THE BEGINNING

"Hold that!"

The voice held such command that Andy didn't even stopped to think; he just extended his hand, catching the elevator's doors before they could close.

The man skid to stop inside the lift and gave Andy a warm smile. "Thanks! The other one's out of service and I'm already running late," he said, thumb pointing vaguely to the right, where the other elevator supposedly stood inoperative.

Andy gave the whole notion an uninterested shrug. "Which floor?" he asked, not so much out of politeness but more to gauge how long would he have to share a lift ride with a guy who was obviously into over-sharing. Most people thought that elevator music was the worse, but Andy had long learned that the true curse of skyscrapers' elevators wasn't the music at all. It was the casual acquaintances.

"95th," the man supplied, moving to casually lean against the opposite wall, hands in his pockets, settling comfortably for the long ride. Fast as those lifts were, 95th was all but the top of the John Hancock Center.

Andy pressed the button and contented himself with watching the numbers roll by in the display. He was heading for floor 74th, for the second time that day, having been called back by his boss to do some overtime because some half-assed client had forgotten to fill out his tax returns properly.

95th was the restaurant floor, everyone knew that. Fancy restaurant at that, with the breath-taking view and the gourmet food and the romantic candle-lit tables. Andy had never been there; he'd never had an excuse good enough to drop that kind of money on a single meal.

Peeling his eyes from the fast rolling numbers, Andy looked back at his current lift-companion. At that hour of the night, of course that guy would be heading for the restaurant; tenants had a private set of elevators of their own and most of the other offices were already closed for the day.

Out of boredom, Andy tried to guess which big event this particular stranger was up celebrating in the fancy restaurant Andy had never set foot to. A birthday, perhaps? He wasn't carrying any wrapped gift, but that didn't meant a thing if he was the one blowing the candles. Some other kind of anniversary? No ring on the guy's finger, so odds were it wasn't his wedding anniversary... maybe his parents? Friends?

The elevator's background music cut off abruptly, replaced almost immediately by the most annoying sound Andy had ever heard. "What is that?" he asked, resisting the urge to cover his ears like a five year old.

"Fire alarm."

Andy looked at him, trying to understand if the other man was talking seriously or just pulling his leg. His voice had been far too calm and controlled for him to be serious but the concerned look on the man's face was pretty convincing. "Bullshit," Andy called out with as much confidence as he could muster.

As if to prove him wrong, the lift decided to chose that precise moment to lurch to a stop. Given the velocity they had been going up, it wasn't a gentle stop.

For a split second, Andy got to taste the meaning of 'zero gravity', or at least as close as he figured he would ever get. His body felt weightless, just before he felt himself being smacked by an invisible brute force and thrown against the metal wall.

-o-

"Hey, buddy, you with me?"

The voice was barely audible over the cacophony of ringing bells inside his head.

"Come on, I need you to open your eyes."

For the second time that night, Andy found himself obeying that voice without question. A pair of gentle blue eyes greeted him.

"There you go," the owner of said eyes, said with the same amount of enthusiasm as someone who'd just won the lottery. "What's your name?"

"Andy," he rasped out. "Andy Manner."

"Hey, Andy, I'm Matt. How're you feeling? Any nausea, dizziness?"

He felt hot. Everything around them was bathed in an uncomfortable red light that seemed to make everything feel warmer. On fire. "You'd said something about a fire alarm? Is the building on fire?!" Andy asked instead, his heart starting to race inside his chest. He tried to suck in a deep breath to calm himself, only to have his lungs rebel on him in a sudden cough.

The other guy scrunched back, his hand touching the metal floor for a second before he pulled it back with a concerned frown. "Slow breaths," Matt said in the same controlled tone that was starting to get on Andy's nerves. "We can't see it yet, but I think the smoke's already getting inside the lift."

Andy's eyes almost bulged out of head. The guy hadn't exactly answered his question, but it was a sure bet that where there was smoke, there was fire. Already he could feel the acrid taste taking residence inside his throat. "We're gonna die," he said with the same finality of a judge passing a sentence.

Instead of joining him in his rapid descent into despair and panic, Matt was quiet, silently staring at Andy. If he didn't know better, Andy would say that he was assessing him, passing some sort of judgment of his own.

"Look, I'm gonna be straight with you," Matt started, apparently having reached a decision.

Andy's hands balled into fists. In his experience, never had those words been followed by something nice and positive.

"The doors are sealed shut, which means that we're probably stuck between floors. In any other situation, I would say that our best course of action would be to sit tight and wait for someone to come and get us, but..." he stopped himself, lower lip disappearing behind his teeth. "Look, the floor is getting really warm and the smoke is starting to built up in here and those vents stopped working a while go, so I—"

"I'm not moving from here," Andy cut through his words. The guy was nuts if he thought that Andy was going to move an inch outside of that lift, where it was safe. No way. He'd seen too many horror movies to do anything other than stay put. "And if you have any sense at all, you'll stop trying to be Mr. Smarty-pants about this and wait for people who actually know what they're doing, to come and rescue us. I'm sure that the police or the fire department or the frigging FBI are already on their way."

Matt raised an eyebrow, like he wasn't used to people talking to him in that tone of voice. Running his hands over his short-cropped hair, he ended up fishing something out of his pocket and pressing it into Andy's hands.

The lonely laugh that escaped Andy's lips as soon as he saw what he was holding was more of the nervous pressure-release valve type than him appreciating the humor of the situation.

The silver badge looked coppery in the red emergency light, property of one Lieutenant Mathew Casey, Chicago Fire Department. Andy gave him the badge back, his head hung in defeat. "You were saying?"