A whole minute passes with us standing there silent, trying to listen for anything in the hallway. The clicking starts up again, this time more incessant than before, but it becomes quieter as the beasts must be moving away from the door.

Finally, after what feels like forever, Finn looks down at me. "What's your name again?"

This time, it is me who raises a brow at him, my eyes flicking between his brown eyes and the hand he has holding my mouth closed. Finn scrunches his eyebrows together before finally understanding that I cannot talk with his hand holding my jaw closed.

"Oh, sorry about that," he says a little bashfully. He pulls his hands away from my jaw and head, and I reach up, rubbing where his hand had been.

"It's fine." Cracking my jaw, I look back over to where my backpack is lying. The keys to my car and my apartment are in there; two very important things at the moment. Those beasts could be back any minute, and we should get out of here while we can. The thought of them returning has me hustling over to my dark blue backpack.

The sound of Finn clearing his throat causes me to pause in my search of my keys and look over my shoulder at him. He has his arm stretched over his shoulder as he scratches the back of his head and gives me a hesitant smile. "Your name?"

"Alden Hale." He nods his head holding his hand out to me. It takes me a second to realize that he wants me to shake his hand. "Oh." My hand shoots out so quickly to grab his that I end up slapping his hand pretty hard when ours meet. Wincing, I try to give him an apologetic smile. Looking up, I see that he has a wider smile than before on his face.

"I'm Finn Foster." He gives my hand a brusque shake and a squeeze before letting go. "What were you doing here? I thought all classes were canceled today because of what has been going on."

"Ah, well, my professor didn't want to get behind in her planning, so she had us come in anyway. She ended up letting us out earlier than usual, but I think it was only because she was too busy doing something on her computer." My eyebrows scrunch in confusion as I look around the room. "What are you doing here if there were supposed to be no classes today? I thought the people who are in the storage department only worked on days that there are classes."

Finn grimaces for a second before hesitantly meeting my eyes. "Ah, yeah, well that's how it's usually supposed to work, but since my professor wasn't too happy about the prank my friend and I played, I was stuck working today." He looks around the semi-cluttered room. "He was supposed to be here, too, but he never showed up. We were supposed to organize everything in here."

My brows raise minutely as I follow where his eyes are tracking across the room. "Didn't get too far, hm?"

Finn opens his mouth to protest my words, but the sounds of approaching footsteps stop both of us in our tracks. Finn gestures for me to stay where I am again, but I just narrow my eyes at him. Together, we walk silently back to the door, standing only a few feet away from it. Something is coming, and it is not going to be good.

A shadow from the other side peeks in through the crack between the floor and the door. As quietly as I can, I lower myself down, laying my face flat onto the cold linoleum. The crack in the underneath the door is just big enough so that I can see the feet of the figure that stopped outside the door.

Quickly, I stand back up, backing quietly away from the door. Finn's eyes track down my trembling body. The fear must be showing in my eyes because as soon as his meet mine, he jerks away from the door.

"Not human?" he mouths.

I shake my head in answer. The feet I saw were definitely not human. The sickly green pallor of them and the way they are gnarled tells me that they may have once been human, but they no longer are anymore.

A crashing sound snaps our eyes back to the now trembling door. Before we have any time to respond, another succession of slams come, making the entire door shake in its frame.

"That door isn't going to last long." Finn doesn't even bother to whisper anymore. It's too late for that; the beast out there somehow knows we're in here.

"There's no other way out of here," I say, voice catching a little bit. "It's going to kill us."

"Not if I can help it." Finn rushes over to the side of the room where a large bookcase is placed. He gets behind it, pushing with all of his might, but it isn't budging. His muscles strain and his face starts to turn red with the amount of effort he is putting in to move the stubborn piece of furniture. "A little help here, Alden?"

His words snap me out of the trance I had somehow fallen into. The hinges on the door are straining by the time we push the heavy shelf in front of it. Both of us move around the room, piling anything that we can move around the bookcase.

Heaving, I try to catch my breath. Placing a hand on my heart, I hope to slow it down from its current galloping pace. The thought of the inevitability of that creature getting in is not helping me to calm down.

"Alden, come on. I think I found a way out." Finn grabs my arm, pulling me over to the back of the room.

"Really?" I say, the hope clear in my voice. It is shot to hell, though, when Finn points up at the ceiling. He has an encouraging look on his face, but it isn't too reassuring when he flinches every time the door makes a creaking sound whenever the creature throws itself against it. "You want us to climb through the vents?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure we're going to fit?"

"If the maintenance guy with a beer belly can slide himself around in there, then we should be fine."

"How are we even supposed to get up there? This ceiling is at least ten to twelve feet high."

"You climb on my shoulders and you can haul yourself up." He bends down, balancing himself with his hands as he stays in a crouched position. He looks back up at me. "Then once you're up there, you can help to pull me up."

"I don't think this is going to work," I say but straddle his shoulders anyway.

"We don't have much choice, now, do we?"

"God, you're so freaking bossy."

"If you think I'm bossy now, you should see me in b-" His words are cut off by the sound of one of the hinges on the door snapping off. The metal makes a groaning sound as it bends in on itself from the weight of the slams raining down on it.

"Less talking, more escaping," Finn says. I almost lose my balance when he stands up quickly but manage to catch myself at the last minute. "Ow! Those are my eyes, Alden." Ah, so that's why the skin under my hands is a little squishy.

"Maybe you should've given me some warning before standing."

Finn mumbles something under his breath at my words but continues to stand up.

With him standing as straight as he can, I am still barely able to reach the vent that is supposed to lead to our survival.

"Can you reach it?" Finn asks. The ridges of the vent just brush my fingertips.

"Not quite; hold on." Stretching as far as I can, I lift myself off of Finn's shoulders a couple of inches, making it possible for me to lift the vent away. "I got it! I got it!"

In my excitement, I lose my balance a little bit, almost sending the both of us tumbling to the ground. The vent clanks down onto the ground when I let go of it in order to once again grip onto Finn's face. Luckily, Finn is quick enough and manages to keep himself standing and me on top of his shoulders.

"I swear to God, I am going to go blind from your fingers gouging into my eyes," he says, reaching up a hand to pry mine away from his face. Instead, I move one to his hair and the other to his shoulder.

"Sorry."

The sound of the door being completely ripped off of its hinges pushes us both into overdrive.

"Okay, Alden. Get into that vent." Finn pushes himself up into his tip toes, allowing me to grip the edge of the ceiling and pull myself up. My arms strain under the weight of hauling my body into the vent. Pull ups were always my least favorite thing to do in high school gym class.

The sound of furniture being shoved around causes a surge of adrenaline to flow throughout my body. Somehow, in just a matter of seconds, I am able to pull myself into the vent.

I reach my arm back through the hole, signaling Finn that I am ready for him. Finn backs away from me, his eyes never wavering from my hand. Taking a deep breath, he pushes himself away from the wall behind him and runs as quickly as he can, jumping at the last minute to reach my hand.

A huff of air rushes out of my body when my arm absorbs the force of his jump and all of his weight. My feet are hooked onto an edge in the vent, making it possible for me to use both my hands to haul Finn up into the air vent.

The loud screech of the creature bounces off the walls in the room. Finn looks over at it, and he must not like what he sees, because his eyes widen exponentially before he looks back over at me, the fear clear in his brown eyes. "Alden, haul me up."

"I'm trying," I say through gritted teeth. I manage to pull him up a couple of inches by using the ridge in the air shaft as leverage. "Weight lifting was never my forte."

"You can do it. Just a couple more inches and then I can pull myself up the rest of the way."

The clicking of the creature is coming closer. The thought of that creature getting us, even though I have no idea what said creature looks like, pushes me to levy Finn up the last couple inches.

He lets go of one of my hands to grip the edge of the ceiling. The combination of both me and himself pulling him up gets him waist high in the vest in only a matter of seconds. The screeching starts up again, but this time it is much closer than before. It sounds like it is only a few feet away, quickly closing the distance between itself and a dangling Finn.

"Come on, come on," I mumble more to myself than to Finn, but he manages to hear me anyway.

Letting go of my hand, Finn pulls himself the rest of the way in, letting out a sigh of relief. Both of us try to catch our breath, chests heaving and heart racing from the exertion of having to pull ourselves up into this thing. Our reprieve is brief, unfortunately. The screech of the creature is right below us, and Finn, rather stupidly, peeks over the edge at it.

"It doesn't look like it can jump, but I don't really want to figure that out for myself." He pushes himself away from the edge, looking back over at me. "Let's get out of here."

*****

A/N: Picture at the top is of Finn.