Immortal Brother Where Art Thou (The Immortality Curse Book 4)

by Peter Glenn

  Granted, it was still a bit of a longshot, but if I was going to find Bao, I had to put my faith in something.

  Standing between myself and the building entrance were perhaps a thousand individuals, all dressed in jeans and polo shirts, which made me breathe a little easier. I’d dressed well for the occasion after all.

  Now I just needed to find a patsy and attempt a grab. Someone with a vaguely similar height and build whose badge I could borrow for a bit. Actually getting a VP’s badge wouldn’t be likely, but anyone on maintenance or with a decent access level should do nicely.

  I wiped my palms off on my jeans. They were a little sweaty. Truth be told, I wasn’t the best pickpocket out there, but I did have some practice. There had been a few lean years in the 1800s when I’d had to go to some really dark places just to survive until the next meal.

  Gosh, if only I could go back there and talk to that young, impressionable boy surrounded by all that darkness and despair. I’d have told him just to give in then, save myself the hassle of trying to end things now.

  But alas, hindsight is twenty-twenty and all.

  Still, I liked to think my time would come. My therapist Katherine kept trying to drill into my head that I had to be positive. And that meant having a “can do” attitude, as she liked to call it. Sure, that was likely a perversion of how she meant it, but my mom was paying for her, so I rarely listened to anything she said anyway.

  About three rows of people down and five or six to the left, I spotted my victim. He was of average height and nothing special in appearance. Someone no one would think twice about. That was exactly the kind of person I needed.

  I squeezed through several sets of people while making my way over to where he stood. Again, I traveled slow and kind of ambled about. I wanted to look like someone who was just milling about in the courtyard.

  When I got a little closer, I started searching for his badge. Thankfully, he wasn’t wearing a lanyard and it was hanging from one of his belt loops instead. That meant all I had to do was cut the little thread holding it in place and it would be mine.

  Easy peasy.

  But first, I had to wait. If I tried it now, he might notice. Much better to do it while everyone was being forced forward in cramped groups all at once. Bumping into others would seem like nothing more than an accident then.

  As I settled into place next to my mark, he glanced over at me for a half second, then went back to staring at something in front of him. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was that was so interesting.

  “Hey,” the mark said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I tried to appear startled. It wasn’t hard. “Me?” I said in a low voice, pointing at myself.

  The mark nodded. “Yeah, you.”

  Damn. I’d been had. It was all over, I just knew it. I started coming up with a cover story, but he kept going.

  “New here?” the mark asked. He kept staring ahead as he talked.

  “Uh… yeah, you could say that.” Hey, he provided one for me. Nice. I flashed him a slight grin, hoping it would make me come off as more authentic.

  “Tch. Figures.” His feet shuffled as he rocked slightly back and forth.

  “Oh?” I raised my eyebrows and in spite of every instinct saying to do the opposite, I looked straight at him. “How do you figure?”

  He returned my gaze and smiled as well. “That stupid grin of yours. You’re far too happy to have worked here for years.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, you got me. Still way too green to be jaded.”

  The mark chuckled as well and went back to staring ahead. “So where did you come from? Which company?”

  “Uh…” I had to think fast. I glanced up at the building’s entrance and wondered what was taking them so long. This little bit of small talk was going to give me up faster than anything else. “EnviroTech?”

  It was the only company name I could think of. They’d been all over the internet recently, though I couldn’t remember for what.

  The mark frowned. “Didn’t they go under?”

  Well that would be a good reason to hear about them for sure. And a good reason for a career shift.

  “Uh, yeah. Yeah, they did. Glad I narrowly avoided that mess.” I wiped at my brow for emphasis.

  “Heh. I bet.” The mark turned to look at me more fully. “The name’s Micah. Micah Smith.” He extended a hand toward me. “I work in IT security.”

  I accepted the offered hand. Surprisingly, Micah’s grip was supple, yet strong. I decided I kind of liked this guy. And he worked in IT? Double score! His badge was sure to get me into the higher-ranking offices.

  “Nice to meet you, Micah, I’m Taio.”

  What? It’s not like I could use my real name, and no one was ever going to connect any of this to my brother anyway. Might as well sully his name in whatever way I could in the meantime.

  “Taio? That’s a cool name.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, it means ‘great’ in Chinese. Or so I’m told.” I gave him another silly grin.

  “Great, huh?” I nodded again. “Your parents were really over-selling it, huh?”

  I started laughing and Micah joined in.

  “Yeah, I guess they did.”

  “What department do you work in, Taio?”

  Shoot. Now I was done for. I didn’t even know what they called their departments, and even a new hire would know that one.

  A bead of sweat popped on my forehead, and I wiped at it and cleared my throat, stalling for time. I opened my mouth to mutter something unintelligible and try to pass it off as an answer, but before I could, I was saved by the blare of a horn over the loudspeakers.

  “Attention, Delta Fox employees. The bomb crew has cleared everyone for re-entry. Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest entrance.”

  Heh. Like that was going to happen.

  But whatever. It meant I wouldn’t need to answer Micah’s questions anymore.

  “Well, I guess we should head back, eh?” I said with a half laugh.

  “Tch. Yeah, I guess. Nice to meet you, Taio.”

  “You too.”

  I turned my attention toward the crowd for a moment, watching with glee as the courtyard turned from peaceful into a chaotic scene, with every single building entrance swarmed with thousands of people all trying to get inside at the same time, and harried security guards waving people onward with nary a look.

  A broad smile creased my lips. It was just like clockwork.

  Micah was one of those people that had been propelled onward like a moth to a flame. I followed him the best I could, that juicy badge of his never leaving my sight for even a second as he swayed back and forth in the crowds.

  Just a little bit closer and my prize would be mine.

  I reached one hand into my fanny pack and pulled out a tiny little knife. It was hardly bigger than a razor blade, but it would cut through the string holding that badge to Micah’s belt loop like a hot knife through butter. This knife was also covered by my illusion charm. All metal on me was. That’s how this particular charm worked. So if anyone saw me using it, it would just look like I’d swiped my fist through the air. Not the best look, but better than brandishing a weapon in a crowd.

  Micah kept walking, and I followed. Someone bumped into him, and I groaned as I lost sight of him for just a moment, then I found him again. I just had to get a little bit closer. Another couple feet or so.

  My palms started to sweat again, making my grip uncertain to where I almost dropped the blade. That would have been awful. Once it left my person, it’d no longer be blocked by the charm, and I’d be in trouble. It wasn’t even warm out, so it must have been nerves getting to me. I mindlessly wiped the hand with the knife on my pants to dry it and the tiny blade pricked through the fabric, cutting into the tender skin underneath.

  I stifled a wince and pulled the hand away. I stared down at my jeans. They didn’t look like they’d been torn and there was no sign of blood, though I felt a little trickle of the
stuff seep down my leg. I’d just have to hope no one noticed. A bleeding employee was not the kind of attention I needed right now.

  Besides, Micah was almost within my grasp now. He was stalled with several other employees, and I was once again right behind him. I reached forward with the knife hand, angling for the badge, but just missed it as he lurched forward once more, and the knife met with air instead.

  Thankfully, no one seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t say anything.

  Micah took another few steps before I could recover, and I freaked out as I saw him slipping away.

  There was nothing for it. I lunged forward several steps at once and almost slammed right into him, saving myself just in time and turning it into a bump instead.

  “Hey!” Micah spat, turning to face me. He recognized me and his features calmed a little. “That eager to get back to work?”

  “You know me.” I gave him a broad smile. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all good, man, just watch your step.”

  With that, Micah turned back around and marched onward toward the entrance. But it had been enough. That pause in motion while he’d talked to me had given me just the opening I needed. I looked down at the little yellowish badge in my knife hand and almost gave myself a victory fist pump.

  Almost. Had to act natural and all that.

  I stuffed the badge into my pants pocket and kept moving forward. It wouldn’t do for someone to see me with the badge before they had to. Micah might have been a similar height, but he looked nothing like me.

  Soon enough, security was waving me onward, and I took my first steps into the building proper. Micah turned and waved at me as he sped down another hallway, and I waved back, then I set about finding the elevators.

  I never quite understood why, but higher ups always worked at the top of office buildings. I supposed maybe it was for the view, but this was downtown Seattle and nowhere near the waterfront, so there wasn’t much of a view to speak of. Other buildings were about all you could see.

  At any rate, I needed to get to the top floor of this building, and fast. I had no way of knowing how long it would take before Micah noticed his badge was missing, but it wouldn’t be very long. Minutes, maybe. A half hour on the outset. Either way, it was not a lot of time to work with.

  I glanced back the way I’d come in. It looked to be the main entrance to the building, so the elevators couldn’t be far off. For a second, I thought about asking someone for directions, but that would have given me away. Real employees would know how to find the elevator.

  The hallway in front of me went for quite a ways in both directions, so I picked one at random. Left had always been lucky for me before, and seeing as how my luck got me both into and out of several sticky situations, left it was.

  I briskly walked down the hallway, passing several people along the way. I’d always found that if you walked purposefully enough, people would leave you alone. That was certainly the case today. No one stopped me or even looked in my direction for more than a half second.

  Soon enough, I found a corridor off to my right and took it. I spilled out into a well-lit area with three large, metal doors on each side of the hallway. The elevator room. Nice.

  I pressed the up button near one of the elevators, but it looked like it had already been pressed. In fact, peering around, it looked like there was quite the line to get onto an elevator. I wondered for a second what had happened to create such a backlog and then remembered that it was all my fault. Of course not everyone worked on the main floor of the building. When ten thousand people went back to work at the same time, that would mean they were all hitting the elevators at the same time, too.

  Ugh. That, I had not counted on. It would take all of my time just to get to a VP’s office at this rate.

  Time for another plan, then. I was going to get nowhere fast in the elevators. Time to use a staircase instead. Those wouldn’t have a thousand employees vying for access. Even in Seattle where most people were health conscious, the vast majority took the elevator.

  My eyes scanned the walls for some sort of map or directory, but honestly, through the mass of people standing around in the middle of the elevator room, I couldn’t make out much of anything. Sighing, I backed away, ducking back into the hallway I’d come from originally. I almost bumped into another person as I did so. I gave them a nervous smile and shuffled away from them as quickly as I could. She shook her head and soon became one with the mass that was waiting for an elevator, my slipup quickly forgotten.

  Another crisis averted.

  I turned my attention back to finding a stairwell. Thankfully, I found one soon enough just by going back down the same hallway from before. The door had a little security keycard lock on it, but I tried it, and it opened without issue. Undoubtedly, it had been disabled to help people get back to their desks faster.

  Lucky at last.

  I plunged myself into the stairwell and let the door shut behind me. It slammed itself shut with enough force and noise that I thought the whole building was going to come down on me, but nothing happened. Apparently, it was just a really heavy door.

  Taking the steps two at a time, I made my way up several flights of stairs. I soon felt the familiar burn of exertion in my legs and slowed myself to one stair at a time, though soon enough, even that was a chore. There were just too many stairs.

  How many floors had this place been again? Twelve? Fourteen? Whatever it was, it was far too many.

  With my chest burning and my legs threatening to fall off, I slumped up against a giant number nine next to me and let my breathing slow. Holy hell, climbing stairs was harder than I remembered. Maybe I should have waited for that elevator after all…

  I let that thought die and took another few seconds to breathe and let my body cool, then trudged up the next flight of stairs. It didn’t help that there were two whole flights for every level.

  One of these days, I swore I was going to go to the gym and train my stamina further so ordeals like this wouldn’t be so hard on me, but let’s be real for a minute. This was me we were talking about. I was never going to hit the gym.

  But just to be clear, this whole stair climb business totally counted as cardio for the day, right? Good.

  Soon enough, I reached the twelfth landing. The giant gray number twelve painted on the concrete looked as good as any sign or signal ever had. I gave myself a once-over. A thin sheen of sweat covered my body, but my clothes didn’t look any worse for the wear, and there was still no sign of blood on my jeans. In fact, I was pretty sure it had stopped flowing entirely at some point.

  I ran one hand through my hair and wiped it off on the back of my jeans, then plastered a smile onto my face and pushed open the door to the building proper. My legs felt like jelly, but my arms were still strong enough, and it took little effort to force the massive steel door open.

  A chill blast of air-conditioned air hit my right in the face, drying all the sweat and making me feel somewhat human again for just a moment. My poor legs still wouldn’t be forgiving me anytime soon, but that was just a sacrifice I’d have to live with.

  The plush black carpet beneath my feet did provide a hint of relief, though, which made me happy.

  I scanned my new surroundings. It was the same building, but the decor couldn’t have been more different. The walls were made of some sort of granite and had a nice sheen to them so polished I could almost make out my reflection in them. There were wall sconces hanging every few feet that had soft, white lights planted in the tops of them, casting everything in a cheery, if somewhat subdued, glow. And there was no sign of the typical office posters you’d see on other levels about motivation or some upcoming work meeting.

  No, the place was pristine. I was definitely on the right floor.

  I started walking along the hallway, taking note of each office door as I passed by them. They were all made out of identical-looking cherry wood, and each of them contained a black keycard lock and a name plaque
.

  The names meant nothing to me, of course, but the titles, on the other hand, those could come in handy.

  “VP of Sales, VP of Security, VP of Marketing,” I rattled off in a low tone as I made my way past several of these doors. The one I was looking for couldn’t be much further. At least, I hoped not, as I was almost to the end of the grand hallway.

  “VP of Human Resources,” I said aloud as I came to one of the last ones. My eyes lit up and my spirits soared. This was it. The door I’d risked everything for.

  Now I just had to hope this particular VP hadn’t come back to his office yet. He shouldn’t have. The higher ups at Delta Fox, by all reports, were very personable people and had gotten to their positions by taking the time to meet with the little guys whenever possible. Hopefully, they’d all still be mingling with some employee or another, and I’d have a few more minutes.

  I took my stolen badge out of my pocket and swiped it past the keycard lock. The little red light flashed green for a half second and it beeped at me, then it went back to red.

  “Come on, come on,” I chanted.

  It didn’t take long. The light flared green once again and held there. I breathed a small sigh of relief and flung the door open before it could decide it didn’t like me again.

  Once again, I was plunged into an unfamiliar setting. There were windows all along the back wall of the office, but it was overcast out, and I couldn’t see much of anything out there worth looking at.

  Still, they provided quite a bit of light for me to see by, so I scoped out the office proper.

  Along both sides of the office were giant, wooden bookcases. They contained several volumes that looked to be work-related, but also a good mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and even a little romance mixed in with the more boring tomes.

  There was a large potted plant next to the VP’s desk. Some kind of fern, perhaps. I’d never been good with plant names. The desk itself looked to be made of natural oak and was stained a light color. A few papers were scattered along the desk next to a laptop that looked like it cost more than what I made in a month. Not that that was hard or anything.