Finn

55… 56… 57… 58… 59… 1:28 pm. It’s showtime. I flung the car door open and stepped out, as ready and energized as I was ever going to be. But unfortunately, the icy pavement hidden under the coating of snow had other plans. Coupled with the sudden burst of freezing air that felt like stepping into a blast chiller, my step slid back from under me, as did the next step I took to regain balance, leaving me running idly and flinging my arms in the air before crashing face-first against the open car door. I dragged myself up, slammed the door shut, pulled up my stupid 36x34 work pants, and retightened the shitty 2007 canvas belt. Fucking perfect. The one time I get to do something important and the universe takes a fat shit in my mouth.

I swiped my feet around the ice to test the waters again and walked as light on my feet as I could towards the towering HQ. One hand held my eight-pound backpack and the other was sitting in my pocket holding the pants up, which wouldn’t stay up without an unreasonable level of human intervention as the notches on the belt didn’t go back far enough so it would be able to do its fucking job.

The parking lot was the size of one you’d find at a grocery store, only it sacrificed width (A.K.A. efficiency) for excessive length. My car was parked three quarters down it, seeing as it was the only area with free spaces that’s also crowded enough to keep the lingering eyes of any employees from noticing that I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes. But as it turned out, nobody showed up to even see the car, and I’m three quarters down the lot with the wind blowing right into me and my beet red XXL electrician’s T-shirt that served as my lone piece of weather body armor. It predictably did nothing to keep me from violently shivering, the sight of which would have made any passerby think I was convulsing and in immediate need of an ambulance, which coupled with the crushing weight of my backpack made my chest feel like caving in. My abs could have deflected bullets in that moment. I will happily let it be known that winters in the state of Ohio—or as I like to call it, the Midwest’s avalanche of squirrel shit so large it has its own climate and ecosystem—have long been the bane of my very existence, but I refuse to admit that I ever let it get the better of me, especially not in a moment like this.

With the apparent lack of a sidewalk in between the parked cars, I had to tread as close as I could around them where the ice didn’t reach, regularly weaving myself around in a jig-jag as most of their drivers didn’t seem to see there was an extra foot of parking space in front of them. I also made a point to keep a consistent eye over my back for anyone driving behind me to avoid their side mirrors hitting me. The awkward walk, the blistering cold, and having to sling a heavy-ass backpack over my shoulders with one arm while tiptoeing to keep from slipping all combined into the longest four-minute walk across a parking lot that can be experienced. I just hope this will all have been worth it in the end, however slim that chance is.

Most of my body was cramping/stiff and my hands were dead numb when I finally reached the HQ entrance. The entire wall in front of me was made up of only three glass panes: two on each side of the glass door and one much smaller one above it. The knob on the door was shaped like the Eclipse logo. I pulled on it, and of course, it was locked. I put my face up to the glass to find someone in the lobby’s vast expanse who could open the door for me, but it was empty. Fuck. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

I kept looking around inside, hoping somebody was close enough to hear me pounding on the door, to no avail. The sofas by the fireplace were empty and the bar was unattended, which it isn’t supposed to be at this hour. There was a hallway left of the fireplace, but it also appeared empty after I moved along the windows to see inside. I walked back to the door and slammed my head on it. 1:33. Goddammit.

I was about to resort to forcing the door open until a woman finally popped out from the hallway and noticed me. She speed-walked over, shuffled through her dozen keys, and unlocked and opened the door. “Hi! You’re here about the cracked pipes, right?” she asked, blocking the entire doorway. She looked and sounded like a Tina Fey character from a straight-to-DVD romantic comedy, only if Tina Fey quit midway through filming and was substituted by a wine-drunk Sarah Palin. There’s no simpler way of putting it.

“Yeah.”

“Awesome! Oh my god, you would not believe how bad it’s been here since that stupid snowstorm knocked out our power last… Tuesday, was it? Yeah, I think it was Tuesday. The power was out for almost the entire day, and the emergency power only lasted, like, 15 minutes. It was totally miserable, like, it got so dark that those of us who didn’t have sunlight had to use the flashlights on our phones to keep from bumping into each other. It got super cold too, like, oh my gosh did it get cold. It was complete chaos on our floor. I swear to God, nobody had a worse time than we did.”

So this is what it’s going to be now. Fuck you too, universe.

I attempted to peep my head around to see inside, but her head moved with it. “I tried to get my coworkers to huddle up for warmth, but of course, Janice just had to be there to ruin it for everyone. She thinks she’s better than everyone else and that I’m ‘the most careless and irritating person she’s ever met.’ Can you believe it? She even almost punched my friend Jared when he offered her his son’s Spider-Man blanket! She’s just cruel! When I started here last summer, I would say good morning to her almost every day, and every day she would have some new snarky comment for me, always something along the lines of ‘Eff off,’ and ‘Stop talking to me.’ I will never understand how she makes more money than the rest of us. I mean, we all clearly deserve it more! I try telling my boss all the time that she’s a stuck-up bitch who treats everybody like garbage, and what does he do about it? Gives her a promotion a week later, that’s what! It’s almost like they’re married or something; he always lets her get away with these things. I have outlined her behavior in great detail to him, and he’s never even bothered to speak with her about it! It’s unbelievable! But I’ve gone on enough of tangent about Janice. Where was I before? Oh, yeah! The blackout!”

I had to physically restrain myself from hitting my head on the door. It wasn’t enough to keep it from shaking out of sheer impatience, which the rest of my body was still doing due to the wind chill on my back. “So,” she continued obliviously, “shortly after the power went out, the guy on the loudspeaker said that it was going to be fixed in 20 minutes, which we were all fine with, of course. I mean, it was only 10:00 in the morning, so it wasn’t like we were super invested in our work or anything. But what happened 20 minutes later when the power was supposed to come back on? The emergency power went out, that’s what! I thought emergency power was supposed to last at least a few hours, but 20 minutes? That’s just ridiculous! You know, I bet it was Carol’s fault. She always leaves her computer on, even after going home. I’m always the one who has to turn it off for her, plus I have to clean up her ungodly amount of snack food wrappers that she leaves all over the floor. I should honestly be getting paid for being the janitor here too.”

I discreetly scooted backward to see inside the lobby a little better, and lo and behold, there was a security camera directly behind her head above the bar. I would’ve looked at my watch to see how much time I had left, but I didn’t want to give her anything else to complain about. “...and don’t even get me started on the circus that is the east wing. Those people were screaming their heads off the entire time like 6-year-olds in a jungle gym. I was about ready to run over there and slap every single one of them, but then the boss man finally showed up and told everyone that we could go home at four o’clock! God, it was just an absolute nightmare.”

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have telekinesis. It’s usually in the context of situations with people like this and me imagining gouging their eyes out. But right now, I don’t know if I would do it to her or myself.

“And the days after that weren’t any less miserable! Even after the power went back on, the heating was completely screwed so we were still freezing our butts off trying to do our jobs, and it wasn’t until yesterday, three whole days later, that they finally figured out what was causing it! And now you’re finally here, and—oh gosh, I’m talking too much, aren’t I? You have a job to do, and here I am, just blabbering on about my colleagues and working conditions. You clearly have a lot of work to do, so I’ll get out of your way.”

The moment continued for multiple seconds, and she was still in my way. I had been freezing my ass off for the past ten minutes out here and I didn’t want to outright tell her, “Get the fuck out of the doorway,” so instead I asked the obvious question: “Where exactly are the cracked pipes at?”

“Oh! Didn’t they tell you? They’re in some unused storage room on the 9th floor where we keep a bunch of old PCs and junk. The elevator is up the stairs and down the hall to the left. Oh, and I’m still standing in your way, aren’t I? Gosh, I’m sorry about that.” She finally moved aside. “Good luck!” I checked my watch as I walked in. 1:38. Fuck. I have 12 minutes before the security guard’s lunch ends. This can still work if I go fast. “Wait!” She yelled, freezing my already-frozen ass in place. “Monday! The snowstorm was on Monday! I forgot!” I resumed walking, albeit much faster.

There was no stairway in view as I entered, but the hallway the woman came out of had to lead somewhere. I didn’t hear her say anything as I walked down it, so it should’ve been the right way. Then I reached its end to find it just led to bathrooms. Dammit, where the hell are the stairs supposed to be? Did she just expect me to know? I walked back out to the lobby. The woman was outside walking to her car. This hallway is the only spot in this place that leads anywhere, so what the hell am I missing? I stepped back into the hallway. There was a door on the right with a metal plate of the same color instead of handle and a tiny label on it that said “Stairs.” 1:39. Good fucking Christ.

I pushed through the door and sprinted up the carpeted stairs two at a time. The second floor was split into two different halls; one ahead and the other to my left. “The elevator is up the stairs and down the hall to the left.” Down the hall to my left, or down the hall ahead and then to the left? The corridor to the left was lined with doorways to other rooms not labeled “elevator” and led to an office lined with cubicles, while the hallway ahead was twice as long but only had a bathroom on the right and an intersection at the end. Either the people who designed this building did a remarkably unimpressive job crafting the HQ of one of the largest tech companies in the region, or I just happened to come in through their shittiest entrance. But no HQ would be stupid enough to make me walk through an active office space just to reach the elevator. One would have to be down the hall ahead for their shareholders and business partners and shit to use.

So I walked to the end of it, only to find both halls at the intersection just led to more goddamn offices, no elevator in sight down either of them. Fuck you, architects. I walked to the left, past private management offices and meeting rooms, and peeked my head into the office. The cubicle walls were just tall enough that I couldn’t see over them, but I could see down the path to the left another entrance along the wall, meaning this was the same office the corridor left of the stairs led to. The lighting and cubicles were piercingly white and unappealing and the carpeting was replaced with tile, combining into a setting pulled straight out of The Matrix. With no other options, I tried to speed down the office aisle without drawing the attention of employees, and to my luck, just a few of the cubicles I passed were occupied—I guess Veteran’s Day is good for something after all. It was a strangely dull look for such a massive tech venture rather than a paper company, but I don’t know anything about the interiors of other tech companies to compare it to.

I reached the end of the pathway in front of an empty cubicle against the wall. To my right, the aisle traveled deeper into the officescape with no visible elevator. The end of the aisle to my left led down outside the office to another hallway. “Down the hall to the left.” I looked harder at the distant hallway to my left. Is that was she was talking about? Is it somewhere back there?

Stolen novel; please report.

With no time to waste (except the time I’ve already wasted), I made another run down the office aisles past the line of vision of three more faceless employees. Against the wall a few feet ahead of me was a set of elevator buttons. Only after seeing that did I notice the elevator doors next to it that was camouflaged in a dark blue paint that matched the carpeting along the walls around it. And that makes yet another valuable minute of my time burnt away looking for a fucking elevator. I sprinted to it and punched the up button. As I waited for it to travel down, I slid in my earpiece from my pocket and called Graham.

“Yo. Are you in yet?” he asked from the other line.

“I had to sit through several minutes of an employee blocking the entrance to complain about her experience with the blackout and spent another two searching for the elevator, but I’m just about there, yes.” The elevator door opened. Empty. And small. I leaped in and pushed the button for the 9th floor.

“Wait, you’re still not in that room yet? Shitfuck, you barely have ten minutes left! You need to move double-time and get your ass out of there, or we’re fucked six ways from Sunday.”

“Thanks for the recycled metaphor. I’ll make sure to tell the elevator that.”

The elevator stopped on floor 4. Fuck. I ripped my earpiece out just as the doors opened and retreated to the back left corner facing the door. A man walked in and stood in the back right corner, also facing the door. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt, a plain ball cap, and partially tinted aviator sunglasses. If he was trying not to look like a midlife-crisis CIA agent that orchestrates terrorist attacks in Latin America, he did a shit job of that.

I could feel my blood pressure starting to climb as the seconds ticked by. The way he glanced at me walking in, along with his general demeanor and outfit, gave an unshakeable feeling that he was here to either arrest or stab me. Fuck, did Eclipse know we were coming? Is this how they handle intruders? No. No, there is no way they could have known. He might just be a sales guy who’s very serious about his job… or something.

The elevator door shut. I kept facing straight at the door, as did he. Time began trudging in slow motion as I analyzed everything I could see him doing from the corner of my eye. My focus didn’t leave his hands, which were folded in front of him. If he’s going to jump me, I’m not going to be taken off guard.

The elevator started rising. His head started turning towards me, making my body twitch for a split second. Fuck. I hope he didn’t see that. Then he looked back. His head veered downward the slightest bit, but enough for me to notice. He had to have been eyeballing the elevator buttons right in front of him. Which one specifically, I couldn’t say. He peeked over at me again, smirked, and then looked back at the door. He still stood in place, motionless.

Then his hands started moving. He reached to grab something from his pockets. I began to tense up until he brought out his cell phone. The case looked metallic, almost like it was bulletproof. I turned myself just over an inch towards him to see what he was really doing and be ready if he was plotting anything else. His phone was held slightly low, while his eyes were obviously looking above it. He’s still staring at the damn buttons. Did he know I knew he was looking at them a second ago and is using his phone to trick me and look at them again? What the fuck would he do that for? Am I just being paranoid?

The elevator bell dinged. 5th floor. He waited for a second and then put his phone back in his pocket. The faint smirk from earlier returned to his face. Is he actively trying to fuck with me? Is that all this is? His hands moved again. His right hand grabbed the handrail. It could be a ploy to etch closer to the buttons. But what the hell does he want with the stupid buttons? If he wanted to push a button for his floor, why didn’t he when walking in? Is he also going to floor 9? I took a deep breath to ease my obvious tension without being loud enough to make the tension audible.

6th floor. I glanced over to the buttons to get an idea of his intentions without losing focus of his hands. The floor buttons started at 2 and went up to 34, even though there are 35 stories. The two buttons sitting below floor 2 were P1 and P2, presumably the parking garage. Below those are the open/close buttons for the door and a button just labeled “B” next to them. Below that is—wait. I heard him move again. His right hand reached up to scratch his hair and moved back to the handrail. He placed it farther out this time. You motherfucker. Stop doing this.

He moved his left hand into his coat pocket and turned his back against the other wall, facing at me. To hit the buttons, he would only have to reach from his side now. I veered my eyes to the left so he couldn’t tell I was watching him, though I could tell he was watching me. I felt a little ballsy and turned to face him as well, although only looking at the wall to the left. Barely three feet separated us in this steel box. Both hands were in my pockets holding my pants up. I lifted them up so my back could hold them up against the handrail behind me, and grabbed the rail with my free hands. He did the same. Now I have to keep a closer eye on his right hand. I couldn’t see anything happening, but I could feel him moving it closer to the buttons.

7th floor. There were two more buttons I didn’t get a look at, and I couldn’t look at them without him noticing. Just wait it out. There are only two more floors left, and then I can get off. Maybe he’s just impatient and is waiting to reach my floor so he can push the button for his… No, that’s not a thing people do. Shit. I can’t just wait this out, he’s trying to do something. He knows what I’m doing here. I darted my eyes over at the buttons to see the two I missed. On the left is the alarm button, and on the right is… the emergency stop. On any other elevator, the emergency stop would typically have a keyhole. Here it’s only a button. Uh oh.

My eyes widened the slightest bit, but it was enough for the guy to notice. Right when we reached the 8th floor, the act ended. I kicked his arm against the wall as it shot out to stop the elevator. His left hand reached out for it instead. I locked my arms around the handrails to hold my body up as I kicked my other foot out to pin that hand on the wall as well. My body strength quickly faltered due to the terrible posture and heavy backpack weighing me down, and his left hand easily slipped out and punched the button. The sudden stop of the elevator, along with losing a foothold, nearly made me crash on the floor if not for my grip on the handrail. My other foot pinning his other arm fell as well, freeing him completely. My back was badly slouched, my ass hovered an inch away from the ground, and I couldn’t quickly pull myself up thanks to the backpack weight. It’s a bad position to be in, but it’s one I have to make the most of.

Before he could lunge at me, I hooked my right foot on the handrail to my side and kicked his face into the corner of the wall with the other. His right hand tried to grab my leg, so I unlatched my right foot and mashed the hand into his face too. My bout with the freezing air outside gave my body the stiffness it needed to press harder than he could resist. His left leg reached over my hovering body and kicked down on my chest, but my improved grip on the rail protected me from being flattened onto the floor, if not the pain of shoe treads scraping on my chest. He grabbed at the foot that was cramming his face in the wall with his free hand and barely pulled it back enough to scrape his head free, but my other leg kept his arm pinned on the wall. My leverage vanished with my left leg detained, and he pulled his arm free with ease, but not without painful shoe marks left on it. Before he could grab my right leg, I planted it back on the ground, pulled my detained leg back as hard as I could, and slingshot it back into his face.

With both legs free, I finally dragged myself back to a normal standing position. I slid my backpack off, snatched it by the handle, and lobbed it at his head. He tried blocking it with his hands, but its weight must have caught him off guard and sent him tumbled back. My shitty pants almost dropped immediately as I straightened my legs and I had to tug them back up, giving the guy time to recover. Visibly disoriented, he swung at me from the right, which I easily ducked under, and I pushed him into the door face first. He saw the buttons once more, punched the emergency stop again to undo it, and then moved his hand up to press the B button. I kicked his hand into the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th-floor buttons to buy me some more time. Either I’m really good at this, or he’s really bad.

I hit him in the forehead with my lower palm, which didn’t appear to hurt him as much as it should have. His right leg lifted around my side with acrobatic flexibility and kicked my head against the corner, sending a painful shock through my brain. He gripped my right leg when I tried to retaliate. He held me in place as the door opened on the 6th floor, and when it shut, I slightly hopped with my left leg and dropped myself on the ground, scraping my face out from under his foot and pulling my right leg free. His right foot got caught on the handrail on the way down, and I kicked his other foot out, dropping him and leaving his legs splitting from opposite corners of the elevator. That position had to have torn something, but he didn’t make a single sound. He tried scooting his left foot in and lifting from the handrail to stand back up, so I shot up and kicked the back of his knee to knock him back down.

I stuck my foot between the joints in his left leg as the door opened on the 3rd floor. I saw him trying to pull up by the handrail his leg was caught on, and as the door shut, I grabbed and slammed his head into it. With all the damage done to his head, he doesn’t seem to be phased by it. This guy is like a fucking drone. I crouched, put him in a nelson hold, and laid back to pull his arms away, wrapping my left leg around his free one. As we approached the second floor, he started pushing up hard, lifting both of us off the ground with his legs alone and freeing his right foot from the rail. After nearly standing straight up, he slammed me back into the wall even harder. The jolt of my spine smashing against the rail made me I lose grip on his head, but quickly gripped onto his shoulders to keep him withheld. Then the door opened on the 2nd floor again, and I saw an opportunity.

I moved my legs out, freeing his own, and he easily broke out of the hold and skidded away. I slid around him against the back wall, and as he turned around, I jumped and kicked his chest towards the door. Any energy he had to resist was depleted, and as the door began to shut, I grabbed his head with both hands and slammed his temple against the side of it. That was it for him. He fell flat on the ground between the door and didn’t get back up. I quickly pulled him back inside so the door would shut, and my adrenaline immediately crashed. I collapsed on the floor to catch my breath, my mind turning foggy, all my limbs soar, a stabbing pain in my spine, my head aching, and my vision blacking out. I almost passed out before life returned to my body and I found the strength to grab my earpiece again.

Gasping for air, I said, “Graham… fuck, Graham, they—”

“Finn! What the fuck was that? Did you not hear me fucking yelling at you?”

“They… know we’re here. The fuckers knew we were coming.”

“Shit. Shit! I fucking knew this would happen! Where are you now?”

“The… the elevator. Some guy got on just after I did, and… the bitch… he tried to fucking kill me. He’s out now, but… you need to tell Percy to abandon mission.”

“They—Finn. Finn! What do you mean they tried to kill you?”

“He stopped the elevator and jumped me! That’s what I mean!”

“Kill—they—he—” Graham stepped away from his mic for a moment, giving me time to recover the breath that the yell took out of me. “Jesus Hannibal fucking Christ almighty. I’m calling Percy. What the hell happened in there? Where’s the guy at?”

“Unconscious. Right next to me.”

“You did that?”

“No, the power of the Holy Spirit did that.”

Graham sighed. “Holy shit, these Eclipse people are fucked up. What the hell would they try to kill you for? They’re a fucking tech company, not Area 51.”

“I guess Adrian was right about them. There’s some other shit going down in this place.”

“No shit. And we’re not gonna stick around to find out. The last thing we need is to be on the wanted list for fucking Skynet, if we aren’t already.” I looked up. The elevator was still moving. Floor 34. The B button was still lit up. Fuck. “Hang on, I’m gonna dial Percy.”

The elevator stopped at floor 35. The door opened to reveal another security guy just outside of it… pointing an assault rifle at me. I panicked and skited back against the corner shielding my face with my arm. After a second, he lowered the gun, turned to his left, and walked away.

The view that appeared behind him was an expansive, blindingly bright, and mostly empty room. “Room” is the wrong word to describe the area. The ceiling was almost 20 feet high, the floor was pure marble, and the back wall was one giant window a few dozen yards away, brightening the whole expanse with clouded sunlight and overlooking the city almost a mile away. A small set of stairs led up to the main clearing, where the silhouettes of about four people stood around a single desk by the window. I hoisted myself up by the handrails and awkwardly stepped into the lobby, every part of my body still burning. On both sides leading all the way up to the desk, at least 50 more armed security goons were standing, seemingly forming a path for me to follow forward. If there was ever a giant modern throne room for some scary billionaire villain, this was it. And somehow this felt like the most normal part of the whole operation.

I took a couple more slow steps into the lobby like a newly adopted puppy. While trying to make out the silhouettes standing at the end of the room, I noticed a familiar one sitting on the right that looked detained.

“Graham?” I said to the earpiece. “Don’t bother with that call to Percy. I know where she is.” I hung up.