Page 79 of Stranded

I can’t believe that to be true in this day and age. I tried using find my phone on both of them but their phones just show their last location as Perth, meaning they probably switched them off before take off.

Wiping the sweat from my brow, I head to the showers to clean myself off. I’m in here a minimum of twice a day now, trying to keep my anger in check. But everyday it gets harder. They’ve been gone for over six weeks now.Six god-damned weeks.

I’ve failed them. But I refuse to give up, I’ll never stop looking for them until I find out where they are and what happened. Was it related to what they were looking into? I had a few private eyes follow Frank for three weeks, but they found no indication that he was somehow holding them somewhere.

What would King do if he was here, and I was the one missing? He’d probably be at the office non-stop trying to invent some new tech to help. He wasn’t a computer engineer himself, but he knew how things worked and was enough of a tech whiz to help found our company. He could take Bower and my crazy ideas and figure out if they were actually possible or not. Then we’d take the viable options to our team to build out fully.

But without his critical thinking skills and Bower’s wild card ideas, I was just left with me…and what good was I?

I finish showering and get dressed in my slacks and light blue dress shirt with a navy tie. At least dressed like this, I felt like I was wearing my own form of armor, keeping the rest of the world from knowing what was going on in my head. Fake it till you make it, as they say.

Outside, Arnold is waiting for me and after a slight detour through the drive thru for some food, he drops me off at Titan Tech.

I push open the glass door and am immediately greeted by our receptionist, Lisa. “Mr. Benson! I didn’t realize you were coming in today.”

“Do I need permission to come to my own company?” I ask, not bothering to look at her as I swipe my ID card and it buzzes me through the turnstile.

“No! Of course not! If I knew, I would have had coffee waiting for you.”

“That’s fine, Lisa. Just send one up to my office when it’s ready. Actually—” I stop before I reach the elevator and look at my watch. One o’clock in the afternoon. Finally, looking at her. “Has anyone left for lunch today?”

“No sir, they’ve all been working hard since eight this morning. Some of them were already here when I arrived.”

My team worked incredibly hard, and even more so these past six weeks as they tried to figure out a way to track down Bower and King.

“Can you call Luigi’s and order their Italian Feast, enough for the whole team, including yourself?” I want to give my team something to show my appreciation. I paid them well, but it didn't mean I didn't appreciate the extra efforts they were taking to find a solution, even if I didn’t show it most of the time.

“Of course, sir! I’ll get right on that, then I’ll bring you your coffee.” She picks up the phone and I nod my head, pressing the call button for the elevator.

Our building was only four floors, but we owned the entire thing. The top floor was where the three of us had offices, along with a few other admin staff and several meeting rooms.

Floors two and three were where most of the team worked. They were wide open spaces filled with tech and computers.

The first floor, besides reception, had an additional meeting room, storage and a large kitchen and dining area. The building wasn’t nearly as large or ostentatious as our competitors, but that’s what I liked about it. Just because we could afford a forty story monstrous tower, didn't mean we needed one. The building was perfect for us, big enough to house our team comfortably without having wasted space.

After stashing my bag and jacket in my office and taking a quick glance at my emails, Lisa enters with my coffee. “The food will be here in thirty minutes, I’ll have it taken to the dining hall and message the team once it’s arrived,” she tells me as she saunters up to my desk.

Instead of placing the coffee down, she holds it out to me, waiting for me to take it. I sigh, I hate when she does that. I don't enjoy physical contact with women, it sets me on edge and makes my skin crawl.

“You can put it there,” I tell her, pointing to an empty spot on my desk without lifting my gaze from my computer screen. She sets it down, but I notice out of the corner of my eye that she doesn't move, she just stands there, twiddling her thumbs like she wants to say something.

I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down so I don’t snap at her. “Was there somethingelse?”

“Oh, I… I just wanted to say it’s admirable how much you care about your business partners, and how hard you are working to try to find them.” I can’t stop the frown from covering my face. They weren’t just my business partners, they were my best friends, my brothers. They were my family. “If you ever need someone to talk to, you know you can always come to me?”

So that’s what this is about? She wants me to cry on her shoulder? She’s always hinted at wanting more than an employee-boss relationship with me… and my brothers, but I have zero interest, nor do Bower or King. They know to keep things professional and not mix business with their personal lives. I’d love to get rid of Lisa but she hasn’t crossed the line of being inappropriate yet, she just skates it enough that we know what she wants without saying anything that could get her fired.

“Let me know when lunch is here,” I say in dismissal. I sense her shoulders drop in disappointment, but it says how much she really doesn't know me if she expected me to give any reaction to her offer. Being closer to her would be no comfort to me, in fact, it would make me feel worse.

“What is that?” I ask, looking over Hendrix's shoulder at the monitors full of what looks like ocean currents combined with data streams. “Is that Siren?”

Siren was one of the many AI interfaces the team has been working on over the years. It was originally designed for climate and environmental modeling, disaster prediction, and real-time global monitoring, it’s still a work in progress but has come a long way in five years.

“Yes. I don’t know if it will work, but I had an idea.” I can hear the excitement he’s holding back. He has what he thinks is a good idea, but is afraid to show too much enthusiasm and have it fail.

But it doesn’t matter because his excitement is infectious, especially when it comes to finding my brothers, we’ve had no solid ideas in weeks.

“Explain.”

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