Page 38 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
A little while later, wedgeduncomfortably into a seat on the subway, I felt like the pining heroine of a Jane Austen novel, my heart going pitter-patter with the first stirrings of love after little more than a couple of Regency dances and some sustained eye contact. All I wanted was to see Eric again. I tried picturing our glossy,perfect future together—picket fence, two dogs, lazy Sundays in bed—but reality kept intruding. The Thing had been right there, snatching people from their cars. Had it been following me and Eric? That was a terrifying thought. More and more, I was convinced that Management had bound it for a good reason. If so, we really were screwed if I didn’t find a way to stop it.
Shouldering the fate of humanity sucks, I reflected as said humanity coughed into my face and stepped on my shoes. I didn’t like the thought of Eric being hurt by the chaos I’d unleashed on the city, though. Saving the world meant saving him, too, and Amira, and even Lex. The rest of humanity didn’t deserve my help, but those three did.
As I exited the train at my stop, I glanced down the platform and noticed a woman stepping out of the next car. She was tugging a hood over her head, but not before I saw that her pale hair had been braided into a coil at the nape of her neck. My steps slowed. I knew that woman. I’d caught her staring at me on the subway last week. Then someone jostled me from behind and I lost sight of her. She was just another commuter, I told myself as I tried to find her again in the crowd of people leaving the platform. Why, then, did seeing her again make me feel uneasy?
I kept looking over my shoulder as I walked home. Maybe spotting that woman again was just a coincidence, but I certainly hadn’t imagined the Thing popping into my bedroom for a late-night chat. More and more, it felt like I was being hunted. All the more reason, then, for me to find a way to fix things.
Fourteen
The plan I devised thatevening amounted to four simple steps:
Figure out what the Thing is.
Stop it.
???
Promotion.
Laid out like that, it seemed very doable. Unfortunately, I remained stuck on Step 1 for the next couple of days. Google was surprisingly unhelpful—what is faceless monster with shadows for headgot me absolutely nowhere—and I was too busy at work to sneak away to the Repository. Blood Sacrifice Thursday came and went, the Old Ones received Their due, and before I knew it, Friday arrived and I found myself scrubbing the smell of human suffering out of one of the chairs in Ms.Crenshaw’s waiting room. I was still working at it when she stepped out of her office.
“Is the chair a lost cause?”
Settling back on my heels, I turned from where I knelt on the floor. “Maybe? That contractor really did a number on the upholstery.”
Ms.Crenshaw crossed her arms. “And it came so highly recommended. Well, we certainly won’t hire it again. I have no patience for incontinence.”
Few people do, I reflected philosophically.
I was about to get back to work when Ms.Yamada appeared in the doorway. The head of Personnel was a tiny woman with wings of white in her dark, glossy hair and a stare that could stop a charging rhino in its tracks. No one in our building was more feared. Her gaze flicked across me in momentary assessment before turning to my boss. “Good morning, Margaret. Do you have a moment?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
Ms.Yamada pursed her lips before speaking. “A number of employees have failed to report for work in recent days. More than usual.”
Ms.Crenshaw tilted her head to one side. “That’s concerning. Is it affecting our quotas?”
“It’s starting to, yes. I’m drafting in new people as quickly as I can but, as you know, there’s significant lag time in getting them trained up. Our quarterly projections are trending downward.”
Keeping my head down, I scrubbed at the chair’s upholstery while listening closely.
“Agents of the Seraphic Conclave have been detected in the city,” Ms.Crenshaw said. “Could they be in the midst of a purge?”
