Page 29 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
I shuddered.
“Now,” she went on briskly, “I have a meeting in Analysis and Logistics. Tidy up those teeth and then get in touch with R&D. Some of our investors are starting to grow impatient with our lack of progress in creating a more docile global population. Tell our people that I want actionable proposals on my desk by Friday, and if I’m not satisfied, they’ll spend the next two weeks suffering unimaginable agonies at a corporate retreat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Once she was gone, I turned and stared fiercely at the scattered teeth, willing them to reveal their answers. No matter how hard Ipeered, though, they just looked like teeth to me. With a sigh, I swept them back into a small velvet bag and retreated to my desk.
What I needed, I thought, were answers. I needed someone to tell me what I’d freed in that elevator, and then how to stop it from killing everyone. Beyond a few people like Amira and Eric, I wasn’t really invested in the survival of humanity. What had they ever done for me? At the same time, there wasn’t any point in angling for a position in middle management if there was nothing outside this building but a postapocalyptic wasteland. I wanted centuries to grind the jocks and beauty queens into the dirt, and I couldn’t do that if they were devoured by the Thing. Stopping it was still my best chance to have everything I’d ever wanted.
I spent the rest of the morning tossing those teeth onto my desk, hoping for a hint as to what to do next. If it was there, though, I couldn’t see it.
At noon precisely, I mademy way to the elevators for my lunch date with Lydia. My heart sank a little, though, when I found Deborah waiting there instead. She worked for Barney Samuels, and she’d only just returned from the Abyss after being translocated there last week by the Cursed Periapt of Anhk-Magon. Deborah had been roughly my age when she disappeared, but time in the Abyss tended to be a little wonky and she now looked to be in her mid-forties, her face and hands both covered in a network of fine scars. No one knew what she’d endured in her two subjective decades down there, but when she discovered that Mr.Samuels had replaced her, she’d challenged his new assistant to a duel and promptly hacked off poor Blaine’s arm with a sword of smoking ice. After that, everyone tried to stay on her good side.
“Hi there,” I said, pausing a careful distance away.
Deborah’s head whipped around, teeth bared in a faint grimace, though she relaxed when she saw it was me. “Oh. Hi, Colin.”
“How’re you?”
“Alive. For now.”
An awkward silence descended.
“Going down to lunch?” I asked eventually.
“Yes.”
“It’s pierogies today, I think.”
She stared at me. “Unless they are filled with the congealed blood of my enemies, I do not want pierogies.”
“Okay. I think there are chicken sandwiches, too.”
Her expression brightened. “I love chicken sandwiches. They’re so crispy.”
The elevator arrived then, thankfully. As we got on, something occurred to me. “Do you know about the, uh, competition for the two spots in middle management?” I asked as I pressed the button for the tenth floor.
Deborah nodded. “Yes. Mr.Samuels asked me to recuse myself.”
“Why?”
“Because my slaughtering all of you is a foregone conclusion.”
I blinked at her.
“Mr.Samuels would like me to slaughter fewer people overall, and devote more time instead to improving my organizational skills.”
“Huh.”
“I have also forgotten how to use Microsoft Teams,” she confided. “We didn’t have Teams in the Abyss.”
“I guess the Abyss isn’t that bad after all,” I joked weakly.
Her gaze bored into me.
“Um. I mean—”
“I hope you survive,” she interrupted. “I enjoy your bow ties.”
