Daisuke wandered through the IT hallways looking for the emergency stairs. He had seen them on the call center floor, but now that all the chaos had settled down, and it was just a mess for Janitorial to clean the stairs had disappeared again. There was no immediate danger, so the building reverted back to elevators as the primary mode of transportation, only that the network was still down.
He put out a text to the Office Pool group chat to see if anyone was still alive while Maxi had been regenerating, and most were fine. Patti and Flav had been in the cafeteria enjoying cinnamon roll day where employees were given a free coffee and these rolls where caramel caked the bottom. They were a company favorite.
There weren’t any creatures in their area, not that they would have lasted long. Sledge, the top Sales Associate of the company, had been eating his customary mushroom swiss power burger at the time. He was the only Power Twelve who didn’t get personal assistants to run errands. The man liked doing things himself and felt more at home with the rank and file employees then those at the top.
With a Power Twelve in the room, Patti and Flav didn’t have anything to do but wait. Their situation hadn’t really changed during the time it took Maxi to heal, other than converting one of the boost kiosks into a makeshift latrine when the free coffee and cinnamon rolls started making their way through people’s systems.
Farhad was stuck in their Office Pool and likewise had to make use of a coffee cup for nature’s call. The only person who failed to check in was Belinda, which meant she was dead and regenerating, just plain dead, or too busy tweaking a Macarena dancing robot to respond to her texts.
Belinda had rented a workshop space in the building when Patti and her almost came to blows about leaving her stuff everywhere. It was pricey to have a room of her own, but in Belinda’s short time she had sold two patents to robotics companies, got royalties from creating a better pen, and had invented a better Ramen noodle that was still pending patents.
It’s possible that she was stuck in her workshop during the lockdown, but still didn’t explain why she wasn’t responding to texts. Unless, she was one of the unlucky employees killed in the attack and if Janitorial didn’t get her body on time…
His phone buzzed, pulling him from his thoughts, he pressed a bluetooth headset in his ear and answered the call. It was his half sister, Arisu.
“I know what you’re doing,” She started at him right away then unloaded a diatribe about how he was ruining the family.
Daisuke glanced around. He was near some cubicles that had been battered by the chaos. A man in a yellow shirt had his head chewed off by a creature. Several smaller desktop printers that had grown fur and teeth looked as if they were exploded, most likely by a PI. There was a conference room off to the side that looked as if it had survived the attack. It was untouched. Even the equipment inside hadn’t become ravenous beasts.
He slid into the room and shut the door, then drew the curtains. Once he was reasonably sure that he was safe, he cut her off.
“Tadanobu will not miss the money and would have squandered it anyway.”
“But it is his money to squander. What you’re doing is criminal. It’s extortion.” Arisu said.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“And the acceleration control chip is not?” Daisuke said. The onboard computers in Kaze motor cars had a bad acceleration control chip a while back. People died when their vehicles mysteriously accelerated while the computer system ignored any attempts to break or slow down. Arisu knew the chips were faulty but approved them for distribution anyway. She buried the evidence of any wrongdoing.
It was a low card for him to play because it wasn’t his half-sister’s finest hour, and he knew the deaths of the people kept her up at night, but he couldn’t have her mucking up his plans, not now, not while he was so close.
“You know that’s different. I made a mistake. You barged into Tadanobu’s home and bullied him to pay you.”
“He invited me.”
“What?”
“Tadanobu invited me, and he saw it fit to give aid to a member of his family. Now unless you are planning to donate–”
“What? Are you going to extort from me too? Send your thugs after me?” Arisu said. Daisuke’s family thought he was a member of the yakuza or the mob. The reality was that everyone in his family, even his own mother, were NPCs. Employees of the company affectionately referred to anyone else who didn’t know there was a company that safeguarded the world from monsters was an NPC.
Divulging company secrets to an NPC risked termination, which meant Daisuke had no choice but to let his family think that his day job was as a member of organized crime. It was an easy lie to let them believe, and for the most part it didn’t hurt his relations with them as they were already bad.
His half brothers and sisters never really accepted him as a sibling, and his mom loved him no matter what he did (though he could do without the lectures about finding a more respectable profession). It was easier to just let them believe the lie.
Many company employees were in the same situation as Daisuke. It was easier for them to believe a lie than risk termination and tell them the truth. Maxi had grown up with two company parents, and they let her believe her father was a gambler over the truth.
The unfortunate consequence of not being able to tell the truth was that people filled in the gaps with their own truths. Not that he particularly cared what anyone besides his mother thought. His half brothers and sisters were people he grew up around, but he’d hesitate to think of them as family as portrayed by Hallmark movies.
“I don’t need your money. I needed $5 million, and I got it,” Daisuke said.
“You just can’t..”
“Can’t what?” Daisuke said. “Ask for a fraction of father’s wealth? A tiny sliver that is no more significant to you than a roll of toilet paper? Trust me, my entire life was spent knowing how little I mattered to the family, and if it wasn’t for my mother, I would have grown up in an orphanage. I’ll consider it payment for the service I performed for the family.”
“Service? You… in front of all of us.”
“I did what I had to do.”
“I won’t pretend that father didn’t have it coming, but I will also not let you dismantle his legacy by–”
“Fine, then you’ll never hear from me again,” Daisuke said.
He could hear Arisu was taken aback. She stumbled over the next words, “You aren’t going to extort money from me?”
“Never said I was. Those were your words. Not mine. If it’s all the same. I’m not keeping any of Tadanobu’s money. It’s all going to a better cause than creating another poorly acted martial arts flick.”
“What are you using the money for?” Arisu.
“That I cannot tell you,” Daisuke said.
“Why?”
“Because then I’d have to kill you,” he said with all seriousness.
Arisu had lived with him long enough to when he wasn’t joking.
“Then I don’t want to know,” She said and hung up on him.
He cracked his neck, and checked that his invisible scabbards were still on his body. He opened the conference room door to continue the search.