Page 59 of Girl, Empty
'Which server room?'
'B-1.The basement.'
Noah frowned.‘The big one.Probably just an error with the thermometer though.It happens in this cold.’
‘I hope so.Are you coming?’
‘Been a while since I heard that.’
Amanda barely caught the joke, and she couldn’t find the will to laugh.If their servers failed, the company would bleed cash until they were fixed.‘Come on.’
Noah fell in step behind as they made their way along the corridor and down the stairwell.By the time they reached the bottom, Amanda could see her breath in the air.
She pulled out her keycard and pressed it to the panel.It flashed green and Amanda pushed through into the downstairs corridor.The server room lay at the deep end.
‘Whoa, kinda chilly down here isn’t it?’Noah said.
‘Yeah.Even for January.’
‘You know,chillyis the only word that means something both hot and cold.Think about that.’
With every step down the corridor, the temperature dropped that little bit more.‘I will,’ Amanda lied.
‘Jesus Christ, do we have air con in here or something?’
‘No.Haven’t you been down here before?’
‘I don’t have access down here.’
‘It’s the building’s armpit so you’re not missing much.The only air con is in the server rooms.’
They reached the entrance to server room B-1.It was an electronic door, like an elevator.The thermostat outside drew Amanda’s attention.
‘What the hell?30 degrees?’
‘What’s it supposed to be at?’
’64, constantly.’Amanda jabbed the up-arrow on the panel, but the number wouldn’t rise.It remained at a constant 30.‘This is freezing.Did someone screw around with this?Was Jeff down here?’
‘He couldn’t.Only you have access down here, you paranoid freak.’
Amanda swiped her keycard and the door to the server room slid open.The cold air blew out in a violent breath and sucked the air from her lungs.It was like opening the front door mid-storm.‘Holy… this is all wrong.’
‘You’re not kidding.’Noah wrapped his arms around himself.‘I should have brought a jacket.’
‘I’m going in.Stay back.Keep an eye on the temp gauge.There might be something screwy with the air con unit.’
‘Hurry up.You’ll turn to a snowman in there,’ Noah said as he prodded the thermostat.‘I’ll work my magic on this thing.’
Amanda crossed the threshold into the Arctic conditions of the server room and checked the conditions of the hard drives themselves.They’d already developed a layer of frost on their cases, which meant it had been freezing down here since before she got that notification on her cell.The cold burned her lungs, and only worsened when she got closer to the air con unit on the far wall.
Nothing about it looked screwy.There were no control buttons on the thing itself, so Amanda wasn’t sure what she expected to find.She needed to get out of here and call the company that installed it, because while she could design apps in a heartbeat, she knew very little about air con tech.
She rushed to the exit and breathed a sigh of relief.She found Noah attacking the thermostat controls with two thumbs.‘It’s dead.Can’t turn it off or anything.It’s been overridden.’
The door shut behind them and brought brief respite from the cold.‘Can you unlock it?’
‘Me?What am I, some kind of air con guru?I don’t have a clue how this thing works.Did you check the access panel?’
