The Me You Stole ✔

Hello 33

Tanner awoke to an empty house—he missed the cylinder. Each step he took, room after room echoed, making the sterile silence unbearable. Today, too, as he hovered his hand over the interface by the kitchen, he debated forfeiting this ELETE lodgings.

Jan was why he hesitated.

Instead of confirming his request, he waved his hand before the screen and a list of his invitations appeared. All were still pending—unread.

Meeting An—Jan at home unannounced would be out of bounds, he concluded. He held out for two days before finally deciding to seek out steady employment. With a diskette from his father listing possible divisions where he might find work in defenses, he went looking for a job.

He wasn't sure which division he'd go into. One area was listed twice, so Tanner purposely avoided it. None of the other divisions he'd tried had kept his interest for long after the trial. This was the last place although it was the first one at the top of the list.

The day he took a tour of the Colony's facilities to get a look, he heard his own name screamed in a manner and at an octave he'd never witnessed in his entire twenty-five years.

"TANNENBAUM!"

Tanner spun around, eyes wide with fear, but there was no one looking at him. Hurried footsteps closed in as he turned to scan the spacious office. He couldn't quite pinpoint where the rapid footfall was coming from in the maze of desks and cubicles. Someone passed by at high speed, nearly knocking him over, before coming to a halt with a hand to her brow, saluting.

"Yes, fearless leader," the guard exclaimed.

The man who shouted wore a badged indicative of an area supervisor. He was a heavy-set man of Indian descent who huffed and puffed, hating every fiber of his blond subordinate's being.

"Stop calling me that," the supervisor demanded.

"Then stop calling me Tannenbaum, sir. My name is Jan."

The very cheek garnered some chuckles from the other guards, but the man wasn't having it.

"Where are the files I asked you for?"

"They're on your desk, sir!"

The utter enthusiasm was met with a wooden glare after the man glanced to his desk, one of the larger ones in the front, and saw it empty.

"There's nothing there, Tannenbaum," the supervisor said.

Jan considered it, still staring straight ahead as she shrugged. "My mistake, fearless leader. I meant to say, it will have been on your desk as of ten minutes from now."

The man's dark eyes widened so far that Tanner half expected them to fall right out of his head. "That's it. I want your ass out of here. Now."

"Sir?" Jan relaxed her stance and allowed her slight belly to sag. "But I'm up for evaluation next week, sir. You can't get rid of me till then."

"There's no way, absolutely no way in hell you're passing to enter the ELETE division, so just shuck off."

Jan's posture wilted, and she considered the words. She pressed her lips into a fine line as she looked the man in the eye.

"With all due respect, sir, there are only three entities who can tell me to shuck off. My mother, my husband, and my Colony. so since you aren't any of those things, how's about you just let nature run its course, and you can laugh from the sidelines as I take the walk of shame the hell outta here next week?" The man ground his teeth while staring her down, but Jan glared back. "I mean, it is shameful, right? If I get rejected from a division that can't even spell its own name. E-L-E-T-E. I know there's no 'I' in team, but hell," she said, "there should be an 'I' in 'elite.'"