Page 87 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
“It’s either company loyalty or some kind of unbreakable compulsion.” Eyeing the shivering workers, I added, “My guess is compulsion.”
“That’s horrible.”
“No, that’s corporate capitalism. You can’t sell coffee if your employees don’t work.” I put an arm around her shoulders. “How are you doing?”
Amira shook her head slowly as she leaned into me. “I’m still wondering if this is some wild dream. But even if it is, I don’t want to wake up. Not yet, anyhow.”
“Really?”
“Really. I talked with Lex for hours last night. There are entire universes out there that no one has seen before! Worlds upon worlds of amazing things. How could any scientist not be excited by that?”
I smiled down at her. “I’m glad you’re here. Keeping all of this from you for the past two years was really hard.”
“I’m starting to understand why it has to be secret. I can’t imagine what people would do if they discovered even a tiny fraction of what’s really out there.” After a pause, she asked, “What’s going to happen with you and Eric?”
I’d been trying not to think about the future, or anything at allpast the next few hours. “I have no idea,” I said. “He lied about a lot of things. But then, so did I. He’s sworn to stop people like me, and I—” I hesitated, then finished quietly, “I won’t allow myself to be stopped. By him, or anyone else.”
Amira peered up into my face with a concerned expression. “I’m not sure I like this side of you.”
“Really?” I murmured. “It’s growing on me.”
Back at Dark Enterprises, thethree of us sipped our coffees and nibbled on rubbery croissants while taking stock of our preparations. “Thanks to that book you found,” Lex said, “I’m pretty much finished with translating the tablet. There’s a clause at the very end I still don’t understand, though. Something about an assurance or safeguard.”
“Sounds important,” Amira said.
“I’m actually not sure it is.” Tapping the tablet with a finger, Lex said, “It’s separate from the ritual design. I think it was something extra Management wanted to note down, maybe some kind of defense against a contractor they used to compute the higher-level geometry.”
“Speaking of which,” Amira added, “I’m close to a means of conceptualizing multidimensional space in purely imaginative terms that anyone can follow. It’s not easy, though. I don’t have any experience teaching this stuff.”
“You’ll get it,” Lex told her confidently, and she smiled as she looked down into her cappuccino.
I finished my latte. “While you two nerd out, I’m going to visit Supplies and Procurement. There are some supplies I need. Meet you back here in an hour or so.”
In fact, my sole reason for visiting S&P was a tantalizing reference to something called “Sunfire.” I’d found it the night before while perusing the Forbidden section, and while the anonymous author had advised against “tampering with such destructive and unstable magicks,” I thought it sounded like exactly what we needed to face down a ravenous shadow monster. Helpfully, someone had written a series of numbers in the margin that pointed to a storeroom on the third floor. Apparently, I wasn’t the only employee to be tempted by the promise of unstable destruction.
Knowing that most of the building was empty somehow made the silent watchfulness of the third floor even creepier. I rounded each corner cautiously as I worked my way through the warren of hallways, reaching the storeroom I wanted after nearly thirty minutes of walking. The room itself was small, its walls lined with no more than two dozen items, and waiting there was the object I sought, a small glass sphere that pulsed with gentle light. It didn’t look like much, but a sign mounted in front of it readHIGHLY VOLATILE—EXECUTIVE USE ONLY. Tied around the sphere with twine was a small tag on which was written a single word.
“You’re coming with me,” I murmured as I plucked the sphere from the shelf and dropped it into my pocket. Whatever The-One-Who-Hungers threw at us, I’d be ready.
Back in the elevator, I was about to punch the button for the eleventh floor when I hesitated. Then, on a whim, I hit the six instead. Moments later, the doors rolled open on Human Resources. Most of the lights were out, leaving the cubicle farm cloaked in gloom, but after two years of working there I could have navigated the entire floor with my eyes closed. The room I wanted was surrounded by extraction suites, all of them empty now, and the deep silence, unbroken by so much as a sob or a whimper, felt wrong somehow.
It took me only a minute of rummaging through HR’s medical supplies to find a scalpel handle and a size 20 blade in a foil packet. I studied them both for a long moment, then unwrapped the blade and slotted it onto the handle before carefully sliding it into my other pocket, the one with the business card.Insurance, I thought as I closed the door behind me.Just in case.
I was skirting the edge of the darkened cubicle farm when I realized I wasn’t alone on the sixth floor after all. Sunil approached from the other direction, hair flopping untidily across his forehead and his dress shirt deeply wrinkled. In his arms he clutched several clay vessels, used by the company for thousands of years to store human resources. When he saw me, he jumped and fumbled with the containers held to his chest. “Christ,” he breathed, the corner of one eye ticcing spasmodically. “What the fuck are you doing here, Harris?”
“None of your business. What areyoudoing here?”
His mouth twisted as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “The board has me fetching resources for whatever they’re doing up on the roof.”
That made me pause. “They’re conducting their ritual on the roof?”
“Yeah. I’ve spent the whole morning schlepping crap up there, and they keep asking for more.” His eye twitched repeatedly. “They’re trying to draw that fucking monsterback here. Crenshaw’s got balls of steel, but the rest are shitting themselves. And I’m going to have tobethere, ‘managing resources,’ whatever the fuck that means.” His voice grew louder as he spoke, the words coming faster and faster. “I didn’t sign on for this, Harris. That thing is going to show up andmurdereveryone on that roof! You know what? Fuck that. Fuck Dark Enterprises. At the firstwhiffof trouble, I’m out. This job isn’t worth dying for!” He finally ran out of breath and stared at me with wide, frightened eyes, chest rising and falling rapidly.
I shook my head in disgust. “You know what your problem is, Sunil? You’re not committed to this company or its mission. Even when you were making my life miserable in HR, I never stopped believing in Dark Enterprises and what it represents—the idea that anything is possible, if you’re willing to reach for it. That alone makes this job worth dying for.” Pausing, I studied him as if for the first time. “You never had the ambition to be truly great. That’s why, whatever happens tonight, this is as high as you’ll ever go.”
I left him there in the murky half-light and walked back to the elevators, departing the sixth floor for the last time.
Back in the Repository, Ifound Amira pacing circles around our little corner of the Obsolete section, a book open in her hands. “Where’s Lex?” I asked as I joined her.
