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My eyes widen at the thought. I’ve heard the mention of a cave in before, but it didn’t make sense in my mind. The pressure underground this deep would kill someone in a second, and it’s not the way I’d like to go.
“What are we doing?” I yell. “Wasn’t your assignment with the adherents?”
“That’s all I had for the day,” Alex says. “My work’s over until tomorrow. More time to fuck around with my gift, I guess.”
“Okay?” I scream, throwing my hands into the air. “I know you’re mad, and I’m sorry I’m making your life worse, but I don’t want to get crushed to death.”
“You’re not making it worse,” he argues. The construction sounds lesson the further we walk, becoming a dull thudding in the background. “You’re making me… do something.”
“Okay, well, you look like you’re about to murder someone. Is that what we’re about to do?”
Alex shakes his head, and his pace quickens. I’m in a steady jog to keep up with him by the time we take another turn. His grip on my arm aches, and I wiggle to get him to release a little, but he doesn’t pick up the hint.
“Could cave ins happen?” I ask “Is that another thing I need to worry about?”
“Not by accident,” Alex says. His cryptic response annoys me, and when I’m about to berate him on the details, he stops short in front of a metal door.
I slam into him as he punches numbers on a side panel, and I mumble, “I’m sorry,” but it goes unnoticed. He leads me into the room full of shelving covered in tools and a cluttered workbench. It’s a messy office setting with dim fluorescent lighting and smells like sawdust.
“Alex, if you—” The slam of the door cuts off my words, closing me inside.
Alone.
I grab the handle and wiggle, feeling it stick against the lock.
“Alex,” I say, knocking on the closed door. “Alex!”
That fucker trapped me in here.
I bang on the door with my fists, but it’s so thick the echoes are hollow, and I doubt anyone hears me.
“Alex,” I call out again. “Can you hear me? I know this morning sucked, but that doesn’t give you the right to act like a total fucking asshole!”
There’s nothing but the steady buzz of the overhead lights and whatever work they’re doing on this floor. The thought of the cave in makes me sick to my stomach, and I bang again, my sore fist throbbing after a few minutes.
“His eminency won’t like you treating your pet rat like this, motherfucker,” I curse. “Let me the fuck out of here.”
I don’t expect him to open the door, but it feels good when I scream more profanities at it.
It feels terrible when I kick it, hurting my foot through my thin shoe when it slams into the steel.
Stepping back, I scan the room for anything that will help. The tools on some shelves look dangerous enough to cut through metal, or a person. I imagine slicing the Eminent with a chainsaw, even if I’m not sure how to operate one. There’s something that resembles a sander, and I wonder how much it would hurt to slice off the damned AOE symbol burned into my skin.
Some drawings lay out on a workbench, and I study them but can’t make sense of what they’re about. I’m not an architect, but it’s clearly something about designing a floor or repairing this cave in. When I flip through them, I see notes on the fifteenth floor and scribbles about the redesign, and I recognize what looks to be the room I visited yesterday.
There are long hallways next to an open space with the words two-way mirror written on the side. They drew staggered seats on one side of the mirror where the Eminent’s following sat and watched Theodore take a bullet.
I can’t be sure, but it looks the same, and on the same floor is a full kitchen, bedroom, and living area. On the far side of the drawing, the words,sanctified suites,stand out in thick block letters.
Only one person in this place would get a floor to himself, and I groan at the sight of this asshole making them build all of this for his sex and slaughter chamber. He sleeps a few feet from where he kills people with his concubines resting on the other side of his king-size bed.
It’s disgusting.
The door handle moves, and I drop the pages, ready to storm toward Alex and slap him across the face, but I pause.
It might not be Alex.
Sprinting to the back of the room, I crouch behind a large piece of machinery, trying to make myself invisible. The door swings open and footsteps thump inside, vibrating the floor underneath my hands and feet. I see two large boots step closer, walking in my direction, and then the door shuts behind him. The intruder wiggles the door handle, and it sounds locked again.
