The elevator door slid open. Inside stood a young girl with deep golden blonde hair and green eyes. At first her expression was one of disinterest, but in a split second it changed to a frown of confusion, then recognition, and finally to confirmation. "It's you!" she screamed.
Before she could do more, Mark lunged forward and struck her squarely on the nose with his elbow. The blow was so sudden she was completely off guard. She stumbled backward, the sharp pain disorienting her, and for a moment everything seemed to wash red. "Argh! That bastard!" she roared, trying to force her way out of the elevator. Her vision cleared as she felt the metal doors. In that instant she realized the elevator had been shot and was now headed toward a high floor. "AHHHH!" she yelled in anger, wiping blood from her nose with her sleeve, thinking of how he would pay for it.
✽✽✽
"Oh god, this is getting more complicated by the second. I have to find a way out of here," Mark muttered, hurrying down a flight of stairs toward the far side of the building. He hoped, against the odds, that there would be an emergency exit. He had a gut feeling that taking the main exit would not be wise. Given that Abby, as she called herself, was supposedly the owner, there was every likelihood she had instructed the staff to stop him from leaving, if he ever managed to escape. That was why he was moving the other way.
The problem was there were too many stairs to run down. Then he saw an elevator. He rushed to it and tapped the button. The doors opened and he stepped in. He pressed the second to last floor and it began descending. Standing there and waiting anxiously, he clenched his fist and took a few breaths to calm his breathing. He was panicking. If he did not make it out and was caught, his life would be in danger.
Ping. The doors opened and a few young men stood inside, waiting for the elevator. From their disinterested stares he guessed they did not recognize him. He slipped past them and continued his descent down the stairs. After a few more turns he reached his destination. From where he stood he could see an emergency exit below; the sign glowed green. "Haah... haaah... haah," he panted and rushed down, but the moment he grabbed the push bar he realized it was locked. "It's locked," he said, eyes widening.
"Damn it." He slammed the bar with his elbow. BAM. He felt a deep sting and held his joint, clicking his tongue in frustration. He began to search the floor. There was nothing here except the stairwell he had just used. There were two more doors opposite the emergency exit, adjacent to the stairs. "There has to be something else," he said and started searching more urgently.
He realized the emergency door was an automatic type that would not open until the alarms went off. So he needed to trigger an alarm somehow. "If only I could start a fire," he thought, but he saw no easy way. His eyes then fixed on something he had missed on the wall. "Emergency lever," he muttered. It was encased in glass. He ran forward and felt the smooth surface, then realized he would not break it with his bare hand. "I need something solid," he said, and grabbed the knob of one of the nearby doors. "Locked," he muttered, then peered through the glass. The room housed a lot of boxes.
He left that door and tried the other. Click. It opened and he stepped into a room that was completely dark. "I can't see anything in here," he muttered, feeling along the walls for a light switch. Click. Whoom. Light flooded the room and revealed stacks of boxes. He hurried to one and felt the texture of the contents. "Bedsheets," he said. He dropped it and moved to another box, which held some small appliances that were probably faulty. Another held bulbs. In a larger box he found a pile of white foam. He checked box after box until he found cloth. He frowned as a thought formed. He opened more boxes and found more cloth and some rolls of wallpaper. He still had to find something to break the glass, he told himself.
"What are you doing here?" a voice said, and he turned, frowning.