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POV - [######]
When I take Y/N’s hand to lead her somewhere but she looks at me with wide, glassy eyes. Her face drops, and the tears start to build. Taking a sharp breath in, she tries to remain visibly calm despite her shaking hands and trembling lip.
At the manager’s desk, I can spot the CEO staring at me with the coldest look I have seen since our last coworker went missing. Y/N says nothing, but that oh-so-horrified look in her eyes tells me all I need to know. For a moment, I can see the wall of innocence break. The cracks spiderweb across the stone, revealing a terrified, burdened, and guilty human being.
For a moment, she finds her voice. Not the one she uses every day, not the sweet, sugary tone she holds, not the small, shy thing she uses when talking with the CEO. No. This is something raw, something that has been broken over and over again. And she uses it to warn me, in hopes of avoiding the fate all the others met not so long ago. “Run. Please, run while you still can. I’m sorry.”
My gaze returns to the CEO. He’s standing now, and I know what I have to do. I don’t even bother grabbing my things as I bolt out the door and down the hallway, racing for the streets outside where I’ll hopefully be able to hide in a crowd.
The street is quieter than it used to be and, despite the darkened night blanketing the sky above, many houses do not have their lights on. All those houses without occupants, due to mere slipups in the CEO’s presence.
A small group of people walks the pathway on the opposite side of the road, and I care not to check for cars before darting across. The CEO’s steps thundering down the building’s stairs are the only sound I can hear.
It’s raining out, the shadowed clouds blocking out any starlight from above. Droplets mix with the tears streaming down my face, sticking hair to my forehead.
When I hurriedly approach the group, my breaths short and sharp, they give me a knowing look. I don’t recognise their faces, meaning they do not work with me. Well, they wouldn’t work with me even if they did look familiar. The office building has been near-silent for weeks. Now I know why. I shove the thought aside, begging for some form of hospitality from the strangers, hoping they will listen.
I know the CEO is close, no doubt he is striding his way closer and closer to my location, ignoring Y/N’s pleas to “Stop! Stop it please! Listen to me! It was an accident!” while she tugs at his arms in a weak attempt to slow him down.
One of the strangers takes my hand, and I let out a sigh of pure relief. This one looks more familiar than the others. Dark hair and hazel-green eyes, a mole on his left cheek, just below his eye. He looks to be fairly young, probably about sixteen to seventeen at the oldest. A sudden memory hits me like a train.
He looks almost exactly like a younger, male copy of the most recent missing coworker—Jane. She mentioned having taken the job due to the good pay, which she could use to possibly get a proper house for her and her younger brother.
I know she had been caring for him ever since she was 15, after their parents died in a car accident. Or at least, the records said ‘car accident.’ Knowing what I do now, I doubt it. My hand squeezes his and he beckons the rest of the group over, pointing at a young man with lighter brown hair and chestnut eyes.
After a few moments of tense whispering, while I continue to glance back in the direction I came from, the second young man nods, waving everyone over before sprinting into the bushes to our left. In pure fear of what the CEO may do to me if I am caught, I follow behind, ignoring how branches scratch and claw at my legs. Thorns tear at my clothes, but I push onwards, knowing what will happen if I don’t.
Eventually, the branches part, and I find myself in a clearing of forest. The raindrops sting against the newfound scratches on my legs, yet I ignore them in favour of desperately sprinting over to the warehouse sitting in the clearing’s centre.
Jane’s younger brother—Andrew, my mind informs me—slams the door shut behind us once everyone is inside. The warehouse is dark, cold, and a pungent scent seems to be coming from a box in the corner. But we all remain silent. I’m ushered to crouch behind a stack of boxes by a blonde girl with amber eyes, which almost seem to glow in the shadows of the warehouse. She crouches down beside me, pressing a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture.
My head jolts up when the door opens with a bang, light flooding the warehouse while I press a hand over my mouth to muffle my harsh, panicked breathing. My ears pick up on the sound of heavy footsteps, followed by a pair of lighter heels tapping along the ground.
“Come now ####, it’s clear they’re not in here, why don’t we go back, hey? I don’t like this place, it’s oh-so-filthy after all.” The high, ‘weak’ tone of Y/N’s voice has returned, and I’m shocked by how fake it sounds. How I didn’t notice it before, I don’t know—but my eyes well up all the same.
“Hush kitten,” I violently flinch when I hear the CEO’s booming voice echo around the building, as if he is all around me, watching my every move, “-Daddy will find them. Afterwards we can have our ‘special time’ without *any* interruptions.” My heart aches for the whimper Y/N lets out at that sentence.
Soon enough, it’s clear the CEO has given up on the search for me in here. I am not sure how she knows, but Y/N always seemed to usher him away from the crates where the others and I were hidden, claiming she had already searched there. The door slams shut behind the CEO, and the warehouse is plunged into darkness once more.
Slowly, everyone creeps out from their hiding spots. No one makes a sound while we all move to a sitting position in the centre of the warehouse. The silence is somehow louder than the CEO’s voice, though the raging storm outside at least allows for some stimulation.
Nobody talks for a long while, until another girl from the group—a redhead with green eyes—speaks up. “We finally got someone out.” She murmurs, her voice hollow, as if she hadn’t fully processed that fact until now.
I soon learn about how this group had been planning to get someone out of that building for months, how, initially, it would’ve been Jane, until an accidental run-in with the CEO no longer made her an option. Apparently, I was their last-ditch-attempt at getting someone out. The only reason I managed to do so earlier than planned was thanks to Y/N’s warning.
Yet, even as I hear them excitedly talk about finally reporting the CEO, I feel an uneasy guilt settle in my chest. Y/N was still back there. She was still trapped with that terrible, terrible man, and I’m not sure if he’ll ever let her go.
Everything crashes down on me at once, and I double over in my cross-legged position, sobbing quietly while tears race down my already tear-stained cheeks. Because the realisation has finally hit me. No matter how many coworkers we save, even if it’s hundreds of lives, there will always be one person we won’t be able to save.
Y/N won’t be getting out of there. Not alive.