Chapter Three
Three
On my way into Midtown the next morning, I read a shocking exposé about a beloved and progressive clothing company that was secretly exploiting children in sweatshops.
What would happen next was entirely predictable.
There would be the usual swell of public outrage, the contrite resignation of the company’s beleaguered CEO, and their replacement by someone with a long-standing passion for social justice.
Then would come the phone call. The new CEO would ask Dark Enterprises if we could supply them with a workforce that didn’t require inconvenient things like bathroom breaks or a living wage.
And we would, of course, for a price. Smug consumers would continue to buy twenty-dollar T-shirts, reveling in their brief flirtation with basic human rights, and somewhere down the line, after making an embarrassing amount of money, that CEO would find themself traded to a demon lord or a squirming extradimensional intelligence in return for something we wanted more than a cut-rate soul tarnished by avarice and shortsighted stupidity.
God, I loved capitalism.
When I finally got to work, the bland confines of Human Resources felt especially oppressive.
I didn’t want to be there, but I had no choice.
Maybe something would occur to me, some amazing plan to get me out of this.
I could hand-deliver my reports to Ms. Kettering and explain the situation to her.
I’d never noticed her to be a sympathetic or caring individual, but it might be worth a shot.
My heart skipped a beat when I looked up from the beige carpet and found Ms. Kettering herself waiting outside my cubicle, lips curved in a friendly smile. “Good morning, Colin,” she cooed at me.
“Good morning, ma’am,” I breathed anxiously.
“I need you to pop down to Transportation. We have a visitor waiting with questions about our extraction methods. Bring them to my office, please.”
I nodded in suitably obsequious fashion, desperate to earn more points with her. “Of course, Ms. Kettering. I’ll head there right now.”
Transportation was the next floor down, so after weighing my options I decided to take the stairs.
It was one floor—I’d be fine. Pushing open the unmarked metal door, I stepped into the stairwell, my breath misting in the cold air.
A strange scuffling sound floated from somewhere overhead as the door swung shut behind me with a hollow bang.
Ignoring the unsettling noises as best I could, I started down the first flight of stairs, but it was hard not to notice when those noises grew louder.
The Stairmonster was coming.
No one knew what it was, but it had taken up residence about a month ago, picking off the smug health nuts who loved to extol the cardiovascular benefits of taking the stairs.
Once it had worked its way through those idiots, Janitorial Services went in to try to clear it out, losing several people in the process.
The executive board had promised to do something, but given the general attrition rates in the building, stairwell-related losses were probably a low priority.
As a result, only the foolish or the criminally impatient risked traveling more than a single floor without using the elevators.
Trying not to panic, I reached the landing and hurried down the next flight as, behind me, labored breathing grew in volume.
Practically falling down the last few stairs, I launched myself through another metal door, shuddering uncontrollably but refusing to look back as it swung shut behind me. Looking was always a bad idea.
It took a minute or two for my legs to stop shaking, and then I straightened my cardigan and told myself for the thousandth time that I would never take the stairs again.
Who cares if taking the elevator a single floor is wasteful?
It was better than disappearing like poor Alonzo, who got tired of waiting for the elevator and was never seen again.
The Transportation department was where specially trained acolytes maintained the network of gateways that connected the company to a myriad of other realms, planes, and dimensions.
The entire floor was built around a wide, circular corridor, its white marble floors inlaid with sigils made from different metals, woods, and semiprecious stones, all of them intended to banish or destroy unwanted visitors.
The air felt strangely heavy, too, thanks to more layers of protective magicks.
Extradimensional incursions were an occupational hazard on the fifth floor, though we’d gone three weeks since the last one.
Fortunately, the only person dragged screaming to the other side had been an intern.
As with most floors in the building, Transportation was far larger than our innocuous office tower in Midtown might suggest. It took almost ten minutes of walking for me to reach the well-appointed waiting area in front of the elevators.
Soft Muzak drifted from hidden speakers, blandly inoffensive but filled with strange dissonances that made the hair on my arms stand straight up.
A solitary being waited for me there, tall and cadaverous and dressed in a three-piece suit the color of dried blood.
It sat primly upright in a chair, a magazine held in front of the unsettling darkness where its face should have been, darkness given form and shape by a fine web of delicate silver chains pulled into a perfect sphere.
I cleared my throat, and it slowly lowered the magazine, bringing its attention to bear on me.
It felt like tiny spiders with needles for legs skittering across my skin.
I tried not to flinch. Some contractors found displays of human weakness extremely appetizing.
“Good morning,” I said as smoothly as I could. “Welcome to Dark Enterprises. I’m here to escort you upstairs to Ms. Kettering.”
Long, spindly fingers moved with a mesmerizing grace as the thing slowly closed the magazine and placed it delicately on a table to its left. Wonderful, it said in a cold, sepulchral voice that echoed as if emerging from a deep well. Lead on.
I gestured to the elevators and it rose in a sinuous, unnatural motion.
Above the crisply starched collar of its pristine dress shirt, inky blackness pulsed and shifted within that cage of threadlike chains as it took a moment to adjust its cuffs.
Its shiny wingtips dangled an inch or two above the floor, and it glided soundlessly after me as I crossed to the elevators.
An awkward silence fell between us. The thing turned to study me and my skin prickled unpleasantly once more.
Finally, the elevator arrived. I allowed the being to precede me, folding itself almost in half in order to fit through the door.
I pressed the button for the sixth floor.
Smoothly, the elevator began to move before a thin finger reached past me and pressed the button labeled EMERGENCY STOP. The car shuddered gently as it halted.
You seem troubled.
Slowly, I turned to look up into the thing’s shadowed face. It gazed down at me with a solicitous tilt to its narrow shoulders.
“Me?” I said weakly. “No. I’m fine.”
Silence fell once more as it continued to watch me.
“Really. No problems here.” I didn’t want it looking at me anymore. “We should probably keep going.” My hand reached for the elevator buttons.
You are afraid.
I stopped, my finger hovering over the EMERGENCY STOP button.
Is it because they plan to kill you?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whispered.
I think you do. It held out a black business card. Let me help you.
I stared at the card, unable to move.
Take it, it urged. When you are ready, place a single drop of your blood on this card and then speak the words. I will come to you and give you your heart’s desire. This I promise.
Mechanically, I reached out and took the card. It was made of heavy, expensive cardstock, but there were no words that I could see.
All I will ask in return is a single favor. Something small, unimportant. Promise to give me that, and you will have anything you want. That is fair, is it not?
I tried to speak, but my throat was so dry that nothing emerged but a strangled croak.
You are destined for great things, Colin. Let me help you achieve them.
Without another word, it pressed the EMERGENCY STOP button again and the elevator lurched back into motion.
Mere moments later, we arrived at the sixth floor and the doors rolled open with another cheerful ding.
I stood there, card clutched in my hand, until my companion turned to look at me once more.
“Yes,” I breathed, “right, sorry.” Without looking at it, I scurried out of the elevator and turned to the right, making a beeline for Ms. Kettering’s office. I was so eager to be rid of the thing that I stopped in the middle of the empty hallway and gestured toward her office door. “Here we are.”
This time, I couldn’t hide a flinch as it brushed those long fingers against my shoulder. Remember: I will give you your heart’s desire.
I didn’t reply. Instead, I turned and hurried away, faster and faster, until my skin stopped crawling.
Back in my cubicle, I hunched over my desk and turned the black card over and over between my fingers.
The correct thing to do—the smart thing—was to surrender the card to Ms. Kettering.
Employees were strictly forbidden from accepting gifts or favors from contractors, since more often than not they came with hefty strings attached.
People still talked about the woman in Personnel who allowed a contractor to buy her a coffee back in the 1980s and then found herself feeding an endless succession of ravenous demonic larvae with her own flesh.
She was still down there, somewhere. They said that if you listened very hard late at night, you could hear her voice floating eerily up through the air registers on the fourth floor as she crooned the Top 40 hits of 1987 while her body regenerated in time for the next brood.
Shivering, I stared at the card, fingertips running across its smooth surface as my mind spun furiously. I needed help, but was it worth whatever “small favor” that thing wanted from me? As bleak as my future looked, I didn’t want to replace it with an eternity of torment.
Slowly, I opened the top drawer of my desk and placed the card inside.
Then I got back to work. Or, rather, I tried to.
My gaze kept drifting to that drawer. Your heart’s desire, the thing had said.
I could ask to become a trillionaire, or to have an eight-pack, or to make Henry Cavill fall madly in love with me.
I could even be a “good person”—cue eye roll—and save the world by eradicating poverty or ending war or providing free, renewable energy.
And sure, all of that sounded great, except for the Law of Unintended Consequences.
That thing might end poverty by disintegrating 99.
99 percent of the global population, or provide us with a source of renewable energy that required sacrificing children, or give me an eight-pack of Bud Light rather than abs to die for.
I needed to be smart about this.
I’d been staring at my computer screen for a while when the phone on my desk rang with jarring suddenness. Pressing the handset to my ear, I stammered, “Hello?”
“Colin.” Ms. Kettering’s high-pitched voice purred in my ear. “I’m still waiting for that visitor.”
I paused in dismayed confusion. “But I brought it—him—them up from the fifth floor at least half an hour ago.”
Silence. “Then where are they?” she demanded.
“I—I don’t know. I left them outside your office.”
“So you have no idea where they are?”
“No, ma’am.” My palms had started sweating. “I’m sorry. I showed it—them where to go and then went back to work.”
An irritated sigh traveled down the phone line. “Very well. I’ll look into it. I’m very disappointed, Colin.” Then she hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand before slowly replacing it.
So much for earning points with Ms. Kettering.
I hadn’t seen the thing actually go into her office, but why would it stop there?
Where else could it have gone? Unsettled, I glanced over my shoulder as if it might be standing at the entrance to my cubicle, those frail hands folded politely while it watched me, but there was just Beverly on the other side of the aisle, piling on more lipstick for some reason.
Rolling my shoulders uneasily, I turned back to my computer and the spreadsheet waiting there.
Later, as I was getting ready to leave, I glanced across the bullpen and saw Sunil talking with Ms. Kettering. They were both watching me. Slowly, I opened my desk drawer and looked down at the card waiting there. Then I slipped it into my pocket.
Desperate times, I thought as I walked to the elevators.