Page 43 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
Mouth dry, I stared at the pendant I’d picked up from the ground the day before. “I don’t understand.”
“Why do you have this?”
“They dropped it.”
“ ‘They’?”
“The Firing Squad.” She stared at me, expressionless. “They came for me yesterday. You must know that.”
The silence deepened. “Why would the company send a remediation team after you?” Ms.Crenshaw finally asked.
I opened my mouth and then closed it again.
“Have you done something that merits termination, Colin?”
“N-no,” I stammered instinctively. “Of course not.”
“And yet you believe the Firing Squad attempted to detain you.”
I watched her uncertainly. “They’ve been following me. Two of them. And yesterday they—” I trailed off under her impassive scrutiny.
“If our people wanted you gone, Colin, you would not be herenow.” Ms.Crenshaw said that with a calm certainty that made my skin crawl. “Where did this happen?”
“Fort Tryon Park.”
“You were alone?”
I held her gaze with effort. “Yes.”
“And you said there were two assailants?”
“A man and a woman. I’d seen them both before. Following me.”
“How did you evade them yesterday?”
“Some other people showed up,” I lied, thinking fast. If the companyhadn’ttargeted me after all, I had to keep Eric out of this. “They scared them away. Then I found this lying on the ground.” I nodded at the pendant on the table.
She studied me carefully. “And you brought it here this morning. Why?”
“I was going to hand it in. Along with myself. To you.”
“Because you believed the company wanted you dead.”
I hesitated. “Because I couldn’t imagine any other reason why I would be followed.”
“I see.” Ms.Crenshaw stayed completely still, arms folded, weighing me with icy consideration. Then she picked up the pendant and studied it. “We would never issue something so ostentatious to our people. This belonged to an agent of the Seraphic Conclave. It’s imbued with basic magicks intended to locate the person carrying it.” One corner of her lip curled upward in an eloquent expression of disdain. “Rather like microchipping a dog.”
“Wait,” I started to say, “so—”
“It wasn’t us who came after you, Colin. You were targeted by dangerous idealists who want everyone in this building dead.”
I stared at her, jaw slack.
Ms.Crenshaw held the pendant in the palm of her hand and spoke a rapid series of syllables. Then she tossed it back onto the table in front of me where it began to smoke and twist, the metal bubbling until it had been reduced to a smoldering piece of slag.
My heart raced as I looked back up at my boss. Would she destroy me next? “Ms.Crenshaw, I didn’t know,” I blurted. “I really didn’t.”
“Bringing a Conclave talisman onto the premises constitutes a serious security breach. If I suspected you knowingly smuggled it in here…” She let the rest of that sentence hang unsaid in the air between us.
