Ellen is a twenty-something girl from a rural, podunk town located a few hours drive from the city in which the Dae-su building resides. She's in the big city looking to bring her runaway brother, Arny, back home, or at least get him off the streets. She tracks Arny down but much to her chagrin he tells her he's begun making a life for himself there and doesn't need her help. He's got a group of friends that look out for him and each other – and references a failure on her part to do that for him in the past – and she wouldn't understand and can piss off, he's got things to do with his crew. But in response to her impassioned and plainly sincere plea for him to reconsider, he agrees to meet up with her the next day to hear her out. Thus she finds herself in the lobby of the Dae-su building because that was where her brother suggested they meet up, so she could make her case for why he should split with her.
The lobby is indoors, but is otherwise a pretty public, open, airy place, with a bunch of eateries, a few fountains, etc. She's there with her dog, which draws multiple warnings from building security, the last of which – when the guard is on the verge of physically ejecting her – is interrupted by a request coming across the guard's walkie asking for his presence on floor (x). Meanwhile her brother doesn't show, but one of his associates does, saying that if she wants to see her brother she'll have to pay for the pleasure – the money she described to her brother as “enough to get us started somewhere else” - in front of his “friends”.
Her brother's fallen in with a bunch of street rats, present-day urchins complete with their own Fagin, James “Putty” Putkins. Putty runs a pretty tight ship and is well inside the heads of all his kids and isn't hesitant with the quick, effective application of pain where fear and hunger fail to motivate. He's arranged to shake Ellen down before sending her on her way, with no intention of letting her brother leave with her.
In the beginning of the game, Putty uses a handful of his kids to make Ellen jump through a series of hoops to talk to her brother, basically going from point a to b to c in the building. Once she's in one of the building's other publicly accessible - yet less popular and populated – spaces: either he (or one of the urchins) successfully extracts some or all of her money from her and says her brother will meet her there in five minutes; or the player refuses to pay him and Putty or the urchin make a run for it, eventually shaking Ellen if the player chooses to give chase.
Either way Ellen finds herself deeper in the building and away from the lobby when the pre-quarantine sequence of events go down, the goal being to credibly keep the character in the building until the quarantine traps the character in the building. If the player chooses to keep Ellen in the lobby – and near the exits, when in-game circumstances might egg the player into having Ellen flee the building along with the handfuls of NPCs who've been put into panic mode by circumstances they've become privvy to on the upper floors – then other plot mechanics can arrange to have Ellen relocated, such as her dog running off, security detaining her for the dog, security detaining her for having seen her with one of the urchins, who's been caught doing something he shouldn't have, or some combination of somesuch.
Once she's located far enough away from the exits, if she encounters NPCs that present her with the rationale, it becomes her optional in-game goal to join the increasing number of people looking to leave the building. Rumors of an illness, or nerve gas, or a disgruntled employee attack circulate in hushed nervous tones amongst those headed for the exits. If she arrives in the lobby or at another exit within a certain window of time, the game pace will adjust so that she will have arrived at the exact initiation of the quarantine, replete with the drama it entails: the confused and horrified building occupants trapped, screaming, their panic and indignity peaking, with much banging on glass and screamed questions and confused weeping.
And always the rumors and speculation on what, exactly, is happening. She can participate in or incite a riotous attempt to burst through the blockade the police and hasmat suited emergency response team has set up against the doors, but this will end up repelled with tear gas and rubber bullets, at it's most extreme conclusion, after which willingness to participate in a similar venture will be nil.
If the player has Ellen show up in the lobby a certain amount of time after the quarantine, but still in the beginning stages of the game, the goings on will be less dramatic. Depending on what mode they're in after their initial attempt at exiting – which is determined by what degree of separation they are from the invasion story line unfolding on the floors above, i.e., having seen some things first hand vs. having talked to someone who saw things first hand, vs. not having talked to anyone about anything, etc. – many NPCs will either head back to the section of the building from whence they came, or find an alternative safety zone, either communal or solitary.
What NPCs populate the space will be more resigned to having been quarantined. Rumors will still abound, their nature influenced by the aforementioned degree of separation from, and the progress of, the invasion story line. As far as the lobby is concerned, information about the emergency response story line will be apparent from the state of affairs outside, as observable through the lobby windows, as well as discernible in more granular detail by a handful of other gameplay options, such as eavesdropping on a tidbits of conversation before being warned away from the window, or bribing/appealing to an officer's sympathy for information.
Later on in the game, as the emergency response story line intensifies and darkens, the lobby will become a no-man's land for NPCs, as snipers are given orders to fire at any who come within x ft. of a window or exit, out of fear that an “infected” will carry the mysterious affliction outside of the quarantine. Further, the emergency response story line events that involve large scale military actions in the building will see them staged out of the lobby – both the initial military action against the horde and the later military action against all of the building's occupants, horde and civilian NPCs alike. Towards the end of the game, the remnants of the military presence in the building will be slaughtered and/or ejected from the building via the lobby.
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