2 2. Helen and the broken door.

Thump! Thump! Thump! echoed the door, the old frame beginning to creak under the strain of multiple blows. It was early morning, and Helen had only just woken up after a late shift at work last night.

"Coming! I'm coming! Let my door off!" yelled Helen as she began to panic – she wasn't expecting guests. The door was banged more as she scrambled about her room, grabbing the only metal pot she owned and getting ready to swing it as she crept over to the door to peer through the eyepiece at a tall, muscly man in a suit, his features sharp and stern. 'A black suit? What's a guy like him doing here?' she pondered, but not for long as the man on the other side of the door banged on the door again, his impatience now obvious on his face. She reluctantly called from the other side of the door to him. "Who is it? What do you want?"

"Site maintenance. We've got to do a gas check for safety reasons." he replied. A guy like him? In a suit? He was lying to her. "Let me in, it will take 30 seconds at most, I promise, little miss." He coaxed her, trying to convince his target to open the door. The situation made Helen bite her lip and she looked again through the eyepiece at the now smirking man in a suit – he hadn't realised she was looking at him. He pressed a button on his collar and began to whisper into a small microphone she hadn't noticed before. She could just about read his lips to make out 'use force' in the sentence...

Use force?! She wasn't going to stick around for that. She grabbed a large duffel bag and began stuffing her few possessions inside – a minute later and she was done. So too was the man outside, as he had started trying to kick her door in after realising that he wasn't being let in and that his cover was most likely blown. None of the neighbours came out to help as it swung inwards with a crash and a shower of splinters, his foot closely behind. Helen pried open the one window her apartment had and climbed onto the fire escape just as he stepped into the room, crossing her fingers as she climbed up rather than down. Hopefully he wouldn't realise that she wasn't escaping, but was hiding instead. To make things look more realistic, she threw a book from her bag onto the ground and climbed to the top of the building and started to peek over the edge to see her window. An angry man's face soon poked out, squinting into the darkness before quickly climbing onto the fire escape and leaping down the two flights of stairs to the ground without a moment's hesitation. He was gone, but what did he want? Taking a deep breath, Helen waited on the rooftop for 30 minutes before truly believing she was safe. She grabbed her bag and pulled out her phone, an old thing that she'd found thrown away one time after work. A popup flashed on her screen, telling her that it was time for her medication, so as she typed in the emergency number for the police, she popped a tablet into her mouth. And then her world changed forever.