“Chimpanzee,” Trey answered.
The doctor’s expression again was baffled. “Chimpanzee? Are you sure? We don’t have wild chimps in the jungles of Belize.”
“He was, uh, lost too,” Trey replied.
“Uh-huh,” the doctor answered skeptically, shining a light into Trey’s eyes.
Sasha went to the waiting room while the couple was ushered to the back. She bit on a nail while checking her phone. There wasn’t any further news from Dr. Cutchin, but while trying to access her company email, she discovered she had been locked out. She could only assume this was the first step in notifying her she was fired. When her phone rang from an unknown number, she chose to ignore it. There didn’t seem to be any point in discussing things. She decided to send an email to her cousin, who was a journalist with the LA Times.
She expected she’d be waiting for a long time, but, after an hour, a nurse came out to get her, and she was taken to a patient room. Trey was in a bed, hooked up to monitors, his shoulder newly bandaged. Catalina sat in a chair beside him, an IV of fluids attached to her hand, leaning toward him while holding up his hospital blanket. It was as if both of them were doing a deep inspection of the lower portion of Trey’s body underneath the blanket.
It was probably better not to ask them about it. Sasha cleared her throat as she entered. “Everything okay?”
Catalina dropped the blanket like it was on fire, jerking away from the bed. “Oh, yes, fine.” Her cheeksblushed while her husband grinned, not appearing at all embarrassed.
“Better than fine,” Trey responded, but before he could expand on this, there was a commotion in the hallway, and it soon traveled through the doorway toward them.
Zack Massey in a hoodie and sunglasses strolled through the door, looking as though he had a clear agenda, and was followed by two men in suits. He barely glanced at the injured couple after he spotted her. Sasha’s heart beat fast with anxiety, unsure what was about to happen. Zack being a very rich, powerful man could possibly punish her more creatively than normal people could.
He strode to her, pointing an accusatory finger in her face. “You’re not answering your phone. When you work for me, you answer your phone. I don’t care what fucking time it is, or if you’re taking a shit, or if you’re bleeding in your car after an accident. You answer thefuckingphone when I call.”
This sentiment wasn’t surprising. She’d heard him say similar things to other employees. He expected everyone to be a workaholic even if his own work standards were nowhere equal.
In fact, he didn’t seem to care they were standing inside a hospital, treating this area as if it was a conference room. Not inquiring after Catalina or Trey made Sasha angrier than she already was. Maybe Zack didn’t know the whole story—but he had to know some of it. Otherwise, why was he here? Zack just didn’t care. He flat out didn’t care about anything notpertaining to him, and that included her.
She returned to herFuck Zack Masseymode. He wouldn’t be able to take her down without her shouting to the world about everything she’d witnessed with as much noise as she could make. Without backing down, she looked straight in Zack’s eyes and calmly said, “I don’t work for you anymore. I don’t have to answer shit.”
His skin turned an unnatural shade of red—it spread across his shaven head with veins popping along his temples. In a low tone that was almost a growl, he replied, “And what do you think you’re going to do? You think you can touch me or M2M? You can’t. Who are you? Nothing. Nobody. No one is going to listen to a failed employee who never deserved to be working for Mankind in the first place. You come after me, and not only is no one going to hire you again, but I will sue you into a black hole of oblivion.”
It was big talk from a small man, a man who was used to pushing people around until they feared him. And maybe the old Sasha would have been terrified enough to consider running away and changing her name. Except, at this point, she didn’t care. Her reputation and work had to count for something, especially as someone who’d always played by the rules. She may not have much in the way of evidence since she was locked out of everything, but she’d been on the inside of the company and had seen a lot. Someone would listen to her.
Zack kept going. “What do you even have? You don’t have anything. Have you documented any ofthis? Found anything? No. By the time we’re done, you’re going to be seen as nothing more than a liar with two false flag actors. No one is going to believe that two people were shrunk and lost at a Cancun resort.”
Sasha wasn’t sure if her bluff would hold up because he was right. She didn’t have anything. She hadn’t taken any pictures when she had the opportunity, nor had she documented anything when she should have. She was more concerned about the people than about taking scientific notes.
“I have something,” Trey said, his voice being the reminder that the two victims of the whole catastrophe were in this very room.
“Yeah?” Zack spat out. “And who are you? No one.”
Catalina glowered with such an intense look of dislike it would burn through most people’s skin. Zack didn’t seem bothered by the couple’s existence, as if they were more fleas than people. Trey, on the other hand, didn’t appear the least bit bothered. His expression could even be described as friendly. “I’m the guy who took pictures.”
He lifted his phone and started scrolling through images like he was sharing vacation photos among friends. “Here’s Cat and me on an iguana. And here we are in a seashell.” Trey smiled at his wife. “We almost got killed by ghost crabs, but Cat is a super badass warrior. Here’s another one of the seashell. Oh, this is a good one. I’m standing in front of a giant empanada, and let me tell you, that was the best—”
Zack rushed to him, attempting to snatch the phone from Trey’s hand while also trying to fight off Catalina.
“Get away from my husband,” she shouted, smacking him with the magazine in her hand. “I swear to God I will strangle you with my IV if you hurt him.”
It was a short tug of war, and though Trey was bigger and had to be stronger than Zack even while injured, he surrendered the phone without too much of a fight. In his victory, Zack held up the electronic device, pointing at Trey and then Catalina. The former put a hand over his wife’s forearm as though to settle her. “If you think being shrunk was bad, it can get so much worse if you go against me.” In a moment of rage, Zack smashed the cell phone against the wall, and it clattered to the ground. He stomped on it until it was in pieces, looking more like a toddler having a tantrum.
One of the suits pulled him away, Zack continuing to yell threats at them as he left the room.
“Well, shit,” said Trey. “I really liked that phone too. Aw, well. I guess it’s a good thing all those images and the recording I just took had already been uploaded to the cloud. It would have been a real shame to lose all our vacation pics, right, Cat?”
His wife laughed as she leaned into him to press a kiss to his temple. “Your ability to come up with the best ideas is one of the reasons I love you.”
“Right?” he replied.
A throat cleared in the room. It was the othersuited man, who had remained behind. “Okay then,” he said, adjusting his glasses while approaching the couple. “Now that Zack has had his say, I think it’s time for us to talk. I’m from Carmichael Brightman, and our law office represents Mankind2Mars. I’m free to negotiate on behalf of my client to see what we can do, financially speaking, for everyone to leave here completely satisfied.”
