Chapter Text
This elevator ride is taking quite a bit, even compared the trashiest elevators out there.
Anthony thought this to himself as he watched his friends and their activity in the comfortably silent elevator. Will was leaning against a wall, dozing off. Hanbon was sitting on the floor, with headphones in and singing silently to herself, completely unaware of the total time it took for the elevator to move on from floor to another (which has reached 5 minutes by now). Coy was simply scrolling on his phone and Anthony decided to take inspiration from this and pull out his own phone, his thumb hovering over TikTok before Coy breaks the silence.
"Does anyone else not have signal, or is it just me?"
Anthony looks at the corner of his phone, seeing he too, does not have any signal either.
"I've got no signal either" Anthony responds.
"Mine just cut of too" Hanbon chips in.
"Maybe it's cause of this darn elevator. Why the hell are we still moving downwards?!" Anthony questions angrily.
DING!
As Anthony says this, he watches the doors of the elevator make a open to a vastly different (and far smaller) lobby to the one the group had checked into yesterday. By now, Will has woken up from his slumber and steps out the elevator far too eagerly than what the rest of the group would like.
"Yoo, this has got to be the craziest dream ever." Will turned to look at everyone, who are understandably in shock and still processing the new environment. "Oh shoot why are you guys in my dream, you aren't supposed to be here."
Anthony hastily stepped out the elevator and shook Will's shoulders, trying to knock some sense into him.
"Will, I don't think this is a dream."
"Me either" Hanbon says as she steps out the elevator, more unsettled than when Anthony had seen her first interact with Shirley. Coy followed behind her, looking 100 times more unsettled than Hanbon and biting his nails, a habit Anthony had expressed constant negativity to whenever Coy did it. Anthony hears the doors of the elevator shut.
Hanbon stays near the elevator, constantly pressing the up arrow on the elevator, trying to get them to open again. Will takes a seat on a nearby armchair and Coy takes a seat next to Will on the rug, starting a conversation on their current situation with a small laugh being heard every so often.
Anthony takes a breath and properly inspects the strange new area. Rain was pelting against windows, despite it being sunny 15 minutes before the gang hopped into the elevator. There was a smell that wafted the room, giving a smell of pine trees and dust. Lots of dust. Anthony walked up to the front desk and noticed the thick layer of dust and covered everything on the table. Everything seeming to had been undisturbed for years, maybe decades. He walks up to the only door out of the room, locked with a pretty hefty padlock and a number branded onto a decorated gold plate "001".
"So guys," Coy starts quietly speaking and almost mumbling, forcing Anthony to focus on his voice to hear him. "Do we have a plan? Or do we just sit here and wait for help?"
"Can't we just go back up the elevator?" Will starts.
"I've pressed the call button like a hundred times and I don't think its coming back down." Hanbon says, with a defeated tone.
"Anthony you find anything?" Will shouts.
"Yeah there's a door over here but it's locked tight with a comically sized padlock."
Anthony hears his friends walk towards him as he inspects the lock.
"Is that the key over there?" Hanbon points at a key, hooked onto a empty key rack, suspiciously shining a hint of light blue.
Coy jumps over the front desk and grabs the key, which promptly leads to a scolding from Will.
"Bro you shouldn't just grab stuff on a whim. What if the blue stuff is cocaine that kills you when it touches you."
"Will I don't think stuff like that exists and Coy, pass me those keys and I'll try them with the lock." Anthony says with a layer of fake confidence, knowing fully well his friends rely on him to be a voice of reason in this ridiculous situation and that if that confidence was ever dropped, his friends would lose all hope and probably get themselves killed. Well, they probably will end up dead sooner or later, despite Anthony having his confidence. Anthony would just prefer to delay that deadline as much as possible.
Stay on track, he was zoning out and had to focus on the matter at hand.
Coy handed Anthony the key, causing their hands to touch briefly and causing Anthony's ears to turn a small shade red and form a thought that was 100% not suitable for their current situation. Anthony quickly turned away from Coy and slid the key into the padlock to distract himself from the prior thought. A satisfying click was heard and the padlock dropped to the ground. Anthony slowly opened the door, and a loud creaking sound was heard. Until the door was fully opened and the bunch was faced with, to their dismay, another room and another door at the end of that room.
"Oh my days you can't be serious!" Coy and Anthony shout in unison. The group walked into the new room and looked and saw bookshelves and paintings lining the walls and desks, potted plants and closets (strangely) scattered across the floor. Anthony tried to pull a book off from a bookshelf, but it remained in place and refused to budge. It seemed to be completely petrified.
"Guys do you think anyone would mind if we took these coins?" Hanbon asks from across the room. She seemed to be inspecting a small pile of coins that lay on top of a desk.
"I don't think anyone is around to stop you, other than us, but I think we have other stuff to worry about such as the alarming lack of signal, the..." Coy started to mumble to himself.
"Whatever, should we just go through this next door? I think we've ransacked this room enough" Will complains.
"Yeah sure," Anthony says as he motions for everyone to come to the door, which also had a gold plate labeled "002". Everyone crowds around Anthony as he nervously grips the door handle. He hopes the next room would be a room he recognised from the hotel they checked into two nights ago and that this was an incredibly "realistic" hallucination caused from drinking too much the previous night.
Good news, the next room was somewhat familiar. Bad news, it was because it was a one-to-one copy of the previous room, with some of the bookshelves and desks shuffled around. The group quickly looked around the room and pocketing anything that looked of value on the desks, before going to open the next door, the gold plate amply named "003".
"Ugh, how many of these do we have to go through?" Hanbon complains.
"What if the doors just never end and we just keep wandering until we starve" Will chimes in.
"Or we die of thirst," Coy adds. "My bet is we die of thirst first."
"Guys shut up." Anthony snapped in a tone which surprised himself. "If we continue moving then at least we have of of finding something that could help us, as apposed to staying in one spot and accepting our miserable deaths here. Besides, imagine all the content and money we'll have when we post this. Speaking of, someone should be recording shouldn't they?" Anthony finishes in a somewhat comical tone.
This small speech, to Anthony's surprise and relief, managed to restore everyone's morale. Will and Coy pulled out their phone to start recording.
"Lets try do one phone recording at a time to save battery," Hanbon buts in, "after all, we don't know how long this is going to take and we should capture as much footage as possible. How about Coy starts recording first and Will follows after Coy's phone dies, then I'll record on mine and Anthony will be last to record after my phone dies."
Anthony and the others all agree to this as Anthony opens the door. They are met with (shockingly) another room, this time seemingly shaped like the letter "T", with a fireplace at the center of the crossroad. Everyone cautiously approaches the fireplace and sees one door to the left which was boarded up with wooden planks, and other to the right of the fireplace with a gold plate labeled "004". As Anthony approached the fireplace, he noted the lack of warmth from the fire.
"Guys, someone had to have lit that fire" Coy says.
"Maybe they are further up ahead?" Anthony states.
The group start walking towards the door on the right and before opening it, glance back onto the boarded up door, looking at each other and unanimously agreeing it would be far too much work to remove the boards and see what was beyond the door. Everyone continued to move through the rooms and ransacking them of their gold, until Coy opens a door labeled "015", and the lights in the next room flicker violently. Everyone has seconds to react until a distinct sound which seemed to consist of a mix between and yell and a screech can be heard from the previous rooms the group passed.
"Guys is it just me or are those sounds getting louder. Wait scratch that, IT'S GETTING CLOSER!" Will yells as he hops into a nearby closet.
Hanbon and Anthony follows his lead and hops into separate closets. Only Coy remains unmoving, camera facing towards the sound and seemingly shaken to his core. Anthony reacts quickly and grabs Coy's arm (which was more difficult than what Anthony would have preferred) and drags him into his closet and shutting the doors. Anthony and Coy breath raggedly, taking in short, sharp breaths. Anthony feels Coy's shoulder touch his and hopes the darkness of the closet is enough to cover his blush forming on his cheeks and on his ears.
Whatever this thing is, hopefully its nothing too ba-
Anthony’s though is cut short when a white flash is seen from the small opening between the closet doors, rushing across the room, destroying the lamps with it and leaving the room in complete darkness.