Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
I was still flying high on adrenaline when I settled behind my desk and looked down at my hands.
They weren’t shaking. That was a surprise.
Putting Sunil in his place was something I’d imagined for a long time, and the reality…
well, the reality had been infinitely sweeter than any imagining.
The swearing, though. I was starting to sound like Lex.
“How did things go in HR?”
My head jerked up. Ms. Crenshaw stood in the doorway to her office, shrugging on her suit jacket.
“Challenging,” I replied, “but—” My computer chimed softly and an email from Sunil appeared in my inbox.
Clicking it open, I found the numbers I’d requested.
“But they’re complying,” I finished, unable to suppress a smile.
“I gave them until COB to send R&D what they need.”
“Good.” She adjusted her lapels and tugged at her sleeves.
“I have a meeting with the rest of the board. It shouldn’t take more than an hour.
When I get back, you and I will visit Investor Relations together.
I want you to see how we’re framing current events for our high-level partners. ” Then she was gone.
I was debating whether to wander down to the boardroom and examine the Chief of Security’s smeared remains—I was kind of curious—when my phone buzzed with a text from Lex.
Come to repository now
I stared irritably at those four little words. That was it? Muttering darkly, I stalked back to the elevators.
When I reached the Repository, I found its usual silence positively funereal.
Maybe a half dozen people sat at the long tables that filled the center of the atrium, diligently researching, but the only sounds to break the deep quiet were the whisper of pages turning and the occasional cough.
As usual, Lex was hard to miss. The sides of their head appeared freshly shaved and their mohawk now glowed a brilliant magenta.
Hands in pockets, they slouched several yards away from the elevators, looking bored.
“Why didn’t you text me back yesterday?” I whispered furiously as I marched up to them. “I thought you were dead. Or worse!”
“I was in the stacks.” Lex waved a hand dismissively. “The haunts were never going to get me there.”
“There was an Abomination in the building!” I shouted. My words, amplified by the atrium rising overhead, echoed until every single person in the Repository probably heard them. Heads came up among those reading, concerned faces swiveling in our direction.
“Be quiet,” Lex growled, seizing my arm and pulling me across the marble floors.
“I will not be quiet,” I snarled back, shaking free with some effort. “You get that I care about you, right? You understand that I don’t want you to die?”
Lex looked away and sullenly played with their hair. “Don’t be weird,” they muttered.
I moved closer so I could scowl right into their face. “The next time I tell you there’s an emergency, you run to safety and then tell me you’re okay. Is that clear?”
They snorted but still refused to meet my gaze. “What’s gotten into you today?”
“People keep pissing me off. Why am I here?”
Lex shot me a sidelong glance before turning in place.
“It’s this way.” I followed them across the atrium and through a stone archway that led into a series of well-lit hallways.
After a couple of twists and turns, we stopped at an ordinary-looking wooden door.
On the wall next to it, a bronze plaque read The Museum of Company History.
“You’ve brought me to a museum,” I observed, a hint of a question in my voice.
“I found something in here that you’ll want to see.” Lex opened the door and ushered me inside before closing it behind us.
The museum was small and rather quaint, with wood-paneled walls displaying colorfully illustrated exhibits and the floor crowded with glass-enclosed display cases.
The air was cool and smelled primarily of dust. Peering into one of the cases, I found a neat jumble of human bones surmounted by a grinning skull, all of them heavily scorched.
“ ‘Incinerated remains of Agatha McMann, first employee to encounter the Deep Ones,’ ” I read from a small card affixed to the case. “Oh my god,” I added, revolted.
“I know. Pretty neat, huh?” Lex admired the bones from the opposite side of the case.
“The whole museum is filled with artifacts related to the company’s history.
” They pointed to another case. “Like the architectural sketches for the first branch office in Mesopotamia or, over there, the contract signed by Judas Iscariot. You know, sentimental stuff.”
“Yeah, wow, I’m welling up just thinking about it.”
They shot me a hard look. “How can you not appreciate how cool this is?” Then they sighed. “Never mind. The thing I wanted you to see is over here.”
The small, neglected case Lex led me to, sitting by itself in a poorly lit corner, looked distinctly uninspiring.
Inside stood a piece of dark gray stone, its smoothed edges maybe a foot long on each side, and carved into its surface were row upon row of short vertical columns, each containing four or five symbols stacked on top of one another.
“Am I supposed to know what this is?” I asked as I leaned in to get a closer look.
“It’s Akkadian cuneiform, probably four thousand years old.”
“And?”
“And I’m pretty sure this is the ritual that Management used to bind the first Abominations.”
Straightening, I stared at Lex. “Are you serious?”
“Hell yes, I’m serious. After that fiasco with the angel, when I realized what we were up against, I went into research mode. Well, actually, the first thing I did was find a pillow and scream into it for a couple of hours, because you’re a fucking disaster of a human being.”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“Then I started looking for hints about how Management bound those fuckers in the first place. I knew we’d need that before we fixed this.”
“ ‘We’?”
“You and me.”
I blinked at them.
“I mean, obviously you’re still trying to get rid of this Abomination, right? So you can get your little promotion. And you’re probably going to keep trying more and more desperate shit until you blow up the world or trap us all in a parallel reality or something.”
Something like happiness expanded inside my chest. “You really believe that I can fix this?”
“No, I believe you will try to fix it. Let’s face it, your track record isn’t exactly stellar. And I want to help because, as much as this world sucks total ass, I’d prefer that we destroy it ourselves rather than some piece-of-shit Abomination.”
There were nuggets of validation in there, faint hints that Lex really did believe in me. I got a little choked up as I moved in for a hug.
“Touch me and die, Colin. I’m serious.”
“Okay,” I mumbled hoarsely. “But…thanks. I do want to fix this. And I’m so happy you’re going to help.”
“Geez,” Lex muttered, clearly embarrassed. “Calm down.”
I took a couple of deep breaths and nodded.
“Okay.” Lex pointed at the stone tablet in front of us.
“It took a day and a half with virtually no sleep and a dozen Red Bulls for me to find this.” At my look of concern, they nodded.
“Yeah, pretty sure I have a heart murmur now. But who cares? It turns out that the answer we needed was sitting here all along.”
I peered at the obscure markings. “Can you read this?”
“My Akkadian isn’t great. Enough to give me a general gist. Translating it more precisely will be a pain, but it’s doable.
” Lex drew a deep breath. “Here’s the problem, though.
Abominations exist in more than the standard four dimensions of spacetime.
That’s why this one seems able to ignore things like the laws of thermodynamics.
It shouldn’t be able to destroy matter and energy, but that’s exactly what it’s doing.
” I nodded along as if I understood, though I definitely didn’t.
“Management presumably didn’t comprehend this four thousand years ago in the same way that we do now, but They did understand that Their ritual needed to propagate into dimensions beyond spacetime and designed it accordingly. ”
I shook my head as if trying to dislodge something. “What?”
Lex sighed. “The upshot is that this ritual requires some truly intense mathematical calculations. Like, seven-dimensional geometry. I have no idea how Management did this—maybe They outsourced it to a contractor that also existed beyond spacetime, or maybe Their minds transcend conventional reality. Who knows. But this math is way beyond my understanding.”
Frowning at the tablet, I told them, “I think I know someone who can help.”
“Who?”
“Amira. My best friend and roommate. She’s a badass physicist and legitimately the smartest person you will ever meet. She does complicated math for fun when she’s waiting in line at the bodega. But she thinks I work at a bank.”
Lex thoughtfully nibbled their lip piercing. “So if we want her help, we’re going to have to tell her…what, everything?”
“I mean, yeah, I think so.”
“You want us to violate our NDAs?” they clarified.
I nodded.
“Shit. Well, I guess we have bigger things to worry about right now.”
Before I could reply, my phone buzzed repeatedly as someone called. Eric again. Growling in the back of my throat, I stabbed the Ignore option.
“Who’s ‘Lying Jerkface’?” Lex asked curiously as they looked down at the screen.
“Never mind.”
They shrugged. “Okay. So, I guess our next problem is how to get this tablet out of there.”
“Oh, that’s easy. Can I see one of your boots for a second?”
“My boots?”
“Yeah. Just one of them.”
Lex bent down to untie their left combat boot and handed it up to me. Hefting it in one hand, I squinted at the display case and then hammered the boot into it with all my strength. Glass went everywhere with an extremely satisfying crash.
“Holy shit!” Lex yelped, jumping back.
“There we go.” I handed back the boot and took a moment to brush some glass shards off my cardigan. Then I reached in and grabbed the tablet. “Ta-da!” I proclaimed as I hefted it in front of me.
Lex stood there, boot in hand, peering at me through their thick-framed glasses. “Seriously, what’s gotten into you today?”
Grunting slightly as I maneuvered the tablet into a more comfortable carrying position, I said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure, but I think I’ve stopped giving a crap.
Like, having precipitated a world-ending event, inadvertently murdered a bunch of my colleagues, and suffered an unforgivable betrayal at the hands of someone who may have been my only shot at true love, I just don’t care about the bullshit anymore. You know?”
Lex gave me an appraising look before punching me on the arm. “Fuck yes. Welcome to my world.” Taking a minute to put their boot back on, they eyed the tablet cradled in my arms. “We’re walking out with that?”
“More or less. Where can we find a bag that will hold this?”
“Leave that to me.”
“Okay.” Handing off the tablet with some effort, I checked the time on my phone. Ms. Crenshaw would be expecting me back upstairs soon. “Meet in the lobby at five? We can go to my place and talk to Amira.”
“Deal.”