DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Chapter 9

The android stretched out a hand to Ridley. "Come. You are expected."

The dark paneled walls crowded so close here. Was this the top floor, the eye of the needle? Ridley's mind stalled, unable to comprehend. I won't be leaving? Were they going to kill her up here? A private execution, two miles in the sky? And if not, why did they say she wouldn't be leaving?

"Go!" The guard on her left pushed her forward. Ridley stumbled over the threshold, the plushness of the carpet pulling at the lacings that held the soles on her moccasins. Ridley heard a muffled roar. She turned to see the attendant cleaning the elevator carpet with her wand, everywhere Ridley had stepped. Then the doors slid closed between them.

Fear and bewilderment made her thoughts a blur, but one idea stood out. She mustn't let anyone see that she was afraid. That included this thing in front of her.

"This way." The android turned and led the way to a door across the space. Through the reflections of the chandelier off its crystal skull, Ridley could make out wire circuits and tiny lights in a rainbow of colors.

No manacles? No hobbles? She didn't know what to expect. This didn't look threatening. Perhaps someone from the Guild had rescued her. Perhaps she was here to be questioned about her arrest, or about PanChaine's criminal policy in withholding pay from so many people for so long.

Not likely. She thought of the amount of back pay the corporation had just lost and shuddered. Perhaps she would be thrown from the eye of the needle—a "suicide."

The android paused at a second door across the chamber and it slid open, revealing a small landing. One flight of stairs went up, and another flight of stairs ran down. She looked up into a view of the daytime sky in the room above. The down flight led to another closed door.

"Up," the android said and gestured to the upper flight. "He's waiting for you."

Ridley turned. "Who?"

"Up," the android grated, "or I will carry you. We have a busy schedule." And with that, the machine stepped on the top step of the down flight. The stairs came to life, carrying the android to the door at the bottom landing, which whispered open. The android stepped through the door, and it slid closed.

Ridley turned around and went back to the elevator. She tried punching the down button, but, of course, it didn't work. She walked back through the room to the landing, wondering if there wasn't some way to escape through the second door. Common sense told her no, but she stepped onto the stairs leading down. They didn't move for her. She walked down and tried that door anyway.

A sensor noted her presence and opened the door into a small industrial kitchen, bright with steel and white light. The intoxicating aroma of coffee pushed its way into her nose, onto her tongue. She could taste how good it smelled.

The android bent over a short countertop, arranging gleaming coffee service on a silver tray. "Upstairs, Miss Faircloth. We haven't all day." The courtesy in the words didn't match the metallic buzz in its voice any more than the elegant dinner jacket looked at home over shoulders that broad. When it stood, it rose to almost twice her height.

Ridley closed her eyes for a second, seeing the woods at home, her mother's house, her baby in her crib. When she opened them, this bizarre scene was still in front of her: a sinister-looking android in a butler's suit, serving coffee at the top of the world's tallest building. Which, even yesterday, she had never dreamed she'd visit. She felt like Alice in that old story of the looking glass, stepped into a world gone completely mad.

"I don't believe any of this," she said out loud.

"You will end up at the top of those stairs either way."