Chapter 2: The White Labyrinth

Chapter 2: The White Labyrinth

The heavy door boomed shut, the sound unnaturally loud in the sterile chamber. Alex’s back was pressed against the wood, his knuckles white where he still gripped the push bar. His breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. This was a dream. A nightmare. Any second now, he’d wake up with a jolt, the phantom sensation of falling jarring him back to reality, Chloe’s sleepy mumble beside him.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

When he opened them, nothing had changed. The white tiles still gleamed under the merciless fluorescent hum. The air still smelled of bleach and cold porcelain.

“No,” he whispered, the word a small, desperate plea.

He shoved the door open again. Another restroom. He stumbled through it, his sneakers squeaking on the pristine floor, and threw himself at the next door. Another. And another. His movements became frantic, a clumsy, panicked sprint. He wasn't walking through doors; he was plunging through them, each one a fresh wave of ice-water shock. Room after identical room, a disorienting, repeating pattern of white and chrome.

He tried running back the way he came, but there was no "back." Every door, from any direction, opened into a new, identical space. It was a hall of mirrors where the reflections were solid.

“HELLO?!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “IS ANYONE THERE?!”

The only answer was the echo of his own terror, bouncing off the hard surfaces before being swallowed by the profound, humming silence. He hammered his fists against the partition walls, the solid thuds feeling pathetic and small. He kicked a stall door, the grey metal vibrating with a hollow clang.

“CHLOE!”

The name was torn from his throat, a raw, ragged sound of pure anguish. Saying her name here felt like a profanity, a violation of this clean, cold, soulless place. The thought of her, sitting in that dark theater, wondering where he was, sent a fresh surge of adrenaline through him. Was she looking for him? Had she called security? Was he about to be found, laughing with embarrassment at having gotten lost in some bizarrely designed multiplex?

Hope, fragile and desperate, flickered within him. He had to think. There had to be a logical explanation.

His phone.

With trembling fingers, he dug into his jeans pocket, past the small, now-mocking velvet box, and pulled out his lifeline. The screen lit up, a familiar, comforting glow in the harsh white light. The wallpaper was a photo of him and Chloe on a hike last fall, both of them grinning stupidly at the camera, autumn leaves a riot of color behind them. The sight of it, of that normal, happy world, was like a physical blow.

His eyes darted to the top left corner of the screen.

No Service.

Of course. His heart sank, but he tapped the screen anyway, his thumb swiping through his contacts, his call log, anything. Nothing worked. It was a dead slab of glass and metal. A useless collection of memories.

Then he saw the time.

9:45 PM.

He stared at it, a cold dread seeping into his bones, far deeper and more chilling than the simple panic had been. He’d been in the restroom for maybe five minutes before this started. He’d been running, screaming, panicking for… how long? It felt like an hour. But the numbers hadn’t changed. 9:45 PM. He watched the screen for a full minute, waiting for the 5 to click over to a 6.

It never did.

The world hadn't just disappeared; it had stopped. Time itself was broken. This wasn’t a prank. This wasn’t a weirdly designed building. This was wrong. Fundamentally, impossibly wrong.

The panic subsided, replaced by a vast, hollow emptiness. He was adrift. Cut off. The barefoot man’s dry chuckle echoed in his memory. Just… finishing. Finishing what? Was this what he meant?

He slid down the tiled wall, his back cold against the porcelain, and sat heavily on the floor. He dropped his head into his hands, the phone clattering beside him. The sheer, overwhelming absurdity of it all washed over him. One minute, he was kissing his girlfriend during a bad B-movie, planning a future. The next, he was trapped in an infinite public restroom outside of time.

How long could he last here? The thought was unwelcome, an insidious whisper. He had nothing. No food. No…

He lifted his head, his eyes fixing on the row of sinks.

Water.

Slowly, as if testing the laws of this new reality, he pushed himself to his feet and walked to the nearest basin. His reflection stared back at him from the mirror—a pale, wild-eyed stranger. He reached out and twisted the chrome tap.

For a terrifying second, nothing happened. Then came a sputtering cough from the pipes, a groan of metal, and a stream of clear, cold water gushed into the sink.

Relief washed over him so intensely his knees felt weak. He shoved his hands under the stream, the icy shock a jolt of life. He splashed water on his face, gasping. Then he lowered his head and drank directly from the tap, gulping it down like a man who’d been lost in the desert. It was just water, cold and tasteless, but right now, it was the most precious thing in the universe. It was survival.

He straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, water dripping from his chin. He had water. That was something. A fixed point in this endlessly repeating nightmare.

Okay. He needed to stop running. He needed to stop screaming. That had done nothing but exhaust him and leave his throat raw. He needed a base. A place to start.

He looked around the room. This one was no different from any of the others, but the running water had sanctified it. This would be his. He designated it with a fierce, irrational sense of ownership. This was Room One.

He walked over to the paper towel dispenser and, with methodical precision, tore off a long sheet. He knelt and placed his phone, his keys, and the small Swiss Army knife on the paper, a makeshift altar of his former life. These were his tools. This was his inventory. A dead phone for a clock that taunted him with the moment his life had ended, and a keychain knife his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday. Not much, but it was everything.

He sat back down, leaning against the same cold wall, the faint sound of the water still trickling from the tap he’d left on—a deliberate act of defiance against the silence. The fluorescent lights hummed their eternal, single note. The white labyrinth stretched on in every direction, a monument to madness. He was alone. He was trapped. But he had water.

He wouldn’t die of thirst. It was a small victory, but here, in the crushing, sterile infinity, it felt like a declaration of war. He would not just lie down and die. He would survive. He had to. Chloe was waiting for him, back at 9:45 PM.