Thirteen Floors of Nothing
Some doors should never be opened. Especially when they lead to nowhere.
The elevator doors slid open with a sigh that Marcus swore was relief. He stepped out onto the thirteenth floor of the Sterling Building, a space that hadn't existed on any blueprint or manifest for fifty years. The air was thick with dust motes dancing in the weak shaft of light from the elevator, and the silence was so absolute it pressed against his eardrums. His client had been very specific: retrieve the "lost ledger" from this floor, no questions asked, and the payment would clear his debts. Marcus needed the money. Desperately. The job was simple enough—break in, find the ledger, get out. He'd scoped the building for weeks, found the hidden elevator panel that led to this forgotten level, and now here he was, alone with the ghosts of whatever had transpired up here.
The thirteenth floor was a labyrinth of identical corridors, stretching in both directions as far as his flashlight beam could reach. The walls were a faded institutional green, the linoleum floor cracked and yellowed with age. Every twenty feet, a heavy steel door stood slightly ajar, revealing rooms that were completely empty. No furniture, no dust piles, nothing. Just smooth, white walls and a single, centered electrical socket that glowed with a faint blue light. Marcus had checked six rooms already, each one identical to the last. It was as if someone had meticulously erased every trace of human presence, leaving behind a sterile void. The ledger had to be here somewhere. The client had been adamant. But where? And why thirteen floors of nothing?
As he approached the seventh doorway, Marcus noticed something different. The socket in this room wasn't glowing. It was dark. And the room itself, while still empty, had something the others lacked—a faint, circular indentation on the floor, perfectly centered, about the size of a dinner plate. Kneeling, he brushed away the dust with his glove. The indentation wasn't just in the linoleum; it went deeper, as if something heavy had once sat here and pressed its weight into the floor for years. He pulled out his phone, snapping a quick picture for reference. This was the room. This had to be where the ledger was hidden. But there was no safe, no hidden compartment, nothing. Just an empty room with a strange depression in the floor. His frustration began to curdle into unease. The silence of the floor seemed to press in closer, and he could have sworn he heard a faint whisper from somewhere down the corridor, though the sound was so soft he couldn't make out the words.
Suddenly, the elevator doors at the far end of the corridor slammed shut with a deafening clang. Marcus's heart leaped into his throat. He spun around, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness, but the corridor was empty. The elevator was gone. Trapped. He rushed back to the entrance, but the panel he'd used to access this floor was now just smooth, unbroken wall. Panic, cold and sharp, began to replace his unease. He was locked in. Thirteen floors of nothing, and he was the only thing there that wasn't supposed to be. He started down the corridor, looking for another way out, when he passed one of the open doors he'd already checked. The socket in that room was now glowing with the same faint blue light as the others. And standing in the center of the empty room, perfectly positioned in the indentation on the floor, was a figure that hadn't been there before.