Alpine

Gambit 1 - Escalation

The weeks after the smoke break were quiet. He kept up the usual chatter but nothing more. He did not invite me to the garage again. He did not reference the incident. It was like the whole thing had never happened. The only change was Ryan.

Ryan's already cool attitude towards me chilled further. Obviously, Switch's work. Ryan was professional about it though. So, I ignored it. As long as I got the task write-ups I needed, what did it matter if Ryan was giving me the stink eye?

What I failed to appreciate was that Ryan always vented his problems to Clara. Clara, Ryan, and Boss were the originals at the company. I got the feeling that Clara and Ryan were friends long before they joined though.

While Ryan's sphere of influence was limited to the Alpine group, Clara's was much larger. As the one-woman legal team for the entire business, information effortlessly diffused through her to every corner of the office. The damage she could do with a few well-chosen words was incalculable.

Bea stopped answering my emails. She still scheduled meetings with Boss when I asked in person though. So, I ignored it. Sure, eventually I would have to figure out why she was upset with me. But appeasing the passive aggressive secretary was hardly a priority. I was against a hard deadline to finish Alpine's security system. Under the stress of it, I worked slower as I got less sleep.

The growing silence was harder to ignore.

Conversations ceased when I walked by. Polite banter degenerated to one-word answers. I received need-to-know information late. The break room emptied if I wandered into it. Work had left me so drained every day, that making friends had fallen off my radar. I knew my coworkers and no one else. This campaign against me was painfully isolating.

The only person still treating me the same was Switch. He acted as if nothing was wrong. As if everything was proceeding normally. I knew the end to this hell lay with him, but the last thing I wanted to do was owe him a favor. The next best option was to get Ryan on my side somehow.

I studied Ryan's schedule. Initially, I had a sinking feeling that he took all his breaks with Switch. I would have no chance of catching him on his own. Then I realized Switch had a biweekly meeting with Boss that overlapped with the afternoon smoke break. Ryan was a creature of habit, so he went out alone during those meetings. The idea of going back to the garage's third floor made me sick. But what choice did I have?

When 3PM rolled around the next Thursday, I committed my code, pushed it to the online repo, and waited. I stared blankly the terminal. My cursor blinked aimlessly in an open script. Finally, a chair rolled back. A slight groan in time with a stretch. Cherry smoke as Switch passed by. The door to Boss's office opening and then closing.

My shoulders relaxed. Time to talk to Ryan. I turned to his desk. He was not there. Oh. Okay. He must have decided to break early for some reason. Was I going to miss him entirely?

Panicked, I shot to my feet, banging my knee on the desk. I rubbed it for half a second before hobbling out of my cubicle to the door. Around the building. Up the stairs. Off at the third floor. Hurry to the spot where Switch had brought before. Ryan was not at the railing. Was he smoking somewhere else? Another floor? Or maybe he went for a walk?

A sharp whistle from behind. I whirled around to see Ryan smoking on a car's hood. Ryan's ethnicity never came up in conversation, and I never asked, but with his dark eyes, dark hair, and too-dark-to-be-a-tan skin, I always assumed he was Hispanic. When he was in a bad mood, those eyes of his could burn right through a man. I desperately wanted to avoid that.

Head down, I approached. My strategy had been to engage in the polite, social dance with him. Unfortunately, Ryan went straight to the point. "What do you want."