Page 22 of Defended By Love

Then, for a moment, everything goes black as the feeling of gravity and expectations upturn and dissolve.

When the blackness clears and my vision returns, I’m no longer in my home, in my pajamas. I’m back at the office.

My office.

My uncollapsed office.

Chapter 12

The office building echoes with the sounds of destruction that haven’t yet come to pass. Everything, everything is as pristine as the day I arrived for my interview. Untouched and unscathed, it’s all in its place.

My footsteps sound off through the empty office as I wander through like the last mourner in a mausoleum. I move out into the center of the office and run my fingertips over the surface of a pillar. In my mind’s eye, I can see myself clinging to it until my arms cramped with the impossibility of holding on. The shiny picture frames glint out at me from their unbroken positions on the walls, even though I know what it was like to close my eyes and pray that their shards wouldn’t come my way.

How?

I feel like the normal reaction would be to sigh and blame it on an overworked mind. I refuse to do that. I will not entertain the notion that I don’t know what I know simply because it’s impossible.

Which means that something impossible has occurred.

Perhaps I was in a simulation. Some sort of anti-theft VR.

Or corporate espionage VR. Maybe Zagreus Hart’s cronies bugged the place, knowing I’d go back for the files. Maybe everything I searched on my phone was really me entering key pieces of information into their own recording device.

Yes, I know that sounds far-fetched, but it’s considerably nearer-fetched than the idea that my faculties abandoned me. I’d sooner believe that the number one company in technological innovation has created something to make me believe I’ve lost my mind, than believe I’ve actually lost it.

On my own, I don’t do imagination. Never have. As a kid, I refused to open my ‘Santa’ gift until my parents admitted it was from them. (Keeping up with the pretense would only have humiliated us all.)

The only conclusion to draw is that I’m onto something. If the simulation scenario is what happened—although I’m open to any number of explanations—then there must be implicating information within the documents.

I leave the main foyer of the office quickly. Even though I know that none of it was real, none of it really happened, I’m still nervous to the point of panic. The images of objects nearly bludgeoning my head feel real enough to have me break out in a nervous sweat.

God, it just felt so real.

Once I’m in the file room, I relax. Files, information, statistics and the like are my friends. I know them. They’re predictable, comforting even. Besides, nothing in this room almost killed me, so that’s a real plus.

My ease doesn’t last long.

A moment later, a terrible crash rings out, severing the still silence of the slumbering office. It’s followed almost immediately with a roar of a yell that sends shivers over my entire body.

“Hailey!” the voice roars again.

I hate to say it, but it’s a voice that I know well, although last time it was saying my name in a much more intimate way. It resonates in vibrating shivers to the very center of me.

So, naturally, I hide.

I don’t know if this is a simulation or maybe projection-type gaslighting to make me think the building collapsed, but I do know that Grant is involved. His timing is too convenient. There’s the picture of him in the files—which are pretty much the only thing I am sure about. You can’t argue files.

They’re concrete. I remember seeing them before all this happened. In hindsight, I even remember Grant’s floppy hair (I remember thinking it was unprofessional).

Since the two things that I know are that Grant is bad and files are good, I opt to hide in the file room, even as he calls my name from the foyer. His voice becomes more and more frantic. There’s an edge to his voice, a waver that’s cut with a raw edge. Almost like he’s worried. About me.

As silently as I can, I scoot to the back of the file room and crouch down low between two towering boxes of files that should have long since been shredded.

Thank goodness for inefficiency.

(Except, I do make a mental note to reprimand the intern who had been given the task of dealing with these boxes.)

With my back pressed impossibly flush with the wall, I still my breathing as best as I can. My arms wrap around my over-the-shoulder bag, like the files are some sort of life raft.

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