He’s playing TWEWY
Kelsey had been trying to ignore the rising voices coming out of the conference room for half an hour. It sounded like old friends at a bar. When the door finally opened, they all walked out laughing. Everyone shook Bryan’s hand at the desk.
“Will you see him out please, Kelsey?” said David, still smiling.
“Oh, that’s fine, I think I remember the way,” said Michael. “Actually, where is your bathroom?”
Kelsey pointed it out and Michael shook her hand. “Thanks, Kelsey. Look forward to working with you.”
“Yeah, you too.” She watched him walk away and tried to decide if she had meant it.
Michael sat down in a stall and opened the encrypted text chat.
“Status?” he typed.
“Target on the road - Mal and Mark giving chase - hot - playing catch up.” EP replied.
Michael hissed through his teeth. He had given them specific orders to avoid collateral at all costs, and now they were shooting on the fucking highway. He considered what he would be out if he fired two of his operators and tapped the keys frantically.
“?! thought T had eyes on POE? How’d he get out?”
“T went to employee garage - thought he was driving - I hadn’t cracked his phone yet.”
“T engaged?”
There was a pause.
“No - still en route.”
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“T: fall back and return to the POE.”
“Why?” Lindsey popped into the audio chat with a muffled roar of highway behind her.
“Low chance of a kill - get you caught in a roadblock.” Michael typed. There was a pause while Lindsey’s earbuds read it to her.
“Fine.”
“Get to vehicle stash - C give her the coordinates.” Michael typed.
“Alright. I’m out.” Said Lindsey.
He messaged EP directly.
“I want info on any confirmed collateral when this is over, copy?”
“OK.”
“My stuff inbound?”
“Conference room B 5th floor - within the hour.”
“You in?”
“On local net now - everything else will be wide open before you get it.”
“Good. Out.”
Michael went down the hall to the staircase, expecting that Kelsey was too distracted to notice him passing by the lobby. She was. He came out of the stairwell into the elevator lobby, where office sounds bounced off the polished floor. Keys clacked, voices rolled across practiced phrases, and a white noise generator rushed under everything. Someone laughed and he flinched. If there was any collateral, he was going to throw Philip out of a window.
The elevator dinged and he got in alone. When the doors closed, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the lanyard connected to his fake badge and let it hang. He came out on the fifth floor with his phone to his ear, talking to no one.
At the desk along the divider wall between the lobby and the office floor, he waved his badge at the receptionist and signed in as ‘Visitor, Brad Haray, IT’. EP came on the earbuds.
“I'm in the cameras. Looks like most of the security is in the basement cages and the main lobby.”
He found conference room B along the edge of the office floor. Inside was a long pressed-wood table surrounded by high-backed office chairs. There was a flat-screen on one wall and a canvas print of the streets of Prague on the other. An easel pad in the corner said “Idea Bank” in black marker and nothing else. The mundane, sleepy stillness reminded him of something he had never been part of. A way of life seen only from the edges.
“What about the other buildings?” he asked.
“They have a skeleton crew but they’re moving them out.”
“To where?”
“Your building, and the tunnels.”
“Then the door’s down there.”
“Seems like it. I only have cameras on the main tunnel. It could be in one of the restaurants or something.”
“Try and narrow it down.”
“Will do. I routed all emails and calls about the package to me. I’ll send you a text when It’s in the building.”
“Good work.” He pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. Out the window, sapphire glass towers shimmered over glittering streams of cars flowing across hazy concrete. He took out his DS and filled his eyes with primary colors.