Suspended

As the clock struck As the clock struck 5:30 pm, Danny was straight out of his seat and heading home. It was the end of another long, soulless day at work in which the highlight was getting a Subway deal at lunch. While waiting for the lift, he started to scroll on his phone, but it wasn’t connecting to the internet. Without thinking anymore of it he put his phone back in his pocket and got into the lift alongside three others who were already in there. The lift started moving as normal before shaking a couple of times and then grinding to a halt between floors 13 and 14. He wasn’t overly concerned, but one of the other passengers appeared to be panicking, wanting to try and help. He asked if she was ok and found out she suffered from claustrophobia. Another passenger pressed the alarm button to try and get through to the lift maintenance team to alert them to the situation, but there was no response, just a faint crackling noise coming from the tinny speaker.

Twenty minutes had passed when the lights suddenly went off, plunging the elevator into darkness. There had still been no reply from the operator through the emergency call button, and nobody had any signal on their phone. At this point, everyone was starting to become uncomfortable and slightly concerned about the situation they were in. Danny was trying his best to stay calm because he figured they were in a busy office building, and he presumed it would only be a matter of time until they were rescued. Outside of the lift, they started to hear alarms sounding on the corridors and could hear people running around frantically. They were beginning to wonder if there was a fire, and they were trapped in the lift because it had been disabled.

All of a sudden, a robotic voice sounded through the speaker, telling the occupants that they had seized control of the building electronically and would be making ransom demands to the owner. To make things more unsettling, they were told that they also had “people on the ground” ready and able to execute physical tasks alongside the electronic control they clearly had. At this point, panic started to truly set in, and 2 of the men in the lift attempted to reach the escape hatch in the ceiling (something they had clearly seen in Die Hard). They were unable to open the hatch, and as they were between floors, opening the elevator doors themselves would achieve nothing. Danny attempted to start a conversation with the mystery robotic voice, asking what this was all about. He was told in no uncertain terms that capitalism is the parasite that destroys society and that greedy landlords were destroying the lives of the working class. After explaining that he himself was a person suffering from this hardship, the voice told him that he would go down in history as a martyr, something that nobody wants to hear, as it means inevitable death.

The elevator was starting to heat up, the air conditioning had been shut off, and the situation was getting worse. It was at this point that the group decided that they needed to at least try something, so they decided to pry open the elevator doors to see if there was any gap to escape. Upon doing so, they found that they could almost reach the door that led to level 14 in the building and started trying to stick a wedge in the doors to get them open. The robotic voice returned and told them to cease their actions, or there would be consequences. They continued to try and get the doors open when all of a sudden there were 4 loud snapping sounds and a sudden drop…