There was something unsettling about the infrequent lights that were still on in the long hallway creating sporadic pools of light, separating the wider swaths of darkness. Within each pool of light stood solid metal doors. No windows looked in on any of the rooms beyond the hallway. The only hint of what occurred within was the ever-present hum, more of a vibration felt than anything heard, that permeated the entire space.

“Are you sure about this?” Caroline asked.

Todd looked back at her and smiled.

“It’s going to be amazing!” he assured her.

Both of them were keeping their voices low even though they were almost completely certain that no one else was in the building. Caroline didn’t look completely convinced yet and grabbed hold on Todd’s arm when he moved to press on down the hallway.

“Don’t they have, like, security cameras or something?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Todd admitted, “but it’s not like school where the principle Menk is watching all the time. The guys here only check the recordings if they know something’s happened.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yeah, I worked here all last Summer, remember? I’ve explored this whole place dozens of times at night and no one’s ever noticed.”

Caroline still looked nervous but her grip on Todd’s arm loosened.

“Now come on,” he urged her and together they made their way further down the hallway.

Todd kept a careful eye on the doors they passed, looking for the right one. The only markings on the doors differentiating them from one another were their room numbers, shifting the heavy backpack he was carrying as he went.

“Three fifteen,” Todd murmured with growing excitement, “three seventeen…three nineteen…and here we are, at three twenty-one.”

He gave the door a flourish with his hand but Caroline didn’t notice as she was too busy looking behind them.

“Hey,” Todd said, waving his hand in front of her face to get her attention, “you can relax, I promise.”

“Alright, I’m sorry,” Caroline apologized. “It’s just, ever since I was little I’ve hated getting in trouble, and this just seems a bit more serious than getting caught sneaking cookies before dinner or something.”

“Even if we did get caught, which we won’t,” he added quickly, “the nerds here are super chill. You’ll be fine.”

He pulled out the key card he’d used to get them in the front doors and swiped it through the scanner next to the door. He’d stolen the keycard on his last day of work and it seemed its absence either hadn’t been noticed yet or they hadn’t gotten around to rekeying the doors. Either way, the small light blinked green and the door lock clicked.

“After you,” Todd said cordially and he pushed the door open.

The lab wasn’t impressively large but it was still a decent sized room. It was bigger than Todd’s postage stamp of an apartment at least. The wall with the door was covered in white boards with various scribblings, equations, doodles, and notes. On the other three walls were cubicles and workstations for computers, 3D printers, and other machinery Todd didn’t fully know the functions of. The center of the room was dominated by another room. Its walls didn’t reach up as high as the lab’s ceiling and it wasn’t much larger than a bedroom. Massive bundles of cables snaked all around the outside walls of the small room and then ran up to the ceiling where they spiderwebbed out to junction boxes and computers throughout the lab.

Todd was about to open the door to the small room when Caroline grabbed him again and pulled him back.

“Todd,” she said, “I really don’t want to do this, let’s just go.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” he said, “You even said you wanted to come here.”

“No,” Caroline corrected him, “I said it sounded cool. And before you say anything,” she added hastily, “just because something is cool doesn’t mean I think it’s worth breaking and entering.”

“But you came this far, haven’t you?” Todd countered. “There must be a part of you that wanted to try it.”

Caroline bit her lip as she wavered back and forth.

“How about this,” Todd offered when it started to look like Caroline might actually back out completely. “I’ll set the time for half an hour inside. That’s long enough to go in, check it out, and then we can leave if it’s not as cool as you thought it would be.”

Caroline sighed heavily and Todd knew he’d finally won her over. He’d learned to know that she only sighed like that when she’d been convinced to go along with his ideas.

“You’re sure it’s safe?” she asked.

“Perfectly,” he said. “I’ve heard them talking about it, even met a few of the people who’ve gone in there.”

“And it’s just, sort of going to stretch out time?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s the wild thing about it!” This was the bit that had intrigued Todd the most when he first overheard the researchers talking about it. “Inside the room, time’s crazy fast so you can go in, spend a whole week, and come out and it’s been maybe a couple of hours.”

“It’s a pretty small looking room,” Caroline observed.

“Nah, they’ve got it all set up nice inside,” Todd said. “I’ve peeked in before and they have everything in there. Big screen TV, fridge, even a couple of bunk beds that fold down.”

“What about a bathroom?” Caroline asked.

“They even have one of those, tucked into the corner with its own walls and door.”

Todd pulled open the door to the room and Caroline hesitantly stepped inside. Todd followed her, careful not to shut the door behind them just yet. The room was pretty much as he remembered it. There were a few odds and ends left from whoever had used the room last but for the most part it was clean and tidy. If he hadn’t known better, he could have mistaken it for some sort of hidden man cave. Caroline opened the fridge and inspected the contents.

“Looks like you didn’t need to lug that backpack of food around after all. The fridge is already stocked up with food,” she said with some surprise. “And they’ve got cupboards with cereal and canned soups.”

“Like I said, they set it up so people can spend days in here at a time. So what do you say? Just a half hour, or are you convinced enough to just start off our three day vacation that’ll actually only last a couple hours?”

“Why do I have to decide that now?” Caroline asked. “Can’t we just make that decision as we go along? You know, if we get bored or something and want to leave?”

Todd hesitated. He knew Caroline wouldn’t like this part and so he’d intentionally left it out.

“Todd,” Caroline looked at him more seriously now and he knew she was catching on that he hadn’t been completely up front with her about it.

“Well the problem is,” he began, “you have to set the time on the outside and then the door seals itself until the time’s up. I think it’s just the way the machine works, that opening the door while its on would break it or something.”

“Oh, so once we’re in we’re locked in?” Caroline asked and her discomfort rose greatly.

“Look, it’s our last chance,” Todd implored. “I’m moving tomorrow and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to come back and see you again. Don’t you think we deserve at least this one last bit of time together?”

“Alright,” Caroline conceded, “but just because I love you.”

Todd smiled broadly and then turned to look at the control panel just outside the room. It wasn’t the most user-friendly control panel he’d seen, but nothing these scientists ever built seemed to have users in mind. After a few minutes he figured it out and punched in the time for three days and then slipped back inside the room just as the door began to swing shut.

Just as soon as he was in, Caroline ran right into him, almost knocking him over as he stumbled back. The door caught him and pushed him back upright as it finished closing.

“NO!” Caroline cried out, a look of terror on her face. “Did you set it for half an hour?” she demanded, her sudden fear taking Todd completely by surprise. “Please tell me you only set it for half an hour.”

“Calm down, everything’s fine.”

“No it’s not,” Caroline insisted, “It’s really not.”

She held up some of the papers that had been left behind by the previous occupant of the room and waved them in front of Todd.

“How much did they tell you about this room?” she asked, still panicked.

“They just said it slowed down time,” he said, “you know, that a couple hours could be like a few days and stuff.”

“Todd, listen to yourself,” she said, “if it slows down time, then who’s the being slowed down? The people inside the room or outside?”

Todd cocked his head to the side, not really following where Caroline was going with this. She waved the papers in front of his face again and then shoved them into his chest before stomping away.

“Did you set it for half an hour?” she asked again.

“What does it matter,” Todd deflected as he began to pick up and look through the papers she had thrust at him. “And what’s up with these?” he asked regarding the papers.

“You set it for three days didn’t you?” she asked. “And it matters because we are the ones slowed down. If we’re in here for three days then it’s going to be a whole lot longer than that outside.”

Todd still wasn’t following her completely but he was starting to get the idea. If time was moving faster outside the room, then he had indeed messed things up for them both.

“Can they let us out when they realize someone’s inside who isn’t supposed to be here?” Coraline asked.

“I don’t know,” Todd said as worry began to settle in on him as well. “I would think that they should be able to but…

His voice trailed off as he thought back on how clunky the control panel was and he had to admit it did seem very likely that the scientists had neglected to include an emergency stop function.

“Well, okay,” Todd began, trying to find a better angle to look at the situation in. “I’ve messed up, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make the most out of this situation and enjoy our three day vacation.”

“Did you read any thing on those papers?” Caroline asked with an accusatory gesture.

Todd looked down at the papers in his hands and didn’t bother giving Caroline a response. Instead, he sat down on the couch and began reading through the notes as best he could. Most of it was jargon he didn’t understand but two things did stand out. The first, was that Caroline was right and that their time inside the room was much slower than the time outside the room. The second thing that jumped out at him was that they had apparently just finished a new upgrade to the room, making time move even more slowly than before. The term ‘whole orders of magnitude’ kept popping up in the notes and he knew enough to know that was serious.

“So how long are we in here for?” Todd asked.

“How should I know?” Caroline shot back at him. “It’s not like they have some easy little chart to show us!”

“Alright, alright, calm down, we can figure this out,” Todd said though he had no idea how they could do anything from inside the room. Breaking their way out didn’t seem like a very safe option, and there weren’t any controls for the door on this side. There wasn’t even a doorknob now that he bothered to look for one.

“We’re going to be stuck in here for so long,” Caroline moaned as she sank down onto the floor and began to cry.

“What? No, it’s just going to be a few days.”

“Todd, you said they were slowing time down so that a few days were like a couple hours, right?”

Todd nodded.

“But that was a few hours in here and days out there. You’ve set us to be here for three days. Three days in here! And now that they’ve supercharged this thing who knows how much time will have passed by the time we get out.”

“They’ll figure out a way to get us out,” Todd said.

Even if they didn’t have an easy off switch, they wouldn’t just leave them inside for however long it was going to take for them to go through their three days.

“Whatever,” Caroline said and her tears seemed to have stopped just as quickly as they began, although now her face looked haunted and her eyes were staring off at nothing. “I’m going to be in so much trouble. I’m never going to be able to get passed this. I’ll never get into college. Just get stuck doing nothing for the rest of my life.”

“Hey, come on Caroline,” Todd said, going over to her.

He tried to put his arm around her but she elbowed him in the ribs, hard, and then scooted away from him.

“You stay away from me!”

Todd couldn’t breathe for a few seconds and he sat there gasping for air.

“I said I’m sorry,” Todd said. “What more do you want from me?”

“I just told you,” Caroline replied, “I want you to leave me alone.”

“Fine,” Todd said and he made his way back over to the couch.

He picked up the remote and clicked on the TV. Anything to distract himself from Caroline and the impending trouble he was going to be in once the door to the room opened back up. This whole trip was supposed to be one final hurrah, a great escape, just the two of them that no one would ever know about. Their secret, stolen hours. So much for all that.

The only thing available to watch on the TV were old reruns of public television science shows.

“Perfect,” Todd muttered and gave up on his last few hopes of salvaging the situation.