Chapter 2
What was going on? This had to be some sort of fever dream right? Testing? Has God begun to do exams on random blue screens?
"No, no.", Alec slapped his cheeks, trying to ignore the likely impending doom that was right in front of him. There's no way that this is real, right? The sheer amount of implications of what this could mean were endless. He was just a normal guy working at midnight, who’s just making a fantasy in his head.
Yep, no way; this was a delusion from overwork that he was making up in his head right now, and he'd wake up soon. Any moment now. Alec reclined back in his chair, closing his eyes.
It sat there waiting, glaring at him under his eyelids even as he tried to ignore it.
Prepare for your testing
ETA 9 Minutes
He sighed, sat up, and took a hard look at the box.
It looked kind of funny in retrospect. The whole thing seemed a bit Jigsaw-esque to him, “Prepare for testing, fight for your fate!”, yada yada.
The lights in the ceiling panels flickered off. Looks like there was a power outage again. Or it was another part of the setting for the imminent doom. Strange timing.
There was a small, anxious part of him that screamed that it could be real, that a higher being of some sort was testing him, and that there was in fact a "Test" coming.
Wait a second. Aha, he found a loophole there!
“If this whole thing was real, then who would even want to do it!” Alec surmised.
Was there truly some kind of God? Alec hadn’t been to church for years, and he wasn’t really pious, so he seriously doubted it. Aliens on the other hand were a more logistically likely possibility. Aliens that wanted to test humanity on what though? If they could come up with the technology to whip up a blue screen like this in his eyes, then what’s to say humans could do anything that would be of benefit to them?
He shook his head, his imagination was being a big drama queen right now.
Alec walked over to the front window wall, snickering. Take that therapy industry, he was fully capable of diagnosing, composing, and fixing himself! Seriously though, he had to wean off the expresso a bit, this was a little much. World-crumbling encroaching doom? There were better movie plots than that.
Yep, no way; he should call 911 while he was still lucid. This was a delusion from overwork that he was making up in his head right now, and he'd wake up soon. Alec tried to look out the glass, but rhe box in front of him reciprocated his stare, unchanging.
Something still itched at him. There was the chance, however small, though he hated to consider the possibility, that this situation was wholly real, and the implications of his "test" were entirely real. He stopped strutting. And if so, he was wasting time.
The building shook again, making him lose his footing. Distant crashes from his left followed by distant car sirens sounded. Alec scrambled back to his feet, ducking as glass shards from the ceiling lights rained down in time with the lurches.
Alec ran down recent events. Coincidental timing at midnight? Strange mental energy surge? Massive earthquakes? Altogether they didn’t have any logical reasoning to pair up with one another, but he couldn’t help but fell a sinking feeling in his gut.
He ignored the tinkling of the broken bulbs dropping every which way. How much time was left? 8 minutes until the schrodinger's paradox solved itself. He needed to know if Julie was alright, before anything else could spiral out of control.
Alec slid out his phone, and dialed her number. Soft ringing filled his ear as he waited nervously, she should be out of class by now, but then again, there might be night cramming tonight, was it tonight? Christ, was it on Friday or Wednesday? He bit his lip, and listened to it ring four times; then it chimed into voicemail.
"Jules, you there? Sorry in advance if it isn't true, but something terrible is going on right now and I might be gone for a while, stay safe." He whispered.
As much as he wanted to be anxious about her, the knot of anxiety in his heart told him to worry more about himself at the moment. Supposing that disaster was happening, no service on his phone meant that something had gone terribly wrong, to affect the city on such a scale.
Alec could feel goosebumps rise on his body. His monitor was black now, unlike the familiar white that he grew to agonize so much. The underlying din that all of the local appliances made in their passive mode was silent. He could only hear distant car sirens now. The office seemed a bit colder than it was a few minutes ago.
Without the overhead LED's, it was coloured a faint silver, the dim moonlight streaming in through the windows being the only source of illumination. The formerly light brown carpeting was now a iridescent mustard, littered with glimmering shards of broken light fixtures.
Alec slowly stepped out of his cubicle, glass crackling beneath the soles of his shoes. Light streaked through intermittently between each booth, leaving him only looming shadows to walk towards. The immediate path ahead was dark, and pitch black further forward.
He narrowed his eyes. What did he need? Assuming that this wasn’t some freak accident of nature and the world was indeed collapsing, Alec needed to find food and water, at least for the moment. There wasn’t much time left though, according to the timer he only had 7 minutes with some seconds.
Picking up the satchel in his cubicle, Alec ducked into the surrounding desks for anything of use. He frowned; the lack of proper lighting prevented him from easily seeing each had, being barely able to make out the silhouette of another monitor just a few feet away. He pawed on top of each desk, knocking off ornaments and pictures as he swept past.
Alec inwardly winced as he sent a very important picture of his co-worker’s daughter rattling into the narrow ravine behind their desk, never to be seen again. He’d apologize later, if Alec saw him again. His knuckles crinkled into some kind of bag; Alec squinted his eyes, candy maybe? Though he was looking for more substantial sustenance, he swiped it anyway.
Even though it was for his own survival, he still felt pangs of guilt wash over him as he threw his co-worker’s working spaces into disarray. It was difficult to rationalize, even though he could blame the violent tremors that shook the building, or the already present mess from the ceiling lights, he still felt instinctual regret for everything he took and intruded upon.
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Faint tremors moved the ground beneath him, stationeries and assorted objects clattered to the floor as Alec searched. Occasionally, he heard a crash, a precarious monitor maybe? It might be hypocritical, given the fact that he was looting the place, but a profound sense of emptiness filled him as his surroundings fell apart.
As he jogged by, long-fallen hallway paintings rested crumpled and splintered. Overturned water dispensers had spilled their contents already, tepid water soaking into the carpet flooring. The formerly easygoing walk to his cubicle had been broken into semblance of its former self.
Alec moved into one of the thin streaks of luminescence, and laid his spoils in the patch. There were quite a few protein bars, enough to last him a couple of days at the minimum, a small number of water bottles, and electrolyte drinks. A small packet of off-brand chocolate candy. Alec emptied out his bag, ignoring the various documents made in order to present the company’s stagnation in growth, pushing his stash inside instead.
The life he had worked so hard to build was gone now. All of the sweat, tears and years he'd spent to make it so far was being stolen for a sick joke. All for [The Test]. His face settled into a stone grimace.
Slinging the strap onto his shoulder, Alec mentally took a break, examining the remainder of the timer that he had left. His searching cost him a full 5 minutes of his precious time, leaving only 3 for any last preparations before supposed doom. He ran down his checklist. Food? Check. Water? Check. Protection? Alec looked down at his soft, unathletic hands, and at the timer again. 3 minutes.
A weapon. Something to protect himself with, anything sharp would do. Anything that had some leverage. If he remembered correctly there should be some metal tools in the maintenance room. The only problem was that the maintenance room was located on the first floor, while he was on the fourth.
Realistically speaking, there might be a shot for him to make it down the stairs, but he didn’t know whether or not security locked up already, so the elevator would be his best shot. Eyeing the distance though, he’d have to travel at least 50 yards, since his office was set in the edge of the eastern wing.
Alec made a mad dash for the elevator doors, his head pounding. The small lobby was so dark, that he couldn't actually make out how far it was, as he ran his way between the cramped cubicles. He only had about 2 arm lengths leeway between to sprint through, dimly lit thin walls flying by him.
Lunging forward, Alec took another long, painful step, just in the final stretch from the double doors, then felt himself falling forward, his heart skipping a beat; he’d tripped. Alec’s jaw clattered as he crashed down, cutting into the flesh of his tongue, and his work bag flew from his arms, forward into some forsaken shadow.
It hurt. His mouth tasted metallic as Alec clawed himself back to his knees, eyes fervently darting back and forth between the timer and his surroundings. 30 seconds had passed; where was his bag?
God, why did he pick black for the color? It wasn’t even that good, but he had insisted on it against Julie’s argument for a pink one. They bickered about it for an hour, until they had compromised with something, what was it?
Alec wracked his brain as hard against his memories. There had to be some color, something that could stand out in the stark darkness, otherwise he'd be doomed in a day! He could taste the blood in his mouth flowing out more freely now, and his teeth gingerly brushed against the bite marks on his tongue.
The timer was out by another 30 seconds, he counted secondary to his pacing thoughts. She had tied something to bag right? Some kind of string that she made from one of her failed hobbies, a bunch of activities ranging from sports to arts and crafts that she gave up on.
Alec nearly facepalmed himself if not for the wholefully inappropriate situation; she put an embarrassingly hot pink lanyard on his bag, one that she never let him take off, Alec had given up trying to a week in against her persistence.
It should be stuck onto the front flap of the satchel… double braids, a foot long, with little lily blossoms on the side, God, it stuck out so much during the teasing, where was it?
There! Alec spotted the lingering mahogany shade that the lanyard had in the near pitch-black, under the edge of a desk. He lunged down and seized it, shouldering the bag back onto himself. Alec limped his way past the rows of cubicles, into the lobby for the elevator, gingerly avoiding his left ankle that he'd torqued.
Pressing the call button, he leaned back against the cool doors, waiting for the smooth music and a much needed rest. Alec could feel the seconds go by now, having around a minute and some change to get a weapon. Something was wrong. It was too silent.
Alec whipped around, and looked on in horror as the indicator above the doors remained off. He thought back to when he couldn’t make the call to Julie, and how his computer conked out right when the boxes came in. The power was out, and there was no way for him to streak down 3 flights of stairs to the base floor in time.
His heart was beating against his chest now, threatening to escape as he paced off his last options. He didn’t need a weapon right? No, stupid of course he did, armageddon was happening right now, of course he needed a weapon, but what could he do? There was nothing left, nothing here, he couldn’t find jack in the near total darkness of his office floor, so what could he do?
The elevator body. Maybe, if he really was the last one to be on the floor, there was a chance that before power went out, it had set the main body on his floor, and by that slim margin, there may be a shot in being some kind of pry emergency pry bar to escape said elevator body, in case of the power going out just like right now. But the pry bar was inside of the elevator.
Alec looked at the doors up and down. It was open by a few inches, just enough for him to wedge his foot in, but not nearly enough to squeeze through. He rolled out his ankle, setting his heels back in the cheap carpeting. Wedging his fingers in the small gap, Alec threw his body weight to the left to pull open the doors. The sharp corners of the metal dug into his fingers, pressing against his nails as he tried to get any leverage.
He thought about his week prior to this fiasco. He’d crunched the numbers, and after another month of overtime, he'd finally be able to get the security deposit on a decent apartment for them to live in. They were supposed to move in the first week of April. Alec let out a weak laugh.
"Things always get better right? As if." Alec clenched his teeth, digging harder against the doors.
Fate was a cruel ass. Right when things were finally going right with his life, right when he entered the financial precipice to confidently say he could support Julie's education and keep their general well-being, the world was going to wack. His fingernails were aching, along with the rest of his lower body, and his mind was wavering as well.
Finally, the slab he was pulling scooted a clear 3 inches with a metallic shriek. Alec barely forced his shoulders between the gap, ignoring the shearing sensation of the safety locks digging into his back. He squeezed the rest of his body through, falling to his knees as he felt some peace in the narrow compartment.
"23 left." Alec breathed.
He padded along the flimsy walls of the elevator on his knees, relief flooding his being as he found a plastic recess in the wood paneling. His fingers trembling, he opened the latch, drawing his arm out clutching his newfound prize. He rotated it, feeling the heft of the rod rub against his irritated palms. The cool steel felt unnatural in his hands.
Prepare for your testing
ETA 16 Seconds
Tremors rocked the elevator shaft, slamming it to and fro, Alec sliding along with it. Clouds of crumbling plaster rained down on his hair, paired with small splinters. He sat there, mute and still, watching the seconds drop by. Alec set down the bar in his lap, and rubbed his hands together, cold and clammy. Taking in his surroundings, the formally weak field of view he had fell to a perpetual darkness filled with unseeable figures.
Alec flinched, the hairs on his arms raised as he could’ve sworn something pass by. But there couldn’t have, right? He was alone in here. No one else. He shivered, feeling the sweat cooling underneath his dress shirt.
Prepare for your testing
ETA 5 Seconds
He could make out something shimmering around him, those shifting images coalescing into a perceivable hue around him. They seemed to scorn him, dancing around his eyes. His heart was pounding in his ears now, beating so loud that he could hardly hear the shrieking roar as he watched concrete and rebar tear apart through the gap.
Alec himself kept a desperate hold on his possessions as the world crumbled around him, tossing his body in a free fall into the darkness, chaos reigning above.
[The Test] has intitated