Chapter 2: The Office

The bar hadn’t been as bad as I had expected. Watching the game had helped me ignore Miguel’s tech friends, and Stacy really was nice to us. She even called me Nathan, not Nate, which for some reason made me fall in love with her a little.

But then, at the end of the night, she slid her number to Miguel – past me – which hurt a lot despite surprising me none. Even worse, he acted like it was no big deal. It would have been the highlight of my year. I hadn’t seen a girl’s number – or anything else of hers – in longer than I could remember. The unpleasant thought piled onto the mountain of unhappiness I had come to consider normal. As a result, I had left the bar longing for my couch and its welcoming ass print. I just wanted to go home.

“Let’s stop by my office,” Miguel suggested. “It’s two blocks, and if I grab those reports, I can take the morning off. And sleep this off. I’m somehow drunk and hungover at the same time. We’re so old.”

He was right. I was already hurting, and we didn’t even do shots. We had retired that habit a long time ago. But I was no longer accustomed to social drinking. I only went out once a month instead of twice a week. Staying home to game was infinitely more fun than being ignored in public.

“Fine. Let’s head up,” I said, only a little begrudgingly.

I actually liked the view from Miguel’s office. San Francisco at night, the city spilling into the Bay, the constellations reflected in the inky still waters. It was something I never got tired of seeing. Editing Anthropology and Psychology papers from my garage didn’t provide a lot of vistas.

Miguel punched the button for the 34th floor.

We rode up in silence…10…20…30. Neither of us had the energy for small talk – which made the screech of the elevator cables even louder.

We were thrown first against the walls and then to the floor. I looked up, dazed from a blow to the head. Emergency lights flashed, as did the floor numbers 32 and 33.

“You okay?” I managed.

Miguel didn’t answer. He was wide-eyed in the corner.

“So…this isn’t normal?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

There was another tremor. This time, clearly the whole building rumbled, not just the elevator.

Earthquake.

I had lived in California my whole life, and I had felt the planet buckle beneath my feet plenty of times, but this was different. This was big.

There was another screech as the weight of the elevator strained against the cables and the emergency brakes. Gravity was not on our side.

We checked our phones to dial 911. No signal. Same for the phone in the elevator.

“Okay. This is bad. We’re not safe in here,” I said, trying to hold my voice steady.

It broke all the elevator emergency rules, which were to sit tight, wait for help, or hope the elevator somehow fixed itself. But something about the noises and micro-drops told me this was the exception.

“We have to get out. Do you know these floors,” I asked.

Miguel composed himself a little, checking the flashing numbers.

“Yeah, 33 is regular offices. Plenty of safe spots like bathrooms and doorframes.”

We dropped again, this time more than a little. The light now shone solely for 32.

“Okay, ummmmm, yeah. Thirty-two. It’s a giant lab. I’ve been there once. I only saw the first room during a brief explanation of their work. I just remember a lot of glass. A lot of security. I don’t know if we will even be able to get through to a phone or office.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Well,” I said. “I’m guessing the glass is shattered, which won’t make the safest entry way, but it will provide access.”

The elevator dropped again. But 32 stayed lit.

“We have to go. Now,” I insisted. “The next drop might be more than one floor.”

We both stood and started pulling at the doors, which – only confirming how broken things were – began opening with relative ease.

Once they were a foot apart, I surveyed the darkness ahead. My assumptions were confirmed. It was a lot of shattered glass. But the good news was that it was just a foot lower than us. We would be dropping down instead of crawling up.

Another crack and drop. We were knocked back against the walls, and this time I smacked my head hard against a handle. I instantly felt the blood on my temple as my vision blurred. I saw Miguel in a similar state, crumpled on the floor. I stood up, wondering if I was swaying or the earth was. I pulled Miguel to his feet, and we stumbled toward the door.

Now we were even with the floor. Now or never.

I pushed Miguel through first and fell in quickly behind him. Before I could look forward, I felt the wind at my back – as elevator doors transformed into an elevator shaft.

“Holy shit,” Miguel yelled, glancing back at the abyss.

“Let’s go,” I responded, urging him forward. We needed distance between us and certain death before there was another aftershock.

Glass crackled beneath our feet, but it did mean there was more than one area ahead. It looked like the now-cavernous space had been several rooms, all security checks after security checks. What was this place?

“Okay. Where to?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Like I said, I’ve only been here once. I just know they do advanced AI, machine learning, and human immersion work. I think it’s government related. So maybe there are storage or server rooms toward the center. They would keep data as far away from the entryway as possible.”

With that, we pushed ahead, finding a cracked floor and the first “room” we had encountered. But it wasn’t offices or storage or anything normal. It was a bay of a dozen human-sized capsules. They looked like individual escape pods from sci-fi games.

“What the hell are these?” I asked.

Miguel emerged from his haze a little.

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. Umm, it’s sensory deprivation and immersion, but more advanced. They said it’s for PTSD. Something about using cutting-edge technology to help veterans deal with psychological trauma in safe spaces.”

Despite my own current trauma, I said, “That’s amazing,” suddenly focused on a concept other than survival.

“Who cares!” Miguel yelled, with a mixture of anger and fear.

“Sorry. Forward,” I agreed. “This is way too open. And everything is a mess.”

Half the pods were on the ground, while even those still on their platforms were sitting at precarious angles. This wasn’t the inner sanctum we were looking for.

As we moved onward, there was less glass but more darkness. Only red emergency lights flashed on the floor, presumably urging us in the other direction, probably toward stairs that were no longer accessible. The edges of the building were falling apart, but the center seemed more intact.

Pneumatic doors hissed open as we stumbled ahead, their security protocols overridden by their “the building is falling down” instructions. Finally, as we reached what seemed like it might be the center, beams crashed behind us and around us, closing us in. Wherever we were, this was our final stop.

My eyes had become more accustomed to the dim red light, and I saw that we were in a room similar to the first, but these pods were bigger, bolted directly to the floor, and cabled into massive computer banks. But it was more than just wires. There were thick tubes running from each individual capsule to arrays of multi-colored storage units along the walls.

Whatever these capsules were, they provided a lot more than sensory deprivation. And they were solid steel, gleaming even in the low-light, much more robust than their predecessors. And at that moment, they looked like individual bunkers.

“Get in.”

“What? We don’t even know what they are,” Miguel scoffed.

“It doesn’t matter. They’re solid. We fit. And the ceiling looks way too brittle.”

Miguel looked up, his eyes widening at the reality of our surroundings. In a few moments, we would be bleeding from a lot more places than our temples.

“Fine. Which ones?”

I quickly surveyed our dozen options. The two capsules in the far corner looked the most pristine. And they were directly next to their computer banks and storage tanks. I had no idea what those held, but connectivity seemed like the best option.

“There,” I said.

We rushed to the corner and pulled open the pods, greeted by the same pneumatic hiss as the doors. But as I focused my eyes, I could see they weren’t empty. There was a dark liquid in the bottom, and protrusions ran all the way around the inner casing. Outlets? Bolts? Syringes?

There was another crack above us, and my evaluation stopped. Only survival mattered. We grabbed the sides of our capsules and jumped in – like dropping into a bunk bed. As I splashed into the dense liquid below, I heard a final crash above, the ceiling beams closing the capsules for us. But as I was jostled to the side, I hit my head again. Hard. Briefly, a different word flashed into my mind, just before the world went black.

Not capsules.

Coffins.