Profession

Stuck at the office

Red light for a widespread problem, the staccato tone for pretty much anything outside a fire, usually prisoner-related. I'd just exited the room when there was an explosion, and I swear that the building shuddered. Crap, crap, oh crap. I charged down the hall toward the nearest safe room, but the hall doors sealed. I bounced off them and scuttled down the cross hall, which contained housekeeping supplies as well as a few offices. I held out my credential as I passed and flung myself into the first one that opened. I shut the door behind me, the lock crumping closed, leaning on it for a second while I caught my breath. It wasn't the running that had me short of breath but the unknown situation, and I scanned the office as I panted. Looked like I was in the one the supervising nurses used on second and third shift. I realized then that I'd been momentarily worried that I'd run into Hugo Strange's office, which would be icky. But this was good; I'd met the supervising nurse for second shift and she was nice. Never met the one for third shift, who was a male. There was a small emergency light, blinking red to signal the emergency, and of course that siren. Making a bad situation worse since five minutes ago.

My instructions had been to seek a secured place and wait, so I quickly sent an email to Angie, telling her where I was. There was another shudder through the stone, and I took a mo to search the office, finding the special safety gear. I took off my gloves, face shield and mask and put on the hood with the integrated face plate and high-test filters, then shimmied into the protective suit to keep any particulates off my skin and clothes and provide moderate protection against flames. It looked like a big foil onesie. I felt like a packet on the grill. There was a wrap to secure the suit to the hood, and thicker gloves that sealed around my wrists. Then I sat back down and opened a hole in the asylum's programming, finding the part that had the cameras and tapped in. I was in the center block, the tallest part of the asylum, which was a relic of Streamline Modern Revival. The shaking hadn't felt like it was directly beneath me, so I checked the east and west wings close by. Nothing, so I checked the back of the center block. Grandpa Bruce once said that the original asylum had been a neo-gothic pile straight out of a comic book, and it had been badly damaged in an escape attempt. It had been torn down about two hundred years ago and rebuilt stylishly (but apparently some of the contractors had cheaped out on the plumbing, as evidenced by the freshwater leaks all over the place. At least the sewer system had been built to last.) The sleek style of the modern asylum left no convenient hidey-holes on the exterior, and thus it was easy to see van pods being backed up to the service door. The rear service door was more heavily armored than the front entrance, but the front had a lot of guards and defenses, while the service entrance traded mass for people. Shit. I quickly texted Jon that I was tied up at my internship and might not be able to make our date. The power went out while I was texting, so I didn't know if the message went through.

On the other hand, Grandpas Bruce and Xander would find out about the breach and they'd do something soon. Sunset was around 6 pm, which was fast approaching, so they'd be able to flap on out here and fight the forces of evil. I looked around the office, which was pretty spare. The supervising nurses didn't spend much time in their office and there wasn't much to work with. There was no window, so I didn't have to watch to points of entry, but that was also kind of bad that I only had one point of exit. Although we were nine stories up, it's not like I could escape through a window anyway. I used my communicator's light for more illumination since the red light was weak, and moved the desk up and to the side to obstruct the door opening so that I could drop anybody who came through before the all-clear, and found a wire basket in the book shelves that had some folded up crepe paper decorations. I would replace them, but I pulled and twisted them until I had a good length of cord that I could use to throttle somebody if necessary. I moved the chair close by the door so that I could kick an intruder, again if necessary, then shut off the light to conserve the battery and waited. The staccato siren was irritating and made it hard to think, but I 'entertained' myself by running through the checklist for Deri's shower, trying to spot gaps that needed to be addressed. I wondered about her dress; Uncle Steve would keep it from being awful, but I'm betting that there would be embellishments aplenty. Deri does like the shiny. She's like a magpie. Well, I like sparkly things too, so no throwing stones there and being snotty, Lys. I bet myself that she'd have calla lilies in her bouquet; she'd always liked their bold, sculptural quality. I wondered how she was going to do minimalist floral decoration without looking cheap. Did Grant even like minimalism? The red light cut out, but the siren still blared.