"I was going to say."
"How's it look?"
"Good. It looks good. Did you want a coffee?"
"Is it real coffee?"
He laughed. "God, no, it's Starbucks."
My smile dropped. "Wait, no, seriously?"
"When was the last time you were in a Starbucks?"
"I don't..." I dropped my eyes. "I don't remember anything from the last ten years."
His voice dropped to a whisper. "Jesus, Erica, what happened to you?"
I had dreaded this. I knew that it was something that would come up again and again with anyone from my old life. I'd have to explain the inexplicable, make up some answers when all I had were questions. Dwelling on it made me feel like a freak, but I couldn't pretend like it wasn't a problem. It wasn't the kind of thing people would just let go, and I needed Baxter to be there for me.
"I don't know. I woke up in the hospital... the police said they found me in a burning warehouse on the West Side, no sign of how I got there. I was in a coma for a week... but I'm healthy, no signs of muscle atrophy or brain damage. Hell, if I want to be honest, I'm in the best shape of my life."
He leaned back. "You look really good."
"I'd love to take credit for it." I smiled. "I just have no idea what I did to make it happen."
"Everybody thought you were dead."
"What happened after I disappeared?"
He sipped his coffee. "What's the last thing you remember?"
"God, I don't know." The police and FBI had asked me the same question. "It's not really like I closed my eyes and opened them ten years later. I mean... I remember it about as well as you do."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, I remember that I had a birthday. I just don't remember what we did, who was invited, what I was given. Just because I don't remember anything after doesn't mean my last memories are any fresher than yours. I just... don't remember anything after September. At all."
"One sec." He stood, approached the counter, then returned with a pair of drinks.
"I never even saw you order."
He tapped his glasses. "I should have asked. I just got you the Chai, is that okay?"
"It's fine." Leaning forward I could see a translucent display on the inside of his lenses. "I'm still getting used to the technology."
"Crazy, right? And the kids growing up with this won't ever know any different."
"Yeah. So what happened the day I disappeared?"
"It was after that party at Pete's."
"Oh, that I do remember," I said. "That fight he had with Susan..."
"Yeah, you disappeared a week later." He sipped his drink. "You went to work, you didn't come home."
"That's it?" I took a sip of mine. It didn't taste right.
"Yeah. I mean, there was an investigation, but they never really came up with anything. I looked for you, your parents looked for you, your company paid private detectives to search for you..."
I took another sip. Different, but not bad, I guess. Just sort of bland. "I see."
Baxter looked down at his drink. "After a few years... we just lost hope. You know? The FBI told us you would have contacted us if you were... if you were going to get in touch."
If I was still alive, I'm pretty sure he was going to say. Of course they'd have thought I was dead. I was too invested, had had too many plans to just turn my back and run away. Maybe I'd been kidnapped, taken by force, kept somewhere overseas... but even then, I'd have tried to get in touch with Baxter or my parents at the first opportunity.
It was hard to imagine what I'd done to those left behind. It's why I was dreading contacting my parents, why I'd put it off. What they'd been through... I'd have to face them eventually.
Baxter glanced at his watch.
"People still use watches?" I asked. "Don't your glasses tell you what time it is?"
"Habit." he smiled sheepishly.
"Got to get back to work?"
"Yeah, lunch is over."
I stood. "I'll walk you to the corner. I have an appointment, anyway. Job interview."
He rose. "Oh, I was going to ask how you were getting on?"
"It's tough," I said, "But I was able to get in touch with Matthews."
"He's still at Septopharma?" he asked. "I thought they folded."
"New company, but I'm hoping he can find me something."
"Oh good. You know, if you need anything–"
"You're sweet." I linked my arm around his as we walked out of the cafe. "Oh, so I read in your profile that you're married. How's that?"
He stiffened. "It's... things aren't great. Seeing you again, how easy we slipped back into conversation... made me realize just how bad things are."
"Oh no, I'm sorry!"
"Funny how it takes that kind of perspective to get you to realize. I've been living with a stranger. June has her life, I have mine."
"Baxter..." We stopped at the corner crosswalk.
He offered me a pained smile. "It's been bad for a while. Don't worry. Focus on your meeting. Call me later?"
"I will."
The light changed and I watched my ex-boyfriend cross the street, fighting the urge to join him. He still felt... well, it still felt like he was mine. We'd never broken up, and while I'd been gone for years, it felt in my heart like we'd been only apart for days.
I won't lie. I felt like I had a chance. I felt the urge to swoop in and steal him from this June who didn't deserve or appreciate my Baxter.
Yeah, great plan Erica, like you don't have enough dramatic bullshit to deal with.
It probably wouldn't even be too hard to make him mine again. But no, I couldn't take advantage of his pain and nostalgia. He didn't deserve that. And in a practical sense, it wasn't what I needed. I needed a friend more than I needed a lover, and trying to seduce him away from his wife would only complicate everything.
I despised myself a little for even considering it. I wasn't that girl. No matter how lost or how afraid I was, there were some lines I wouldn't cross.
***
Novabio Medica's offices were only a few blocks away. They had a suite of floors in one of the newer buildings, a cylindrical towering monolith of chrome and glass that rose from the earth like an upturned nail. The surface shimmered like an oil-slick, and from the ground I could see that some kind of animation played across the upper-floors like it was one massive video screen. Above that, at the very top, it looked unfinished, with girders stretching up to rake the sky.
The lobby was just as futuristic and ultra-modern, though maybe this was just what professional buildings looked like in 2025. Everything was clean lines and obsidian furnishings with chrome trim. A heavyset security guard watched me from the moment I entered, simply pointing to the elevator bank when I told him about I had an appointment. Maybe he'd already scanned me and verified it.
The elevator's interior was cylindrical, sterile and featureless, without even a control panel. I was on the verge of getting out to ask the guard what the deal was when a thought occurred to me, and I looked at it through my ChicagoCard. The Augmented Reality version of the elevator was vastly different, with ornate baroque brass and walnut fittings and rich velvet padding. I wondered what people without cards did, but security probably didn't let them into the building.
On the virtual wall was a directory of all the offices, including Matthews's up on the 67th floor. Before I could select it, though, the doors closed and the elevator started moving. Had the security guard triggered it, or was it just reacting to my card and the fact that that was where I had the appointment? Maybe I could ask Matthews.
The elevator ascended in almost complete silence.
It's pneumatic. I didn't know how I knew that. The thought felt weird, alien, other, as strange to me as my escape from the gang had been. Another echo of Erica-who-had-been.
But was it an aftershock, or a foreshock?
***
In contrast to the sparseness of the lobby and elevator, Novabio Medica
's reception area was rich with retro art-nouveau sensibility, mahogany furniture and plaster reliefs alongside murals and thick carpeting. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave a breathtakingly picturesque view of the Chicago River.
An Asian man in his mid-twenties watched me with a perky smile from the moment I stepped out of the elevator right until I walked up to his desk. His shirt was starched, his short hair was impeccable, and his lips shimmered with a coral lip gloss.
"I'm here for–"
"Miss Crawford?" He had one of those ear-loop glasses things. "I've told Mr. Matthews you've arrived, if you'll have a seat?"
"Oh. Okay."
I sat next to the waiting room windows and looked down towards the city, and was reminded of views from the building I'd worked in when I was at Septopharma, only a few blocks away on Clinton and Canal. It was still there, the building, a relic from another time, but that was Chicago's cityscape... towering relics from a vast span of decades gone by alongside the ultramodern that managed to achieve a sort of synthesis when taken as a whole. It was a living, breathing museum of architecture, the familiar next to the strange, and I couldn't help but feel like I, too, was an out-of-time relic.
Aside from the waiting room and Matthews' office, there wasn't much to the rest of the floor. Half of it was just empty space, an atrium over the lobby, with a suspended walkway leading to a fire exit stairwell.
The receptionist cleared his throat to catch my attention. "Can I get you coffee? Water?"
"Coffee, please. Is it just Greg's office up here?"
"On this floor." He gave me an insincere smile and rose from his seat, crossing gracefully to a small alcove holding a coffee machine and some cups. "You wouldn't know, given your... situation... but most people work from home. Some of the other executives have floors above and below us, but it's all the same layout."
"Wow, that seems... wasteful."
His smile faded as he handed me my cup, leaving only the insincerity. "Yes, well. I wouldn't expect you to be up to date on contemporary business practices."
The door to his office opened, there was Matthews. He was older now, hair more white than gray, but he looked far healthier and in better shape than I could have hoped. The astonishment in his face was priceless.
I stood. "It's not a prank."
"Erica! I can't believe it's you."
"How are you, Greg?" I extended a hand towards him.
He bypassed my offered handshake and clasped my arm by the elbow, pulling me into an embrace. I'd been cautious in my approach... I really needed this job... but was happy to let him set the limits of decorum.
"It's really you."
"It's really me."
He glanced at the receptionist, who was carefully not watching our reunion. "Come along to my office. We can talk."
I followed my one-time mentor through into a spacious office, as Spartan as his old one had been when we'd both worked together at Septopharma. Greg wasn't an office kind of guy. It was where he kept his desk, where he kept his personal files, but he'd always preferred to be out there in the world, meeting clients face to face, pressing the flesh and learning the names.
It had been the way I'd learned my business, and it had worked out tremendously for me.
"Sorry about Dae. He can be... well." There was little in the room beyond the desk and a pair of chairs. Greg maneuvered his way into the chair behind the desk, and gestured me towards the other one. "Jesus, Erica, what happened?"
I told him much the same story I'd related to Baxter. "According to Baxter, I never came home from work."
"You've reconnected with Baxter, then?"
"Only just now. We met for coffee."
"Hell of a thing." He looked morbidly fascinated. I couldn't blame him. "We turned over surveillance footage of you leaving the parking garage, but there wasn't anything unusual about it."
"Was I acting any different on that last day?" I asked.
"Not that I remember. It was a long time ago, though."
I nodded. I hadn't expected much more than that.
"So now what?" Greg asked.
"So, now I'm here." I hated to come begging for work, but he had his own way of doing things. We both knew why I'd contacted him. Maybe he wanted to see if I could still be assertive. "I'll be upfront. I need a job."
"I'll see what I can do." He seemed hesitant. "But this economy..."
"I don't need an executive position," I said. "I just need to get back on the ladder."
"Erica."
Something struck me about how patronizing he sounded, and my stomach dropped. "What?"
"Listen, if I can get you something... You're a straight shooter, and I respect that, so I'll be straight with you."
"Okay."
His voice had grown distant, like I was listening through a funnel. "You've got a ten-year gap in your work history. You're ten years out-of-date with modern marketing and medical technology. You don't know what we sell or how to sell it. You don't have a network or any connections..."
Desperation clawed through the fog in my head. "I've got you! You can vouch for me."
"You have me." He nodded. "My name doesn't carry the weight it used to, Erica. To most of the young turks running the industry, I'm just another dinosaur holding the company back until I retire. Just ask Dae, I'm sure he'll go on about it."
"I can go back to school, get up to date–"
His voice was gentle. "So can any fresh-faced graduate with an MBA. And they grew up in this world. You can learn about it, but you're not living it. To be honest, neither am I. Novabio isn't like Septopharma." He turned in his chair, voice going soft, dreamy. "The whole business of business has changed. When I was starting out, Fleischmann gave me the shirt off his back when I needed it. Now they're all like Dae. Young. Hungry. Vicious."
My hands tightened on the arms of my chair. "Greg, I need this job."
"I know. I know, sweetie, but... look." He closed his eyes and exhaled. I could almost smell the regret on his breath, underneath the bourbon. "I'll do what I can. Just... just don't get your hopes up."
"Thank you, Greg. I'll take anything at this point. Anything. I'm desperate."
"I know, Erica." He opened his watery eyes. "I know."
I don't remember much about the walk out of Greg's office, other than the way his receptionist watched me go, a relic coming from a meeting with a relic. I was blessed with an empty car on the train ride back from the Loop, and I welcomed the solitude, welcomed the opportunity to be alone with my disappointment.
I couldn't get Greg's receptionist's expression out of my head, a mixture of pity and contempt, a disregard for both me and Greg shouted in every line of his posture. He was of a new breed, Dae, one of the fast young people who'd grown up in this world. Maybe, if I hadn't missed a decade I could have kept up. Maybe, like Greg, I'd be lost and archaic.
I don't know what I'd been expecting from Matthews. More than nothing, that's for sure. My old mentor had been right, though... what did I have to offer a prospective employer? Ten years ago I'd been hot shit. Now I was just another unskilled worker in a tough economy.
Greg was wrong, though. I had other talents, other skills, and I was a hard worker. Maybe I couldn't cut it in a business as relationship and technology focused as pharmaceutical marketing, but I wasn't going to start at ground zero again. I wasn't going to be a secretary, or a drone in the mail-room. It wasn't that I was too proud. I'd just already crawled my way up from the bottom once, and I wasn't going to do it again.
I'd find something else.
Something new.
I had no other choice.
CHAPTER 8: MORE THAN COFFEE
The first time I met Lonnie Park I mistook him for someone from billing or a therapist. He certainly looked the part. Balding, middle aged, thick glasses, sweater vest, bristly mustache. I was still in the hospital, and had only recently regained awareness of where I was and what was going on. I woke to him sitting in a chair in my room, just reading a magazine.
>
When he noticed that I was watching him, he cleared his throat, stood, walked over to me, and asked if I'd remembered anything about where I'd been for the last ten years.
I told him I had not.
He nodded and left without a word. I didn't think much of it at the time — my stay was a whirling blur of visiting doctors, nurses, specialists, and police officers. Lonnie just slipped my mind until after I'd been discharged.
***
The second time I ran into Lonnie was as I was being discharged and moved to the group home while the Department of Human Services got me into the system. I was filling out paperwork in the hospital's reception area, and he just walked up to me, jacket slung over one arm.
This time he introduced himself. "Hi, I don't know if you remember me? I'm Agent Lonnie Park. I was given your case?"
"Agent?" Was he with the IRS? How much medical debt had I accrued?
"Oh, sorry." He shifted his jacket to his other arm and handed me a card.
I stared at it. "You're with the FBI?"
"I'm an analyst." He shifted his jacket back. "I'm following up on your missing-persons case."
"Oh."
"Yeah, so, I was wondering. If you'd remembered anything yet? About your whereabouts or activities over the past ten years."
I handed the card back to him. "No, sorry."
"Anything at all. Doesn't have to be important."
"Nothing."
"Okay. I'll just write that down. You have a good day."
"You too?" Was that it?
"And good luck!" He gave me a cheery wave.
"Thanks." Maybe it was just that I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened to me, but Lonnie had been most surreal part of waking up in the future.
***
Lonnie — in my mind he was never 'Agent Park' — left me a message the evening after my meeting with Baxter, requesting I come down to the FBI headquarters for a meeting the next morning. He didn't give me much more information than that, but I held out a hope that he'd learned something he could share with me.
Cold Reboot (Shadow Decade Book 1) Page 6