Chapter 3
But, neither of them are here tonight. Nobody is here but me and my thoughts, and that can be a hell of a combination to deal with sometimes.
I scroll on my phone, play some games, and try not to think about how I have five more hours to go. It would be too much to annoy Maya again, even if I knew she’d pick up.
I reach over to shake the mouse on my computer to keep it from going to sleep, which happens even if I’m watching anime on it…
something I would never do on the clock, but let’s just say if I was doing that, I’d have to make sure it seems like I’m also working.
But when I go to sit back, the whole world plunges into darkness.
Fuck, there’s no way I’ve passed out, I wasn’t feeling weird before…
But, my fears and paranoia about losing touch with reality are made a little less intense when I see the emergency lights click on a moment later, bathing the lobby in a dim orange glow.
Various security and safety systems hum as they come back online, and I realize that I’ve never experienced a power outage in this building before tonight.
I grab the flashlight on the desk and stand up.
I’m surprisingly more calm about this than I probably should be, because this power outage could have been caused by literally anything.
Maybe terrorists struck the power grid, maybe a different band of terrorists have staged a high-stakes heist in one of the offices above me.
Maybe a supernatural serial killer has picked this building to stake his claim as the most notorious slasher of all time…
I’d hate to break it to him that there aren’t too many people around here to kill, but it would be pretty cool to be the Final Girl by default.
“Hello?” I say to absolutely nobody, hopefully, and thankfully nobody replies.
Backup power supplies beep and buzz throughout the building, and I open the desk drawer to look for a folder labeled ‘Emergency Procedures’ that I’m glad I remember exists, because I’m going to be entirely honest, I don’t remember much of what Molly told me months ago.
The folder has clearly never been pulled out of this desk, and the documents inside make me wonder if they’ve been updated since the Clinton era.
I disregard the instructions for getting the fax lines back up and running, and wonder if I really do need to call Arnold Martin, who is probably dead, on his landline phone.
After going through page after page of nostalgia someone other than me would surely find interesting, I get to the section labeled “Restoring Power”.
RESTORING POWER
This building is equipped with a state of the art power recovery system that will automatically reset breakers as needed. If power failures persist for more than a few minutes, please page Dustin at 550-0093 and he will get there ASAP.
I assume Dustin has moved on to bigger and better things, and hopefully upgraded his phone situation, but the next paragraph gives me some relief.
If Dustin is not available, the manual breaker reset box is located in the utility closet in G103.
Alright, well, I’m not waiting on Dustin, so, I turn my flashlight down the hall and for the first time look at the numbers of the rooms on this floor. The one next to the desk is G101, and I quickly find G103 on the other side of the lobby.
The door creaks as I open it, and although I’ve been down this utility hallway before, in this half-light it looks far more threatening, even with the light of my flashlight.
Along the wall, next to legally-required employment posters, MSDS guides, and a blood spill cleanup kit that I haven’t had to use before and quite frankly didn’t know existed, I see a grey utility box, keys hanging from the lock.
I open the box and realize I don’t know if I’ve ever been saddled with the responsibility of having to take care of something like this, but I’ve at least seen enough movies to know that I just need to flip the ones that are ‘off’ over to ‘on’.
The breakers flip with a satisfying ‘ka-chunk’, and as I do it, I can hear the building moaning and groaning as power returns. The HVAC system shudders to life, and a sudden wave of air flutters across my shoulders, scaring the shit out of me for a moment.
With everything restored, I go back down the hallway and try to ignore how weird everything sounds and feels. It’s just my paranoia, I’m sure.
—
The beeping and whining from all the systems in the building subsides within the next few minutes…except for one. One buzzing alarm, just loud enough to hear, far down the hallway, next to the elevators.
I try to ignore it, thinking it will just shut off by itself, since I don’t want to have to deal with it, but it’s just loud enough that I can’t really tune it out, no matter what I do.
Fuck.
I walk toward the elevators, toward the sound, in the hopes of shutting it off.
Now that I’m close, I can tell it’s probably not something all that important, just a tripped sensor or something failing, not an emergency alert that could mean the whole building is about to implode. Still, I want it to shut up.
This room, for some reason, doesn’t have a number plate on it, and the door fixtures are in a different style than the ones on the rest of the floor.
It also occurs to me that I’ve never seen someone come into or out of this room ever since I started here.
I’m sure I could go back to my desk and look up the directory to see what’s in this room, but I’m mostly concerned with just shutting off that damn alarm.
I turn the knob and find that the door is unlocked.
On one hand, I’m relieved that I won’t have to go looking for a key, but on the other, it makes me a little uneasy.
It feels like a trap in some way. But the beeping won’t stop unless I just go for it.
Hell, maybe worker’s comp will be a nice thing if I get immolated or something.
The moment I open the door fully and look into the room, I wish I could have kept it closed forever.