood had shifted from confusion to dread. The reports painted a picture none wanted to acknowledge—they were trapped in desolation and strangeness.
Bradley Turner, an aggressive business major known for his confrontational style, paced between study tables, frustration etched on his face. “This is ridiculous,” he announced. “We’re just going to sit here and wait? For what?”
“We need to be smart about this,” Lara countered, her patience evident. “We don’t understand what’s happening out there.”
“We can’t just sit here doing nothing! That’s a death sentence!” Brad’s voice rose, drawing nervous looks from others. “We should be seeking help, not hiding here like scared kids.”
The argument might have escalated further, but a sudden fight broke out between two sophomores near the water cooler. Stress and fear boiled over into shoving and wild punches before Lara intervened, her counselor experience shining as she separated them with firm authority.
“This isn’t helping anyone,” she declared, holding one freshman at arm’s length while Maya calmed the other. “We need to work together.”
Brad sneered, grabbing a flashlight from the table. “You all can stay here. I’m going to find real help.”
“Brad, wait—” Lance started, but the business major was already striding toward the entrance.
The heavy doors swung shut behind him with a thud, leaving stunned silence in his wake. Through the windows, they watched his flashlight beam cut through the darkness until it vanished around a corner.
Jessica Owens, a photography major, tracked Brad's progress through her camera's telephoto lens. Her hands shook as she adjusted the focus, following the bobbing light until it disappeared.
“There was... something out there,” she whispered, lowering her camera. “In the shadows around his light. I can’t... I can’t quite describe it. Like shapes that shouldn’t exist. They’re flowing around the beam, but... wrong somehow.”
Maya moved to comfort her, her mind racing to reconcile the surreal events with her artistic mindset. She felt the pressure to stay composed for others, her internal thoughts tangled with the rising fear around her.
Jessica's words sparked murmurs of fear through the group. One student near the back broke down, sobbing uncontrollably as others glanced around nervously, their earlier composure shattered.
As evening should have approached, the light outside remained unchanged—not day, not night, but something profoundly dark. The library lights flickered occasionally, prompting Maya to organize strategic locations for the flashlights.
People began forming discussion groups, sharing theories about their situation. Some suggested supernatural explanations, while others sought scientific reasoning. A physics student drew complex equations on a whiteboard, trying to model spatial displacement patterns, while a theology major quoted obscure texts about the end times.
Lance helped Maya arrange sleeping areas, converting study rooms and reading nooks into temporary shelters. They distributed tablecloths they found that could function as thin blankets while Lara established a watch rotation. Maya struggled to capture the chaos around her, finding strange beauty in the disorder while feeling the weight of responsibility to stay composed for the group.
“The shadows are getting thicker,” Lance observed quietly as they worked, his voice low. “Look how they seem to move.”
She followed his gaze to the windows where darkness pressed against the glass like a living thing. The shadows moved subtly, reaching toward the light like curious fingers, their edges blurring unnaturally.
A scream pierced the tension. Jessica stood trembling by a window, raising her camera and scanning the darkness before making a faint click. Her camera’s display screen was visible to those gathered around her as she stepped back.
The image showed Brad's abandoned flashlight lying in a drainage ditch, its beam still burning. There was no sign of Brad himself. Around the light, the shadows seemed particularly deep.
The group dispersed quickly, no one wanting to discuss what they’d seen. Lance and Lara exchanged knowing looks, a silent understanding passing between them. Maya felt a chill of fear deepen her anxiety as the implications sank in.
As artificial night fell over their temporal island, most tried to sleep. Tablecloths and jackets became makeshift beds across floors and chairs. The sound of quiet crying occasionally broke the silence, quickly muffled by the oppressive atmosphere.
On the first night’s watch, Lance, Maya, and Lara sat on the second-floor landing, overlooking both the main floor and the windows. They spoke little, lost in their own thoughts.
“Dawn should have come by now,” Maya whispered, checking her watch for the hundredth time. The hands spun randomly, sometimes forward, sometimes back.
“Time isn’t working right anymore,” Lance replied, his voice heavy. “I don’t think dawn is coming.”
Lara’s sharp intake of breath drew their attention. Beyond the windows, something large moved through the darkness. The area rippled like water, parting around a shape that changed forms with each step.
They watched in silence as it passed, none willing to voice their observations. The quiet understanding between them grew heavier—they were no longer simply trapped in the library.
They were under siege by time itself.