Falling For You

Liberty

After a moment of shock, I dropped to my knees in front of the chair I had been sitting in and crawled my way across the floor to the hole. There was about a foot of exposed concrete and rebar before a visible under ceiling and tiles that led down to the 53rd floor. There lay the broken vending machine atop a large pile of rubble. Eli lay to the side of it, though she appeared to be unconscious.

"Eli!" I yelled. She didn't even twitch.

"Eli!" I called out again. "I'm coming down, stay there!" Yes, that was in the top ten list of stupidest things I've ever said out loud in my lifetime. Tell the unconscious girl to stay there. Well done, Tyler.

I backed quickly away from the hole, and then stood to run back towards the stairwell we'd been travelling down. I pushed open the door then stopped dead. Damnit! Lights! I pulled my phone on and hurriedly clicked on the flashlight, inwardly frowning at the 15% charge remaining, and then skipped down the stairs to the next floor, giving the door a yank to open it.

Then fell right on my ass when it didn't move, and my hand slipped right off the handle.

What the hell? It was a pull to open, nothing should be blocking it! I stood up and gave it another pull, and the same thing happened. Well, I didn't wall this time, because I was ready, but the door didn't budge. I yanked and yanked, and while sometimes it felt like it moved the tiniest bit, it always firmly closed.

With a groan of defeat, I trudged back up the stairs to make my way to the other stairwell, having done nothing but waste some precious battery power. When I got back to the other floor I jogged over to the break room, and then crawled carefully over to the hole and looked down.

Eli was gone.

"Eli!" I cried out. "Eli! Are you okay?"

There was no reply. What the hell was going on here? I quickly backed up and ran for the second stairwell, not bothering with my phone this time as I just held the railing on the way down. Yeah, only one flight and I still almost twisted my ankle and fell headfirst when I hit the landing. I'm an idiot. But I made it, and carefully pulled the door, which opened quite easily. I could only shake my head this time.

I raced over to the breakroom on this floor, which was right under the one that we had been in when the floor collapsed, and still saw no Eli. There was a small pool of sticky blood where she had been laying, but that was the only sign that she had been here at all. Even her phone was gone.

"Eli! Where are you?" I shouted, heading nothing but a faint echo.

Maybe she crawled somewhere and passed out? I started wandering around the floor, looking everywhere I could think a crawling woman could have made it. Nothing. I searched every conference room and office, and even checked the bathrooms. I wanted to call out to her, but at the same time I was trying to be quiet so if she was breathing hard or groaning in pain, I could hear her. But I didn't see or hard a thing. Well, not till I got to the other stairway door, the one that didn't open. Because when I pressed the handle, it opened right away. Strangely, there was also another drop of the dried blood just inside the stairwell that hadn't been there when I had been pulling on it before. On a whim, I stepped back into the stairwell, closed the door, and then opened it again. It opened without any effort at all this time. What the hell?

I went back into the office, looking around to see if I could see what could have stopped the door from opening before. There was no lock on the door, it was supposed to be an escape route for fires or any other emergency. Could Eli have pulled on it to keep it closed? Was that why her blood was in the stairwell, she went that way after I went back upstairs? Had she been pretending to be unconscious? Why would she do that? My mind was just freaking out now!