by S L Shelton
Suddenly, the glass went clear from my chest level up. The change startled me.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I turned to see Bonbon at the control panel for the glass wall. I suddenly tensed, expecting to be bombarded with insults or at least questions from Bonbon about the situation with Barb.
“Very cool,” I replied pensively. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” she said watching as the glass shifted back and forth between opaque and clear.
“Don’t break it. I’m sure it'll come out of your paycheck,” I said with a smile.
She abruptly stopped with the clouding feature on all the way to the ceiling and looked at me.
“Jesus, Scott!” she exclaimed. “What happened to your face?”
I had a cover story prepared.
“Bicycle accident on Saturday,” I said nonchalantly, “I had to swerve on the W&OD to avoid a runner. Anyone else in yet?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.
I was still bracing for a verbal assault and was surprised it had not begun yet.
“Yep. Jo and Mahesh are here. You have to come see our offices. They’re awesome.” She spoke as if she would burst if she didn't show me immediately. She took me by my hand and led me past a break room to the first door. She glanced down as we went and I saw her raise an eyebrow at the skinned knuckles on my right hand.
She said nothing and instead dragged me through the door after swiping her badge across it. Inside it looked more like a lab than an office. Mahesh was leaning over a router box, painstakingly labeling cables as he plugged them into the ports in the back.
“Good morning Mahesh,” I said.
“Oh! Good morning,” he beamed with a broad smile. Then his expression changed. “What happened to your face?”
“Bicycle accident this weekend,” I replied. “Are you okay with your server room?”
“Absolutely. It’s like a dream come true,” he replied, immediately forgetting my injuries.
“Excellent. Staff meeting in thirty minutes in the conference room,” I said.
“Cool,” he replied, his attention already back on the switch box.
We continued down to the next door and Bonny opened it. This was more of an office. It was carpeted instead of tiled. Wood grain desks and cabinets had been arranged into three separate work stations, each divided by a low, double-sided bookshelf. There was a round meeting table in the far corner next to the window surrounded by four matching chairs.
“Cool!” I exclaimed. “I could get used to working in here.”
“Not so fast, buster,” she said, grabbing me by the arm. “This is mine and Anna’s.” She dragged me out of her office and past the conference room, which had the same shoulder-height opaqueness on its floor-to-ceiling glass as the outside wall did. Then she opened the second to last door on the end.
It was the same size as Bonbon’s, but it had only two work stations, along with a small seating area with two comfy-looking upholstered chairs, a couch, and a coffee table.
“Cool! I can take a nap,” I said as I dropped down on the couch. I noticed there were two other doors in the room. One led into the conference room. The other was on the opposite side from the conference room.
Bonbon stared at me, shaking her head.
“What?” I asked.
She pointed at the other door. “That’s your office. This is Jo’s.”
I got up and walked into the next room. There, standing beside my desk and organizing folders in an upright holder, was Jo.
The room was the same size as the others, with one massive workstation facing the door and a small round table in the corner surrounded by four matching chairs. There were two leather chairs in front of my desk and a long couch against the same wall as the door we just entered through. It was huge.
“Good morning Jo,” I said, somewhat dumbfounded.
“Good morning. I have several scheduling items I need to discuss with you. I also need to get your approval on some equipment additions that Story and Mahesh put in on Friday,” she said, still calling Storc by his given name, and then she looked up at me.
“What happened to your face?” she asked quietly.
“Bicycle accident,” Bonbon replied for me, but her tone indicated she didn’t believe it to be true.
Jo nodded. “You received an encrypted file package overnight from a J. Temple at Langley,” she continued. “I’ve already got it flagged on your board.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I said, still dazed by my new surroundings.
“Your bathroom is over here,” Bonny said, pushing open yet another door. “It has its own shower,” she said in an amused whisper.
I walked over and peeked in. It was appointed with expensive looking tile and chrome.
“Our bathrooms are through the break room at the other end of the hall,” she continued. “They’re okay, I guess.”
I grinned. “Bonny. If you want to use my shower, all you have to do is ask.”
“I will. Can I make some coffee?” she asked, nodding her head in the direction of my fancy coffee maker.
“Sure. I’ll have a quad shot latte if you don’t mind,” I replied.
“One quad, whole, with foam, coming up. You want one, Jo?” she asked.
Jo shook her head and refocused on her folders.
Down the hall I heard Storc. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. A few moments later he was entering my office. “Did you see our server lab?”
“Yeah. Pretty nice, huh?” I said as his expression changed.
He was about to ask about my injuries, but Bonbon responded before he could get the question out.
“Bicycle accident,” Bonny said, again with a mocking tone. “A pesky runner knocked him off the bike trail.”
Storc lifted an eyebrow and stared at me for a beat, obviously detecting Bonbon’s lack of belief in my story. I shifted the subject again.
“You like the server room?” I asked.
“Friggin’ awesome!” he said before turning and walking back out. “I’m gonna go play.”
“Staff meeting in twenty in the conference room,” I yelled behind him.
“’Kay!” he yelled back from down the hall.
I sat down at my desk and saw a card in the center. I ignored it while Jo went over her scheduling concerns. By the time she was done, both Bonbon and I had steaming hot lattes in our hands. Jo disappeared back into the outer office, followed by Bonny.
I opened the card on my desk. It read, “We hope you enjoy your new surroundings. We’ve taken the liberty of appointing your office with some upgrades and hope they are to your liking. Your presence at TravTech makes us all proud. Sincerely…” It was signed by Bernie and several of the TravTech board members.
“Nice,” I muttered.
I busied myself reviewing and approving software projects for the team. There were a number of other projects I had yet to categorize, but they were more in line with data detective work than software and security, so I divided them into two stacks. One for me and one for Jo. I was eager to get her started on something other than organization and project management.
At our staff meeting, I went over outstanding infrastructure issues and got updates for everyone.
“Is everyone happy with their new spaces?” I asked.
Everyone enthusiastically nodded their approval. “I want a shower in my office,” Bonny said with a playful pout.
“I'll make sure Bernie gets the request for that,” I replied grinning.
“There is one thing we might have to get looked at,” Mahesh said. “I don't think the power supply for the floor was designed for the load we have on it. I checked the levels in the server room and they are within tolerance, but just barely.”
I nodded. “I'll put in a request for someone to come and check the amperage and upgrade us if necessary,” I replied. “I suspect the massive electromagnets keeping the doors secure out front are sucking quite a bit off the trunk. It may be a simple matter of adjusting the distribution in the jun
ction box.”
Mahesh nodded.
“Okay. As soon as we are done here, I want everyone to finish your signups for the online certifications on the classified materials handling and COMSEC,” I said.
“Is there a time limit on the course?” Anna asked, looking a little nervous.
I looked at Jo.
“There isn't a time limit on the course itself,” she said firmly. “But there is a time requirement on the certification. We are already processing data for the CIA, and technically, these should have been done before we started getting contracts. For some reason, our status was changed to active retroactively, starting Thursday afternoon. Once our status changed, all the queued projects started coming through.”
Oh, shit.
“Why did we go active on Thursday?” Anna asked as if it were an inconvenience that she would have to do her certification more quickly than she had originally anticipated.
Jo shrugged.
“I wonder,” Bonbon purred sarcastically, looking right at me. “Now what could have happened on Thursday evening that would have put this section on active status? Hmm. Let me think.”
“Bonny,” I said with a warning tone.
“I seem to remember getting a secure email. Hmm,” she continued and then opened her laptop to check her emails. “Oh yeah! Here it is. ‘Gang, got called into a three-day orientation workshop. Please don't message or call unless it's important. See you on Monday. Thanks, Scott.”
“Seriously Bonny,” I cautioned, my tone rising. “You need to stop.”
“How’d you say you got those bruises on your face and those skinned knuckles?” Bonny threw in accusingly.
“Something about a bicycle accident this weekend,” Storc replied.
Damn it, Storc. Don't encourage her.
“That's enough speculation,” I said firmly, all kinds of anger in my voice. “You know who we work for. Stop digging.”
“Fine,” Bonny pouted.
“And you know better,” I said, pointing at Storc.
He shot me a grin, pleased with his little coup d'état.
I shook my head and smiled. “As long as we're active, let's get to work,” I said, trying to salvage the meeting. “TravTech gets paid when we're working on projects, and they've already made a fairly substantial investment in infrastructure. So let's start earning their money back.”
Everyone nodded enthusiastically. “I've already parsed out the first projects,” I continued. “Bonny and Anna. You'll have to get with Storc and Mahesh to build your environment sandboxes. Some of what you have to build could be contagious, so treat it like you do virus work.”
“Are these projects being charged by the hour?” Anna asked.
I was about to answer, but Jo interjected first. “Only analyst time is charged by the hour—on a sliding scale depending on the nature of the work,” she said. “There is a project-content-based scale for all other work. The cost ceiling is included in the package and should help you determine the urgency and depth of the work required.”
“What if they want something but it takes longer?” Anna asked.
“If what is requested can't be completed within the scope of the allotted budget, then I have to contact contract administration and inform them that an adjustment needs to be made,” she replied. “But the cost ceilings seem to err on the side of allowing more than necessary. They seem to really prefer quality over quantity.”
“Just out of curiosity, how much does an ‘analyst’ hour go for?” Bonny asked.
“As I said, it’s a sliding scale, depending on the nature of the work,” Jo said and looked at me for permission to continue. I shook my head.
“Oh come on, boss,” Bonny protested. “I know it's not going in your pocket. What difference does it make?”
I took a deep breath and nodded to Jo.
“There are six levels of analyst pay on the scale. Level one bills out at three hundred and fifty dollars per hour and the amounts increase for each level up to eight hundred fifty dollars per hour at level six,” she said.
Storc whistled.
“Whoa,” Bonny said, in shock. “What's the difference between levels?”
“Level one is data review and comment, then there's a stepped level of involvement up to the highest two levels—which don't have descriptions,” she said. “Or rather, I'm not cleared to know what they are.”
“And the project that got us activated this weekend,” Bonny asked. “What level did that get recorded at?”
I didn't catch the significance of that question until Jo was already answering it.
“Level five,” Jo said.
The words “stop now” were in my brain, but they had not reached my lips by the time Jo had spilled the beans. Bonbon, you are too damned smart for your own good.
“So level five analyst work is bruised faces and skinned knuckles,” Bonny snarked with a smug grin. “Good to know. Sort of makes me wonder what level six is.”
“Meetings like this,” I muttered in disgust. I closed my laptop and looked at Bonny. “Please don't make this hard on me,” I pleaded.
Her accusative glare softened a bit. “I'm just trying to look out for you,” she grumbled. “God only knows what kind of trouble you'd get into without me.”
“I know it's going to be hard to get used to, but most of the time we won't be able to share the things we work on with the others unless the job requires it,” I reiterated. “I'm pretty excited about the new section, but there will be sacrifices. Let's please do our best to limit them. Okay?”
I got nods from everyone except Bonny who, in classic Bonny form, had sunk her teeth into something and wouldn't let go.
“Calendar entries,” Jo said, starting a new topic, but I was still lingering on the tension created by Bonny's prying. If I couldn't get her to stop, I'd have to either isolate her from my work, or—though the thought pained me—replace her.
Please behave, Bonbon. Please.
When we were done with our meeting, we all went back to work in our respective areas.
By lunchtime, I had worked my way through most of the stack and was reviewing a couple of the projects I intended to give to Jo. There was a call on the intercom around noon. It was lunch being delivered, courtesy of Bernie.
I always found the ‘gift’ of lunch from management to be a little self-serving. Yes, it was a free meal for the employees, but lunchtime was usually much shorter when food was delivered. Some would inevitably grab their food and then go back to their desk to eat, providing the company with more productivity than if the employee had gone out for lunch.
I felt a little ungrateful letting that thought pass through my head, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I insisted everyone eat together as a team in the conference room rather than at their desks. I was still thinking like a cube farm inhabitant—I'd have to stop that.
After lunch, I sat down next to Jo’s desk and waited for her to finish typing an entry into the team calendar. When she was done, I gently placed three folders on the edge of her desk.
“What are these?” she asked.
“Research projects,” I replied, smiling.
She took them and started to thumb through the contents.
“These are analyst projects,” she said in confusion as she shuffled through them.
“Yes, they are.”
She looked up at me questioningly. “You want me to do them?”
“If you feel up to it,” I offered.
“Yes,” she said, nodding her head enthusiastically. “I do.”
“Good,” I said as I rose to leave. “I thought you’d like that.”
“Thank you,” she called out as I went into my office.
It was 2:30 p.m., and no sooner had I seated myself than the phone on my desk chirped at me.
I hit the speaker button by tossing a pen at it. “Scott Wolfe,” I said, seeing the ID was a secure Langley line.
“Have you heard?” John Temple’s voice came over my sp
eaker.
“Heard what?” I asked.
“Turn on the news,” he ordered.
I grabbed the remote for the screen on my wall, turned it on, and then changed the source from computer to cable. As soon as I flipped to CNN, there were images of rescue vehicles in three split screens. It took me only a second to realize they were three different locations, not three views of the same location.
My heart jumped in my chest when I saw the headline banners at the bottom of the images.
“Radio and TV personalities murdered. Terrorism is suspected.”
“Oh shit,” I muttered, feeling the blood drain from my face.
“Yeah,” John replied. “It looks like Grimwall wasn’t the only one he was after.”
I suddenly realized I was still on speaker phone and my office door was open. I reached over and picked the handset out of its cradle.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We’re still trying to gather details, but it looks like there are at least eight of them,” John replied. “Looks like it happened in two waves, ten minutes apart.”
“Eight?!… He didn’t have time!”
“Either he set up some of them in advance or he had help,” John replied. “It’s possible the mystery woman was helping.”
“Send me the info you have,” I demanded.
“No,” he replied. “Your role in this is over. Go back to work on the movement profiles that I sent you.”
“I’m just supposed to sit here and watch and not be able to do anything about it?” I asked.
“Welcome to the Company… If it’s too much for you, turn the TV off.”
I could tell by the stress in his voice that I shouldn’t push it.
“Okay,” I replied, though I didn’t expect to stay out of it.
“I mean it, Scott,” he replied. “I need that other data anyway. Drop this.”