Chapter 15 #2
Lionel looked around at the lobby, his mouth parting in a silent question.
It was strangely untouched. The plush chairs and sleek coffee tables still sat in their careful arrangements, perfectly inviting.
A little bowl of wrapped mints rested on the counter, as if waiting for tenants to walk by.
The front desk looked like the receptionist had only stepped away to use the restroom.
Even the artwork—gold-framed paintings of bright flowers and city skylines—hung neatly on the walls, not a single one knocked askew.
He thought about how many times the entire building had seemed to quake and heave, vibrating like it might tear itself apart.
Walls had split upstairs, the ceilings cracked, and the floors twisted, but none of that violence had touched this place.
The lobby might as well have been waiting for him with open arms.
“The fuck…” he whispered under his breath. His voice sounded too loud in the soft, luxurious hush of the space. He drifted away from Mads, drawn by equal parts curiosity and dread, his eyes darting from the untouched furniture to the flawless crown molding.
But then Lionel’s stomach dropped as he remembered exactly why they’d come down here. His head snapped toward the glass doors at the front, hope flooding him so fast it almost hurt.
He sprinted over and threw himself at the door with all his weight. Instead of bursting through to fresh air, he slammed into solid, unmoving glass. Pain ricocheted through his shoulder and down his spine. He stumbled back with a strangled groan, clutching at his arm.
“Lionel!” Mads’ voice shouted behind him, sharp with alarm.
Lionel ignored it. He pressed his face against the cold glass, eyes scanning wildly for the street outside, for the bustling crosswalk, the hot dog vendor on the corner, the building across from them with its bright neon sign.
But there was nothing.
Just like the stairwell upstairs, beyond the glass was an endless, swallowing darkness.
It stretched out in every direction; there was no street, no sky, no lights, not even a faint horizon.
It was as if the entire building had been ripped from the earth and left to float through a void.
A deep, instinctive terror rose up in Lionel’s chest, curling around his lungs until he couldn’t draw a full breath.
He kept looking, turning his head side to side, desperate for even a pinprick of normalcy. But it was all the same: a cold, perfect black.
Slowly, he let his forehead fall against the door. His shoulders sagged, breath shuddering out of him. It felt like the world outside had been erased, and he didn’t know if they were still in the same city, the same planet, or if they were even anywhere real at all.
“What?” he breathed, mind not processing exactly what he was looking at.
“Lionel—”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said, shaking his head. Lionel pulled back from the glass, his head beginning to hurt from how many ideas he was folding over and over again in it. “How can it— how are we— how can— what?”
Lionel was glad Mads was beside him, or he would have just collapsed into a heap on the floor. But Mads pressed against him from behind, letting Lionel lean back against his chest as he trembled, shaking his head again and again. Mads secured him tightly, keeping him from tumbling over.
“We’re going to die.” It wasn’t a possibility anymore; it was a fact. “There’s no way— we can’t get out. We’re going to be eaten by monsters or die of hunger or thirst.”
“Lionel—”
“The building is literally floating through space.” He wasn’t sure why, but this was the part of this situation he couldn’t wrap his mind around.
Monsters could be explained—he’d seen enough zombie movies—even the warping hallways could be compared to fun houses, and the inconsistent passing of time could be nothing more than an illusion.
But the building floating in the middle of nothing was past his comprehension.
“We’re going to die,” he said again.
“We’re not going to die—”
He rounded on Mads, voice rising. “How can you be so sure?” Mads’ positivity had helped him through a lot during everything. His small smiles and kind words were a hand to hold during the chaos and horror of the last couple of days. But now, how could he say this with such surety?
Mads stared at him, mouth opening and closing over and over again as though fishing for the correct words. “I don’t know,” he whispered finally. “I just… we can survive this. I know we can. Don’t give up hope—”
“What possible hope is there now?” Lionel asked. “No one is coming for us, Mads. The most we can hope for at this point is a couple of days—maybe a few weeks or months or even a year—before we die the same slow or painful death as everyone else in this fucking building.”
Mads was wrapping his arms around him a moment later, one hand cradling the back of his head and pulling Lionel into his chest. Lionel squeezed his eyes shut as he wound his arms around him as well, hands gripping onto the back of Mads’ shirt. “We’ll figure it out,” Mads murmured into his hair.
Once Lionel stopped feeling like he was going to have another panic attack in Mads’ arms—his breathing finally slowing to something almost normal—they split up to search the lobby for anything useful.
The pristine quiet of the space made Lionel feel like he was rummaging through someone else’s home, every sound he made too loud, too intrusive.
He didn’t find anything. There was no hidden food, no stash of bottled water, not even a first aid kit tucked behind the front desk.
But when he regrouped with Mads near the elevators, Mads had a small stack of dusty boxes in his arms. “Just some trail mix,” Mads said, offering a hopeful little smile.
“It’s not much, but it’s something. But I think we’ll be okay. We have this now.”
It took Lionel a second to realize Mads meant more than the food. His eyes drifted down to the gun still holstered at Mads’ hip. Seeing it again made Lionel’s chest tighten.
“How many bullets does it have?” he asked. His voice was scratchy, half-hoping there might be more comfort in the answer than dread.
Mads reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of loose bullets.
“Plenty,” he said, with a calm confidence that Lionel wished he could share.
Lionel exhaled slowly. He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been holding his shoulders until they sagged.
It wasn’t much—trail mix and bullets didn’t exactly promise survival—but it was more than they’d had an hour ago.
“Do you want to hold onto it?” Mads asked, offering the gun to him.
Lionel hesitated before admitting, “I’ve never shot one. I’d never even touched a gun before I found that.” He put a hand over Mads and pushed it back toward him. “So, you hold onto it—you seemed like a pretty decent shot.”
“Ah, yeah, the blind guy should keep the gun,” Mads laughed, shaking his head. “I was only a decent shot because I was less than a foot away from my target.”
Lionel considered that. He kept forgetting Mads couldn’t see well, considering how easily he seemed to move around and how attuned to his surroundings he was. He sighed and took the gun along with the ammo. He shoved it into his pocket and nodded, “Alright, let’s go.”
“Where are we even going to go?” Mads asked as he followed Lionel back over to the elevator shaft.
“It doesn’t seem like anywhere is better than another spot,” Lionel shrugged and peered up the elevator shaft. The floors were still unnaturally close together. He wiped off his hands and leapt up just the short distance to grab onto the second-floor ledge. “So, let’s just go back to my apartment.”
Mads didn’t argue with him, and slowly they pulled themselves up to the ninth floor. Even with the elevator warping in such a way that was helpful, Lionel was still breathing heavily after doing nine pull-ups, and rolled over onto his back once he was safely on the ninth floor.
He breathed for a few moments as Mads pulled himself over the edge, chest heaving with the effort. He was in far worse shape than Lionel, whose arms and legs were burning, so he gave them an extra several minutes to rest.
When he peered down the hallway, he winced at the state of it.
There were several bodies strewn around in various states of decay, blood bathed the walls, multiple apartment doors were hanging on their hinges, and there were holes busted through the walls.
Lionel briefly wondered if his apartment was even still standing, and wondered what it had gone through since the last time they were up here.
When Mads’ breaths had returned mostly to normal, Lionel helped him up and held his hand as they made their way down the hallway.
His apartment was one of the furthest on the other end, and walking past all of the gore had the hair on the back of his neck standing up.
He tried to keep his head down, focusing on his feet.
But his head snapped up when he heard a soft, groaning whisper—so faint it might have been his imagination.
Lionel froze mid-step, holding his breath, straining to listen.
For a panicked second, he wondered if it was another voice trying to worm its way into his mind.
But then he saw Mads stiffen too, eyes darting around in wary confusion. “Help…”
The word was clearer this time, thin and reedy like it was being pushed out through cracked lips. Lionel’s stomach twisted. It hadn’t come from inside his head. It was echoing faintly from down the hall.
Mads gave him a questioning look, but Lionel was already moving toward the sound, despite every instinct in his body screaming at him to turn the other way. What if it were another creature pretending to be human to lure them in? But Lionel’s feet still carried him forward.
He approached the doorway of an apartment, its door hanging slightly ajar, and carefully pushed it open. The hinges squealed, and he winced at the noise. When he peered inside, Lionel’s breath caught painfully in his throat.
A woman was there—if you could still call her that.
At first glance, it almost looked like she was kneeling awkwardly beside the wall.
But then Lionel realized only her head, shoulders, and one trembling arm were visible.
The rest of her body was simply gone, swallowed into the plaster like it was water, her torso merging into the wall with no trace of blood or torn fabric.
Small bubbles popped and fizzed where her skin met the plaster, the wall itself warping slightly around her as if breathing.
With every faint pop, she seemed to inch deeper, her collarbones slowly vanishing beneath the rippling surface.
Her eyes fluttered open, milky and unfocused, and she weakly tilted her head up toward Lionel.
Her lips cracked as she rasped, barely audible, “... help.”
Lionel stumbled backward, a strangled noise tearing out of him. His back hit the door frame, hands scrabbling for purchase. He couldn’t seem to look away from the woman’s sunken eyes or the horrifying way the wall seemed to softly gulp her down.
“What—what is this—” he choked, bile rising in his throat.
Mads was suddenly at his side, hand clamping hard around Lionel’s shoulder.
Lionel flinched, nearly striking him before he recognized the touch.
Mads’ eyes were wide, pupils blown, his breath coming in shallow pants.
But when he looked at Lionel, he shook his head firmly.
“It’s too late,” Mads said, his voice hoarse with something that might have been grief. “Lionel… we can’t help her.”
“But—” Lionel’s protest died on his tongue. The woman’s head was already sinking lower, her chin brushing the wall as more pops and warbles rippled through the plaster. Her hand twitched feebly, fingers curling toward them in a silent plea before vanishing past the surface.
Lionel pressed a hand hard over his mouth, breathing ragged through his nose. Mads’ arm stayed around his shoulders, holding him up when all Lionel wanted to do was run until his legs gave out. “What the fuck is evening happening?” he breathed.
“I guess the monsters aren’t the only things that can eat people around here,” Mads whispered. “It looks like the building is consuming humans now, too.”
Lionel thought that the couple of handfuls of trail mix he’d had were about to come right back up again as he watched the woman.
But he also couldn’t look away as one of her shoulders disappeared, and she strained her neck to keep it out of the wall for as long as possible.
Then only her eyes were left—round and glassy, blinking slowly at him.
Lionel thought for a second she might be silently begging him.
Then with one last delicate pop, she was gone.
The wall smoothed out, still and pale, as if it had always been empty.
Something in him twitched at the sight, but Mads was grabbing him and pulling him away a moment later. “Let’s go,” he urged.
Mads was the one who led the way this time, his grip tight on Lionel’s hand until they made it to his apartment.
It was still unlocked, and when Mads pushed it open and peered inside, it also appeared to be untouched, except for from them the last time they were there.
Lionel walked inside, taking in the space that used to belong to him. It looked so normal.
He sat down heavily on the bed as Mads checked the closet, the bathroom, the cabinets, and every other crevice that something could be hiding in. Eventually, he locked the front door and flopped down beside Lionel with a sigh.
“There’s nothing protecting us,” Lionel whispered, shaking his head.
“Hm?” Mads hummed in question as he lay back on the mattress, looking exhausted.
“What’s keeping us from becoming like her?” Lionel asked, voice quiet. “We… we can avoid the monsters, we can maybe find food and water, but we can’t escape from this building. What if we become like her? What if we get trapped in the walls here?”
Mads paused for a moment before sitting up again. A hand cupped Lionel’s face a moment later, turning him towards Mads. Lionel blinked at the feeling of Mads’ lips on his own again—he had almost forgotten how soft and cold they were. “That won’t happen to us,” Mads whispered against his mouth.
“How do you know?” Lionel asked, eyes drooping to half-mast as he stared at Mads’ lips.