Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

IV. Sticks and Stones

But I couldn't have a panic attack right there, on the spot. It wouldn't have been seemly, and besides, Omri and Dustin were already doing enough harm to the professionalism of my new workplace as it was.

"So," I said loudly, over their quarrel, "What are my responsibilities?"

They both turned to stare at me.

"What do interns do at Azure Tech?" I repeated.

Omri buried his head in his hands and looked away, a gesture which I felt very keenly that I had not merited.

"You could order us coffee," said Dustin, after a moment. "There's an app for that now. They'll bring it right up to the door now and everything."

He genuinely seemed to think he was being helpful.

"I mean, what did my predecessor do?" I snapped, directing the question to Omri, because it seemed like he was the only one likely to give me a real answer. "What did the intern who came before me do?"

"We know what the word predecessor means," growled Omri, shooting me a dark look from under his his mop of hair. "We're not stupid. And whatever she did, it's not applicable to you."

I flinched. He was really beginning to get under my skin, with his aversion to looking me straight in the face and his morose, passive-aggressive defensiveness. Even more so than Dustin – Dustin was just a jerk, but Omri had seemed at first impression like at least half of a decent person.

"I should think it's very applicable," I said, "since I was hired for the same position."

Omri lifted his head and looked at me then: and there was a sort of real hate in his eyes that shocked me. No one had ever looked at me like that before.

"Dustin!" he barked, "What is there to do here that requires no life experience, no undergraduate education and no qualifications whatsoever except a very wealthy great aunt?"

"Mr. Blue," said Dustin smoothly, "but she's more than a few points below his standard, even on off days."

"Were you two raised by wolves?!" I snapped, after a very long moment, but there was no real backbone to my disdain. Omri's words – and that look - had shaken me to the core. I had that very unpleasant feeling in the pit of one's stomach one gets when one realizes one is out-numbered and out-gunned in a social setting: a frozen, shaky feeling, which kills all real thought.

In any case, my vision blurred, even as Dustin burst out laughing like a hyena, and I turned and walked out of the conference room without saying anything else. I didn't forget my new tablet, though, and I'm proud of that: I had it in a death grip.

When I had taken shelter in the glass atrium out front, I discovered that a keycard had been taped roughly to the back of the device: the photograph Omri had used on it was a very unflattering one. This discovery added at least five minutes to my sob time.

I then tried running the card through the scanner at the front doors, only to discover I didn't have enough security clearance to leave the building. The employment contract had been dead serious.

I sank down in defeat against the wall.

But, as I'd discovered many months prior, crying doesn't do much good when you're alone. People mostly cry, I think, for the sake of other people, or because they have some idea that if they make noise for long enough someone will come for them.

I wasn't under that misconception anymore, so I stopped bawling after a couple of minutes and just sat there, for a long time. I might have fallen asleep, because eventually light filtered into the atrium, and I felt warm sun filtering down onto my face through the glass.

I peered out, and found I could see the world going by in the street outside, as the first pedestrians of the morning began to pass. The glass was two-way, and none of them could see me.

It was oddly comforting to be able to watch. It distracted me for some time, and I thought to myself that if back in my aunt's house I'd had a window that looked out on a street like this I might never have had reason to leave.

I dozed off again, and woke to the sound of the doors opening.

A pair of strangely textured grey shoes entered my field of vision. Sharkskin? I gazed up: endless legs in navy trousers, navy suit, navy tie and an impeccably ironed white shirt.

Barrabbas was back.

"Raised by wolves," he said, leaning down. "Quite a good one, Sabilla! But there's no need for tears, you know. They're only schoolboys. What do you say I take you somewhere?"

"Hell no," I said, after a long moment of consideration. "I look terrible. I'm not going anywhere."

"Don't worry," he said. "Where we're going there won't be a crowd."

Then he picked me up and carried me quite calmly over to the elevator in the atrium. I had never been carried by anyone like that before. It reminded me almost of when I was little, and I had bad dreams, and my father would carry me down to the sofa in the living room to sleep with my dog, and the stuffed hippopotamus called Thisbe he used to tell me could swallow all my nightmares whole.

I could have used a friendly nightmare-eating hippopotamus right then, but instead I got Mr. Blue.

"The roof, please," he said, to the elevator, without pressing any buttons, and we began to rise.

I didn't struggle in his arms. Mostly because at that point I was much like a rabbit that knows the best thing to do now is freeze: or rather, that there was no way out for me, not by struggling at least.

And I thought blearily that Omri must have been right. Mr. Blue must always be watching – or listening – at Azure Tech, even when he wasn't there. IOMS. The tablets. What did I know about technology, or magic, or the difference between the two anymore? The thing they had in common was power - and Mr. Blue had the power here.