The Elevator is serial fiction, with new chapters dropping twice a week.
She checked her watch as she waited in line at the streetside coffee truck across from the Ascension Building. 8:02am. Plenty of time before the meeting.
“Iced honey badger latte, half syrup, half caff, oat milk please,” Quinn requested as she approached the barista and tapped her card on the pay terminal.
“Oh my God you smell amazing,” a voice echoed nearby.
Quinn pivoted, looking around her on all sides. People streamed by, faces buried in their technical devices. Automatons shuffling in and out of the corporate towers.
She glanced to her right at the line behind her. A woman leaned toward her, light brown ringlets framing her face and glacier blue eyes waiting expectantly.
“Me?” Quinn pointed at herself.
The woman chuckled and stepped closer, “Yes, you. What perfume are you wearing?”
She looked around again, sure this woman was referring to someone else. “Ummm, Tease,” she stammered. “Victoria’s Secret.”
The woman nodded, “That seems appropriately named.”
“One iced honey badger latte,” the barista barked and slid the plastic cup on the counter on the side of the truck. “Next.”
Quinn’s eyes widened. What was happening here? She paused, grasping for something—anything—coherent and clever to say. Words had the uncanny knack of avoiding her in critical moments.
Her eyes dropped to the ground the stranger was standing on. The words bubbled up before she could censor them.
“Well, that’s not usually the goal I’m going for. But if it elicits a compliment from a cute stranger, I guess I’ll go with it.”
She ventured a slight glance up toward the woman’s face and smiled. She raised her coffee cup toward the woman as she turned to leave, “Enjoy your day.”
She aimed for the large glass doors of the fifteen story Ascension Building. Her face was hot, and she felt a bead of sweat roll down her lower spine. She shook her head in disbelief and rolled her eyes at herself.
After signing in at the security guard station, she headed toward the elevators, her pace more casual now that she wasn’t running from a stranger she uncharacteristically flirted with.
She stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the tenth floor. The doors began to close as she heard a shuffle of footsteps and saw a hand reach through. She instinctively reached out to help reverse the closing of the doors.
“Thanks,” said a woman. That same woman. Light brown curls, blue eyes. The cute stranger. “Ten for me too.”
“Are you following the scent trail of my perfume?” Quinn bit her tongue. What has gotten into you? You don’t flirt like this.
“You got me,” the woman laughed as the elevator doors closed. She leaned against the side wall across from Quinn, holding her coffee in her right hand while she thumbed her phone screen in the other.
Quinn searched her brain for something to say. It was inconveniently empty and the traditional awkward silence that accompanies being in close quarters with strangers filled the elevator. She stared at the numbered buttons lighting up as the elevator rose.
As the button for floor eight lit up, the elevator shook, and the overhead fluorescent lights flickered then shut off. Silence. No whir of air, no mechanical hum. An amber emergency light above the button panel cast a slight glow down the walls and on the floor.
Quinn and the woman looked at each other.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” the woman offered, her face lit by her phone screen.
After an interminable sixty seconds during which the lights did not come back on and the elevator cables did not resume their upward motion, Quinn pulled her phone from her back pocket. Noting the time on her lock screen, 8:15am, she shined the phone’s flashlight on the operating panel.
Above the panel was the certificate of inspection, dated March 23, 2026. About six months ago, she calculated. She pushed the yellow button with the phone icon on it labeled “Help.” There was no alarm, no buzz, no audible response. She waited thirty seconds before pushing it again. Same result, but perhaps it wasn’t supposed to make a sound.
“We can just call 911,” the woman dialed and put the phone to her ear. “Hmmm, that’s odd. It’s not ringing.”
Quinn couldn’t get a call to go through either on her phone. She tried a text message to 911. The text bubble—"we’re stuck in an elevator in the Ascension Building”—turned green. The grey “delivered” confirmation did not appear, but that wasn’t unusual when texting a different brand of phone. She put her phone back in her pocket and took a deep breath.
“I’m Quinn,” she introduced herself.
“Haley.”
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