Jesse was not able to make out many words from his hiding place on the fourth floor. However, he heard one thing that chilled his blood. A strange sort of inhuman groaning sound that echoed in the stairwell.
What the FUCK was that?
Probably not a good idea to find out, but a small part of him was feeling quite vindicated at the moment. He’d been right!
He checked his watch. Five minutes.
A voice came over the building’s PA system. He didn’t recognize the voice, but it was a big company. It didn’t seem to be the same guy who had been in the bathroom the other day, though.
“Good evening everyone! We are going to commence our team building exercise.” Jesse’s brain put air quotes around “team building” and missed the next few words of the instructions. “– You may use any part of the building, just do not be found. Good luck!”
Wait, what? All this for a freaking game of hide and seek?
Almost immediately Jesse heard a scramble for the stairwell as people started to flood the other parts of the building. Apparently hiding was the right call, so he decided to keep moving and try to find a good spot. He went over to the bank of elevators in the main lobby of the floor and hit the button. It worked! So they didn’t have the elevators disabled for this, interesting. But, he did note a second later, the “down” options were disabled. Interesting.
He chose the button for the next to top floor and started heading up, hoping nobody else had the same idea. Not the top floor; that’s where a lot of people were likely to go. But this one should work.
He hadn’t actually been up to this floor yet. Usually it required a special ID to access, so he was very surprised when the door simply opened from the elevator lobby. Apparently they had it disabled for the moment. Which did not seem a very security conscious thing to do, honestly. Very unusual.
This floor largely resembled the ones he was more familiar with – half-cubicle walls in honeycomb shapes with paths snaking between groups of them. Plenty of places to hide for a moment, but not many that were truly secure.
Or were there….
He took a moment and looked strategically. There were offices clustered in corners of the building with large windowed areas between. The ceiling was the usual office drop ceiling – easy to get up into, but definitely too fragile to support a person. The offices were probably the best place to start. He began moving quickly, trying doors to see if he could find one that was unlocked.
From a distance, he heard a rumbling sound. Zero minutes; it had begun.
— To Be Continued
