Pain.
How much it hurt…
Lucas Walker woke up, and a wave of pain immediately hit him. It wasn't sharp — it pressed down, as if he were trapped under a thick layer of water. The weight crushed his chest, every cell in his body responding with a dull, aching tension. He couldn't catch his breath.
"A panic attack?.."
The thought flashed and immediately drowned in the chaos of sensations.
All his senses seemed to scream frantically, completely disorienting him.
The light cut his eyes.
The air suffocated him.
The ringing in his ears grew, turning into a thick, pressing buzz.
The world shattered into fragments of sensations — light, sound, pressure. Not a single coherent image.
He tried to take a deeper breath — and immediately started coughing. His throat was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
"What… happened to me? Where am I?.."
The thought struggled to form, as if pushing through thick fog.
Gradually, he began to come to.
His vision slowly cleared. At first — blurry silhouettes. They moved, merged, and separated. Someone spoke, but the words turned into unintelligible noise.
He blinked.
Once.
Again.
The shapes began to take form.
He was lying on the floor. The rough carpet pressed into his cheek, leaving an unpleasant scratchy sensation. His arms and legs didn't obey. His fingers trembled as he tried to clench his hand.
Around him stood four people. They were actively arguing, interrupting each other. Their voices were filled with anxiety — sharp, nervous, almost panicked.
— "…this shouldn't be…"
— "…I'm telling you, this isn't our floor…"
— "…you saw it yourself…"
But the moment one of them noticed movement, the conversation abruptly stopped.
— "He's awake!"
Everyone immediately turned their heads toward him. Their gazes — tense, full of fear, almost greedy. As if something depended on him. As if he could know the answers to their questions.
Ethan — his office colleague, a heavyset bald man of about forty — quickly leaned down and grabbed Lucas by the arm.
— "Careful… come on, get up."
His hand was warm and heavy, almost too real compared to everything else.
Lucas struggled to his feet. The world wavered.
— "How do you feel? Are you okay? Does it hurt?" — Chloe, another colleague, asked quickly, almost rattling the words.
Her voice sounded muffled, as if through water.
Lucas breathed heavily, trying to gather his thoughts. Each one slipped away the moment he tried to catch it.
— "My head… it's splitting… What happened to me?.."
He paused, swallowing with difficulty.
— "Where am I?.."
Ethan frowned. He tried to speak calmly, but anxiety clearly crept into his voice.
— "After the lights on the entire floor suddenly went out…"
He hesitated, as if he himself didn't fully believe his words.
— "When they came back on… we were already here."
He quickly glanced around, as if checking that nothing had changed.
— "At that moment, you screamed and fell to the floor. We tried to bring you around… but you didn't regain consciousness."
Lucas ran his hand over his face. His skin was cold and damp, as if he had just emerged from water.
— "I… don't remember any of this."
The words sounded dry.
Gradually, he began to notice the details. Apart from him, Chloe, and Ethan, there were two more people — Tyler, a young and visibly nervous intern, and Nicole.
Lucas slowly looked around — and only now truly understood the reason for their anxiety.
The office.
Yes, it was an office.
The same desks. The same chairs. The same computers. Clocks on the walls. Documents on the desks.
But…
Something was wrong.
He looked to the left.
Then to the right.
Rows of desks stretched endlessly.
Without end.
The building they worked in couldn't possibly be like this.
Logic said — this is impossible.
But his eyes saw otherwise.
The air was dry, with a taste of dust and something metallic.
The smell of old paper.
Stale, trapped time.
The hum of the fluorescent lights grew louder. Now it didn't just sound — it pressed down. It penetrated his head, as if trying to fill every thought.
The clocks on the walls didn't move.
Their hands were frozen at different times, as if each zone existed in its own separate moment.
The floor was covered with the same gray carpet, muffling footsteps.
You walked — but could barely hear yourself.
As if the space didn't want you to know you were there.
Sometimes, documents appeared.
Folders scattered on desks.
Inside — lists of names.
Some crossed out.
Some repeated dozens of times.
Familiar names.
Outside the windows, it was night, with no stars or moon. Across the building, other identical structures were visible, each with matching offices on their floors. Completely deserted as far as the eye could see.
— "Fuck…" — Lucas exhaled quietly.
He didn't even notice he had said it aloud.
Nicole let out a short laugh, but without a trace of amusement.
— "Looks like… we're here for a while."
Chloe, panic in her eyes, hesitated slightly and quietly said:
— "We have to get out of here… we need to go…"
Tyler sharply interrupted her, his voice laced with sarcasm:
— "Go where? There are no doors, nothing that looks like an exit. Even our phones don't work."
Chloe shrank, as if trying to become smaller. Her voice quivered, almost breaking into a squeak:
— "At least… somewhere. I don't think it matters where anymore…"
— "She's right," Ethan interjected. — "Since Lucas is awake, we should move. We have no food, and waiting for help… isn't an option."
He ran his hand over his face. Dark circles lay under his eyes; his voice sounded tired and tense.
Lucas walked down the corridor, and the feeling that something was wrong grew stronger with every step.
The sensation didn't come immediately. It seeped in slowly.
The carpet beneath his feet felt damp, as if it had absorbed water.
The lights above buzzed — too loudly, too oppressively, as if the sound penetrated directly into his thoughts.
The smell of old paper and metal hit his nose.
For a second, a memory surfaced — an attic, dust, forgotten things.
A metallic taste in his mouth.
"Did I bite my tongue?.."
He ran his tongue along his teeth. The pain was faint… but real.
Walking was hard.
His legs buckled, as if they didn't belong to him.
Every step took effort.
Any awkward movement — and he could fall.
Hit the ground.
Not get up.
The corridor stretched on.
Too far.
Walking along the endlessly repeating floor, Lucas couldn't help but sink into his thoughts.
He lifted his gaze.
And froze.
Something had changed ahead.
Desks were overturned.
Chairs scattered.
Monitors smashed.
The floor was flooded with water from the cooler.
Drops slowly dripped from the edges of the desks, breaking against the surface with a quiet, almost obsessive sound.
It smelled of dampness… and something else. Metallic.
The group, already considerably unsettled by what they were seeing, slowly approached the area — a clear sign of someone's presence. Recent. Or… not entirely.
Glass shards mixed with water crunched under their feet.
Every step echoed unpleasantly, as if the space were listening to them.
Lucas involuntarily slowed down.
His gaze clung to details.
One of the monitors still flickered.
Weakly. Unevenly.
The screen was cracked, but through the web of fractures, something… moved.
He blinked.
No.
It was just his imagination.
Ethan stepped forward, slightly ahead of the others. He hesitated for a second, as if gathering courage, then raised his voice:
— "Is anyone alive?!"
His shout echoed through the office, bouncing off the endless rows of desks.
Silence.
Receiving no response, the group cautiously moved forward, deciding to investigate the scene.
They circled around the mess, careful not to step on the shards, and began inspecting the area closely.
The air was thick with the smell of metal.
After passing a couple of overturned chairs and broken monitors, Chloe suddenly recoiled, nearly falling as she tripped over a chair lying on the floor.
— "There's… blood!"
The group quickly gathered near her.
In front of them was a desk. Its corner was soaked with thick, already coagulated blood.
A large dark-red stain spread across the floor — too big for an ordinary injury.
The most terrifying part was something else.
In the dried puddle, the silhouette of a human body was clearly visible.
But the body itself was nowhere to be found.
And no signs of dragging.
Nearby, two pairs of bloody boot prints stood out.
They circled the body's imprint, overlapping each other…
and then led further — into the depths of the endless office.
Lucas studied the scene silently for a while, then quietly said:
— "Maybe there was a fight… But then where did the body go? It couldn't have just… vanished."
He paused for a second, staring at the prints.
— "I hope we don't run into whoever did this."
Tyler nervously swallowed and, without lifting his eyes from the floor, suggested:
— "Maybe… we should turn back? Go in the other direction?"
— "No," Ethan answered immediately. — "How long have we been going in one direction? Three… maybe four hours. Turning back now — it's pointless."
He exhaled heavily and ran his hand over his face.
No one argued.
The group continued, following the bloody footprints.
But soon they began to fade…
And at some point completely disappeared into the gray carpet.
After walking, by their sense, for another half hour, they noticed a new change.
A crossroads.
Four corridors stretched in different directions — and all looked exactly the same.
The same desks. The same chairs. The same carpet. The same fluorescent lights.
As if the same corridor had been copied and pasted again.
— "Where do we go now?.." Chloe asked timidly.
— "Does it even matter?.." Tyler replied wearily.
He ran his hand over his face and exhaled heavily.
— "I was just finishing my project… planning to go home… and now this. Maybe we should take a break?"
— "I'm in," Lucas said shortly.
Nicole and Tyler silently nodded.
After roughly an hour of rest, the group set out again.
They decided to go left, sticking to the wall the entire time.
Time had lost all meaning.
— "I'm so hungry…" Tyler muttered.
— "Hold on. Everyone is," Ethan replied wearily. — "At least we still come across water coolers sometimes. Even Chloe is holding up."
— "Wait… where is she?.."
Everyone turned sharply. There was no one behind them. Neither Chloe nor Nicole. As if they had never been there.
Lucas's heart beat faster. He turned to Ethan to ask what to do next — but froze.
Tyler and Ethan had disappeared. Without a sound. Without a trace.
— "This isn't funny anymore… where is everyone?!"
His voice cracked. There was no answer. Only the steady, oppressive buzzing of the lights.
Lucas was left alone.