I stared at my monitor and rubbed my eyes.

Seriously, Lauren. On a Friday?

The little clock in the corner of my screen read 8:45 PM. Most of the office was dark, and the only sounds were the quiet hum of the air conditioning and the occasional tapping of my keyboard.

I should have been home hours ago. Instead, I was still sitting here, fixing a presentation that had been perfectly fine until Lauren decided it needed a few “minor adjustments.”

Minor. Right.

I took another sip of my coffee, immediately regretted it, and pushed the cold cup away.

“God, that’s disgusting,” I muttered.

I glanced at the remaining slides. Three more. Just three stupid slides, and I could finally get out of here.

I straightened in my chair, placed my fingers on the keyboard, and got back to work.

I finished the last slide, double-checked the formatting, and saved the file for what felt like the hundredth time. My shoulders ached from hunching over the keyboard, and I rolled them back until something popped.

Finally.

I closed my laptop with more force than necessary and stuffed it into my bag, along with my charger and the notebook I’d barely used. The cold coffee went straight into the trash can beside my desk. Good riddance.

The office looked almost eerie this late. A few desk lamps cast pale pools of light across empty chairs and abandoned coffee mugs. Somewhere down the hall, a printer made that soft whirring noise it always did when it was pretending to sleep.

I pulled on my jacket, slung my bag over my shoulder, and headed toward the elevators.

I reached the elevator bank and pressed the down button. The little light above the middle car flickered on, and I heard the distant mechanical hum from somewhere deep in the shaft.

I checked my phone while I waited. Two texts from my sister Sofia asking if I was still alive, one meme from my brother that I didn’t have the energy to appreciate, and a notification that my rideshare app was surging. Of course it was.

The elevator arrived with a soft chime, and the doors slid open.

I stepped into the empty elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. The doors started to close, then hesitated halfway.

A man’s voice came from the hallway, low and slightly out of breath. “Hold it, please.”

I instinctively reached for the door-open button. The doors slid back, and a tall man in a dark suit stepped inside, carrying a leather briefcase in one hand and a phone in the other. His tie was gone, his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and he had the kind of calm, put-together look of someone who had also been working too late.

He glanced at me with dark brown eyes and nodded. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said, leaning back against the wall.

He pressed the lobby button even though it was already lit, then tucked his phone into his pocket.

I let my eyes drift toward him while pretending to check my phone. Subtlety had never been my strongest skill when I was exhausted, but I figured the dim elevator light was forgiving.

He was tall. Definitely taller than me, even in my low heels. His suit fit him well, really well, tailored across shoulders that suggested he actually used a gym instead of just paying for one. The rolled-up sleeves revealed forearms that were unfairly attractive for someone I’d just met in an office building at nine o’clock on a Friday.

His hair was thick and black, slightly tousled in that way that probably took effort to look effortless. Dark eyes, strong jaw, the kind of face that made you think he photographed well even when he wasn’t trying. Which, annoyingly, made me notice that I still had yesterday’s eyeliner on and probably looked like someone who had been arguing with PowerPoint for three hours.

Because I had.

A small part of my brain, the part that hadn’t been completely fried by Lauren’s revision requests, perked up with mild interest. Oh. Hello. Where have you been hiding all evening?

Probably not in marketing. He had consultant energy. Or finance. Something where people nodded thoughtfully at charts.

I caught myself staring a half-second too long and looked back at my phone screen, which showed nothing important whatsoever. Great. Smooth. Very smooth, Emma.

The elevator descended smoothly for a few seconds. I watched the floor numbers change above the doors, already thinking about whether I had enough energy to cook dinner or if I should just order something terrible and call it self-care.

Then, without warning, the car slowed.

It didn’t drop or lurch. It simply eased to a halt somewhere between the eighth and seventh floors, gentle enough that I might have imagined it if the number display hadn’t frozen.

I blinked at the panel. “Did we just stop?”

The stranger looked up too, his expression calm but alert. He pressed the lobby button again, then the door-open button. Nothing happened. The lights stayed on, the fan kept humming, but the elevator sat perfectly still between floors.

A small knot of irritation formed in my chest. Of course. Of course this would happen tonight.

“That’s ... not ideal,” I said, more to myself than to him.

I pressed the lobby button myself, as if my finger might succeed where his had failed. It did not. The button lit up briefly, then faded. The elevator remained stubbornly still.

The stranger pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. His calm expression didn’t change much, but I noticed the slight tightening of his jaw.

“Dead,” he said, holding up the black screen toward me with a dry, almost amused resignation. “I was on calls all afternoon and forgot to charge it.”

I reached into my bag, already feeling around for my own phone. My charger was in there somewhere too, tangled with a hair tie and three pens that had probably leaked by now.

“I should have some battery left,” I said, pulling it free. The screen lit up when I pressed the home button, and relief flickered through me before I saw the actual percentage.

Nineteen percent.

“Okay,” I said slowly, “I have power, but not exactly enough to livestream our rescue or anything.”

He gave a small laugh at that, low and brief. It suited him.

“Any signal?” he asked.

I checked. One bar, wavering indecisively between one and none.

“Barely,” I admitted. “It’s like my phone is considering its options.”

I held my phone up near the elevator doors, then toward the ceiling, as if the signal might be hiding in a corner somewhere. The bar flickered once, teased me, and vanished completely.

“No,” I muttered. “No, no, no. Don’t do this to me.”

I tried to send a text to Sofia, typing quickly with my thumbs: Stuck in elevator at work. I’m fine.

The message sat there for a long moment, the little sending circle spinning lazily. Then it stopped. A red exclamation mark appeared beside it, cheerful and unhelpful.

“Of course,” I said, staring at the screen.

I tried again. Same result. I checked the Wi-Fi settings, but the only available network was the building’s guest access, which required a login page that refused to load. My phone had officially become a very expensive flashlight and clock.

“I have nineteen percent battery and zero connection,” I said, looking up at him. “So that’s fun.”

He leaned against the elevator wall with his briefcase resting against his leg, apparently untroubled by the fact that we were suspended between floors with no working phones.

“We still have options,” he said evenly. “Emergency intercom. Someone’s monitoring those, even on a Friday night.”

I nodded, though part of me wanted to keep tapping my phone like a confused pigeon hoping the screen would magically change its mind.

The stranger stepped closer to the control panel and pressed the small emergency call button. A faint crackle came from the speaker above the doors, thin and staticky, like a radio tuned to nothing.

He waited. I watched his face, still calm, still patient.

“Hello?” he said into the speaker. “We’re stopped in elevator car three, between floors seven and eight. Two passengers.”

The crackle faded into silence. No voice answered. Nothing.

He pressed the button again, holding it longer this time.

“Anyone there? This is an emergency intercom in the south bank elevator.”

More static. Then quiet.

I felt something shift in my chest, a small cold pressure behind my ribs. Up until then, some part of me had treated the whole thing like an inconvenience with good lighting. Stuck for a few minutes. Security would answer. Someone would come. It was annoying, but it wasn’t really serious.

The silence from the speaker changed that.

I took a breath and noticed it was a little shallower than before. My fingers tightened around my phone without meaning to.

“Maybe they’re just away from the desk,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. “Or it’s patched through to someone who stepped out.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

The stranger released the button and looked at me.

I looked at the silent speaker, then at him, then back at the speaker, as if one of them might suddenly offer an explanation.

“Do you think anyone’s actually monitoring that?” I asked. My voice had dropped, losing the edge it usually carried.

He considered the question with the same calm he’d shown since stepping into the elevator.

“Most buildings are required to have someone on call,” he said. “But whether they’re actually listening right now...” He trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid.

I pressed my lips together and nodded slowly.

“It’s Friday night,” I said. “Most of security probably left by six. Maintenance might not even be on-site.”

That cold pressure behind my ribs spread a little wider. I could feel my pulse in my throat.

“What floor did you say we were between?” I asked.

“Seven and eight.”

I tried to remember who worked on those floors. Accounting on seven, maybe? Some logistics firm on eight? Both would be empty now. No one would hear us if we shouted. The walls of these elevators were practically soundproof.

“So nobody knows we’re here,” I said quietly.

The stranger didn’t rush to contradict me. That honesty, however small, made me trust him slightly more than I would have if he’d lied.

“Not yet,” he said. “But someone will notice eventually. Elevators don’t stay stuck without generating some kind of alert.”

I wanted to believe him. The part of me that still clung to practical optimism wanted to nod and say, “Right, of course, an alert,” as if that settled everything.

But he didn’t know. I could see it in the careful way he spoke, the slight pause before he answered. He was guessing, same as me.

“Maybe,” I said. “But this building is old enough that ‘eventually’ could mean a lot of things.”

I leaned back against the elevator wall, my bag still slung across my shoulder, suddenly heavy. The space felt smaller than it had a minute ago. Not dramatically smaller. Just ... small enough to notice.

“So what are our options?” I asked. “Phone is useless. Intercom is useless. Yelling through the doors probably won’t work. We can’t open the ceiling panel without making things worse.”

I glanced up at the ceiling anyway. There was a panel there, the kind I’d seen in movies where people climbed out into dramatic lighting. In reality, I had no idea how to open it, no desire to find out what was above it, and absolutely zero trust in my ability to pull myself through a narrow hatch in heels.

The stranger followed my gaze but didn’t move toward it.

“I wouldn’t recommend the hatch unless there’s an actual emergency,” he said. “We’re safer in here.”

“Safer.” That word landed differently than he probably intended.

“Safer,” I repeated. The word hung in the small space between us, and I didn’t like the shape of it.

“Safer than what?” I asked. “Climbing out? Or just ... safer than hoping someone actually comes?”

My voice had gone quiet, almost careful. I could hear the faint hum of the ventilation system, the kind of white noise I’d ignored my entire life until suddenly it was one of the only things keeping the silence from swallowing me whole.

The stranger shifted his weight slightly, his briefcase still propped against his leg. He didn’t look away from me.

“Safer than trying to force the doors or climb through a hatch we don’t know how to operate,” he said. “Elevator shafts aren’t designed for people. One wrong step, one unexpected movement from another car...” He let that trail off too.

I nodded, because he was right, but my chest felt tight anyway.

“So we’re just supposed to stand here,” I said. It wasn’t really a question.

“For now,” he said. “Someone will check the system eventually. Or another employee will notice an elevator isn’t moving. We just don’t know when.”

“We just don’t know when.” That was the part my brain kept circling back to. Minutes? An hour? Longer?

I looked down at my phone again. Seventeen percent now.

I stared at the battery icon for a moment, then pressed the side button to darken the screen. Checking it every thirty seconds wasn’t going to make a signal appear, and seventeen percent wouldn’t last long if I kept lighting it up like a nervous tic.

I slid the phone back into my bag.

“Well,” I said, “that’s officially all I can think to do.”

The stranger nodded slowly. “We’ve covered the reasonable options.”

I wanted to laugh at that, but nothing funny came out. Instead I exhaled and let my shoulder bag slide down to rest against my feet. The elevator felt very quiet without the tapping of my phone screen.

Neither of us spoke for a while. The ventilation hummed. Somewhere in the walls, a pipe made a soft ticking sound as it cooled. I watched the floor indicator above the doors, still frozen between seven and eight, as if waiting for it to prove me wrong.

It didn’t move.

I crossed my arms loosely over my chest and leaned my head back against the wall. My heart was no longer racing, but it hadn’t settled either. It sat somewhere in the middle, a low persistent thrum of unease that I couldn’t quite ignore.

“This is fine,” I told myself. It sounded hollow even inside my own head.

The stranger had taken a position against the opposite wall, giving me space without making it obvious.

The silence stretched. I changed positions more times than I could count, leaning against one wall, then another, then sliding down to sit on the floor with my knees drawn up and my heels kicked off beside me. The carpet was thin and smelled faintly of industrial cleaner. I stared at the ceiling panels, the frozen floor indicator, the scuffed toes of my shoes. Anything to avoid thinking about how still the air had become.