He paused a few feet before the oversized doors, which had opened automatically as the first in the crowd had approached them, remaining open for the others who were triggering the sensor above the threshold.
Today could be the day.
He repeated the same thought to himself everyday before going inside. He knew, if he kept a positive attitude and continued to do his best at his job in the mail room, his regular requests to move into a higher position in the company would be honored...eventually.
A scrawny man wearing a lab coat stepped beside him, as Thad waited for some of the crowd to funnel through the door in front of him. "Morning, Thad. Time to save the world."
Thad recognized Franklin's voice, and the familiar greeting. He turned and reached out to receive his friend's handshake, which he knew was coming. "Happy to do it."
Thad appreciated Franklin's optimism and enthusiasm. He liked having a co-worker he could relate to so much. Of course, Franklin's job was quite a bit more interesting than Thad's.
The mail room, where Thad spent seven hours each day receiving, sorting, and delivering fan mail, pleas for superhero help, and job applications. The delivering part of the job was the best. He always made sure he was one of the first to volunteer to take one of the delivery carts to the upper floors. Only three people from the pool of twelve mail room workers got to do the daily deliveries. Thad had only failed to get on the delivery team once in the year he'd been with Supers Incorporated. Doing upper-floor delivery meant seeing more of the company, and, if it was an especially great day, getting a little face time with one of the men or women who wore the suits—the super suits. One super in particular, if he was lucky.
Mail delivery aside, Thad felt a little envious of Franklin's department. The Augmentation Technologies Department, where his friend worked, took up three entire floors. But Thad knew he didn't have the science and engineering background Franklin had. But even if he had focused more in school, or had the opportunity to go to one of the science academies and then to a good university like Franklin had, Thad knew the talent to design new technology wasn't in his blood, despite how cool it sounded. Still, he loved hearing from his friend about what the department was developing. Thad always promised to keep the details hush hush. If Franklin and his team were working on something, it meant the technology hadn't been put into the field yet. Every time Franklin shared a little about whatever it was his department was working on, he reminded Thad, "Secrecy is of the utmost importance."
Franklin bowed his head slightly and extended his arm toward the open double doors. "After you, Thad old boy."
Thad chuckled, never ceasing to be amused at his friend's predilection for using phrases from an era before either of them were born. Nodding, he replied, "Good of you." That was the best he usually managed to match the old-timey speech.
He and Franklin were the last two at the top of the steps, and after they went inside the building the massive rectangles of steel and glass smoothly closed, sealing with the audible magnetic locking mechanisms embedded in the walls around the opening and in the doors themselves. If anyone else came up the steps outside, the locks would release and the doors would open again—provided the building hadn't been put on alert for anything.
Parting as they crossed the cavernous entrance hall, Franklin headed toward the left-most security checkpoint of the ten which lined the far side of the room. Thad waited for a group of people to finish passing in front of him, so he could get to the farthest checkpoint on the opposite end of the ten biometric scanning stations.
Standing in place briefly as technicians, administrative staff, scientists, and marketing people funneled ahead of him toward their respective paths into the sprawling and towering workplace, Thad looked down at the large circular Supers Incorporated emblem inlayed on the white marble floor of the entrance hall.
He'd seen the Supers emblem every day but Sunday for the past year, but that didn't take away from the pride he felt when he studied once more. The symbolism of the emblem deeply resonated with him—the golden eagle of freedom at its center, wings like rays from the sun, meant for all, and the three curved streaks, one red, one violet, and one blue, rising from below it, the red and blue fanning away from the violet to broaden as all three passed the golden eagle, then merged into the thin black line which encompassed the entire design. The rays were meant to represent different peoples, joined together by common ideals to make a better and stronger world.
One year.
Thad couldn't believe it had been a year already—since Supers Incorporated opened its doors and since he landed his job in the mail room. Being one of the first applicants had paid off, he thought.
He remembered some of the more noteworthy events he'd witnessed since then. Superhero sightings were common, since dozens of them were in and out of the building daily, but seeing them in action thrilled Thad so much more.
He pictured Hydro standing on the corner of Freedom and Liberty, just outside the Supers building, making himself into a sprinkler for the neighborhood kids to enjoy during the unexpected heatwave over the summer, coupled with a city-wide water shortage. Thad chuckled quietly as he recalled how silly Hydro looked slowly turning in a circle while holding his arms out to project the water in spraying arches for the kids to jump through. Thad had been impressed that Hydro had kept it up for almost an hour, making puddles on the sidewalk and in the street, which had been blocked off so the kids could play and stomp in the water.
Good PR. Bet he got a nice bonus for that one.
Of course, Hydro had done the big job a few hours earlier, replenishing the city's water supply, which had been drained dangerously low. The Hero City Herald said the drought, coupled with a mechanical malfunction at the Trinity Dam was the cause of the water shortage. But thanks to a leaked internal corporate memo, Thad knew the real scoop had something to do with an underground fissure outside of town funneling the city's own underground reservoir into a deeper cavern, which evidently was previously unknown. Hydro used his ability to emit massive amounts of water from his body to refill the municipal storage hold once the rupture had been sealed.
Then there was the electricity problem a month later. Sheesh. That sucked. Glad Voltbolt got back from Eastern Europe when he did.
Voltbolt, who preferred doing out-of-town jobs, had been in the Ukraine for almost a month, Thad remembered. The U.S. State Department had contracted Supers Inc for help, requesting Voltbolt by name.
No idea what he was doing over there, but with a meteor taking out half the city's power plant, he came home just in time.
Thad shook his head thinking how miserable everybody was without power for almost a week, until Voltbolt returned to spend three days holding one of the trunk power supply cables while repairs were done, feeding electricity to the city, mostly without interruption.
"I still can't believe how many bathroom breaks that guy takes."
Something flew overhead outside, passing over the domed skylight in the four-story entrance hall, which sat affixed to the front of the hundred-and-one-story tower. The bird, plane, or whatever it was cast a shadow down into the building, gliding across the marble floor and then over Thad's arm and shoulder before continuing behind him.
Thad looked up at the sky through the slightly tinted, nearly impenetrable, engineered, carbon-titanium sheet.
"Couldn't be him, and all our other flyers are assigned to the new overseas branch offices."
He would've liked it if Mr. Awesome was the one flying overhead, but he knew his favorite hero was still on the moon, overseeing the pouring of foundations for the International Moon Base. Robots and remote-piloted machines were doing the actual work of the recently-formed International Consortium for Extra-planetary Development—I.C.E.D.—but Supers Inc had agreed to send Mr. Awesome pro bono as a safeguard, should anything unforeseen and potentially disastrous happen.
Thad read in the Hero City Herald—something he did over coffee at the bakery on his way home from work�
��that the project would take a year to complete. Thankfully, Thad thought, Mr. Awesome would return to Earth-bound hero work after the initial month of construction, which was due to be completed in a few days, and only return to the moon periodically or when called upon for something only he could handle.
He looked around to ask someone else if they saw what had made the shadow, but the lobby was empty. Thad's chest tightened and he felt flush.
"Crap!"
He turned around to face the entrance and looked above it to check the time on the analog wall clock, which didn't actually have numbers on it. The long hand sat five degrees past the dot beneath the words at the top of the clock, 'Hero Time'. The short hand was on the dot which would have the seven on a numbered clock.
"Five minutes late!"
Was I daydreaming that long?
As Thad hurried to the security checkpoint, he wasn't worried about being chewed out by his supervisor. That had never happened. Agnes had been in the workforce entirely too long to care that much about five minutes here or ten minutes there. What he feared was something he promised himself he'd never let happen again.
Please let me not be too late!
Thad ran down the hall toward the service elevator for mail room employees, ignoring the company protocol which stated 'No employee should run inside the building at any time, unless necessary to avoid lab explosions or villainous attack, or when making use of the gym track on the third floor: Clockwise Monday, Wednesday, Friday; Counterclockwise Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.'
Chapter 3
Running all out, Thad meant to stop at the mail room service elevator, but it was Monday, which meant the floor had been waxed around six o'clock that morning. He loved the replica Mr. Awesome hero boots he wore—pant legs over the top so he didn't stand out too much, of course. But not only had he forgotten about the weekly floor waxing, he also failed to factor in the less-than-perfect traction of the soles of the gift shop knockoffs.
As he slid past the elevator, he clawed at the side of the surrounding panel to stop, but his fingertips only grazed it. Despite gym sessions a few times a week and occasional training in the normals level of the Supers Inc danger room, Thad's body failed him. Balance wasn't even a thing, and with his eyes still on the elevator, he didn't notice the trash can until his leg hit it. The metal can toppled with a loud clang, just as he landed on his rear with a thud, finally coming to a stop.
He glanced down the hall behind him and gave thanks for the fact that nobody was around to have seen his skills. His pride was hurt a little, but mostly it was his rear end.
Scrambling to his replica Mr. Awesome boots, which he liked slightly less at the moment, Thad hurried back to the elevator and pressed the down button. He counted the heartbeats he felt through his chest as he waited for the doors to open, which they began to do as 'forty' went through his head, though it had only been a dozen seconds.
He stepped through the widening gap before he noticed someone inside. He didn't recognize the woman, but he could tell by the way she was dressed—business skirt-suit, nothing flashy, briefcase in her right hand—she worked in legal. Thad saw the annoyed look on her face and how she squinted her eyes at him. He pulled his leg back through the open elevator doors and stepped aside for her to exit.
Why is she using the service elevator?
For some reason she had to let out a slow exhale before walking entirely too slowly out of the elevator. Then she paused beside him and turned to address him, "You won't mention you saw me, will you?"
He could tell by her tone that she meant her question more as a directive. Legal, he thought.
"We have some clients loitering outside the main elevators on my floor," she said. "I'm so done with them."
Thad smiled and nodded, not wanting to say anything which might prolong the conversation. He would've rushed into the service elevator already and hit the button to go down to the mail room, but the legal department's reputation told him not to do anything to get on their bad side.
The woman gave him another second to reply, and when he remained quiet, she squinted at him once more, then walked away.
Thad noticed a faint dusty outline of a hand print on the back of her skirt, but of course said nothing about it to her as she made her way down the hall toward the security checkpoints.
Hearing the closing elevator doors behind him, Thad spun back around to it and shoved his hand between them to keep them open. Being an overused and abused service elevator, the mechanism responsible for halting the doors and reversing them responded slower than Thad would have preferred. He winced as the doors squeezed his hand, not breaking anything, but definitely giving him a nice bruise before they opened.
He rushed inside and used his other hand to press the button to go down the one floor to the mail room. The doors, as if irritated with his intervention, creaked shut slower than usual—at least that's what it seemed like to Thad.
"Come on. Come on." He tapped one of his replica hero boots and stared at the digital display above the keypad, waiting for it to change from '1' to '-1'. The lurch of the elevator felt haggard and for a second he thought it might be his luck that one of the cables would snap, sending him past his destination and down into the restricted floors which extended far below to the deep foundations for the building.
The number changed just as the ding sounded from the speaker beside the keypad. He moved closer to the doors and waited for them to open, hoping the three carts used to distribute the daily mail throughout the building hadn't gone up the same elevator before he had gotten in it.
The doors opened and the sounds of the mail room hit his ears. He stepped out and scanned the room to locate the carts, but the half dozen tables, each with sorting cubbies stacked three feet high on top of them made it impossible to see everywhere. His eyes darted around the room, counting the familiar faces of his co-workers.
No. No, please.
He walked around one of the tables, looking for the three who were missing from the room. Then, not seeing them, he hurried around two more tables, turning around to take in everywhere he hadn't looked.
"No." He felt a little nauseated.
"What's the matter, Thaddeus?" his supervisor Agnes said, walking up behind him. "Don't worry about it. It's just five minutes. Did you stop at Sarah's for breakfast or...you know?" She smiled and bumped her hip into Thad's.
He'd told her more than once that he wasn't pursuing anything with Sarah, but he'd also mentioned one time that he thought she was cute, and Agnes hadn't let go of that since. But he rolled his eyes at her, as he always did when she teased him about Sarah.
"I'm too late, aren't I?" His shoulders slumped a little as he exhaled and took another look around the room, this time less frantically, since he knew the mail delivery carts had already been taken to the upper floors by three of his co-workers.
Agnes rubbed her chin as she looked at Thad and nodded slightly. "I was surprised, I have to say. The mail run is your thing. And you're the most trustworthy one out of the lot of you." She shrugged. "Jimmy volunteered to take your place, the cart for evens up to the fiftieth floor." Looking off to the side a little, Agnes said, "Probably just to hit on those poor women in marketing." She shook her head slightly. "Or one of the supers, knowing how crazy Jimmy can get."
Thad felt a mix of panic and jealousy heating him up from the inside as he pictured Jimmy handing a letter to the one superhero in the building Thad most looked forward to seeing, Allison. He shuttered at the thought of Sly Jimmy, as Jimmy referred to himself, getting face-time with the most beautiful, nicest, and all-around most desirable super in the company.
Allison would certainly be in the building, Thad thought, knowing that unlike the others in the company who wore a super suit, she didn't go out on patrols or make publicity appearances on behalf of the company. Allison had the unique position in the company as the only Power Quality Control person, always wearing a super suit, but a different one every week, making sure it was up to sn
uff before a properly tailored version of the suit got assigned to a new hero, or given to an existing hero as an upgrade or to match a change in their assigned responsibilities.
"You might be able to catch up with them," Agnes said before nodding toward the service elevator across the room. "If you do, tell him, I sent you to take his place. I'd feel better having you representing the mail room upstairs. But don't tell him that part. I'd never hear the end of it all day."
Thad looked at Agnes, and he heard her, but he was already thinking about getting to his co-worker before it was too late. Before Jimmy got to Allison.
"Well, go on." Agnes waved the back of her hand at Thad, shewing him toward the elevator.
Thad's blood started pumping faster in anticipation of the race to stop Sly Jimmy before he put the moves on Thad's future girlfriend.
"Thanks, Agnes." Thad didn't wait for a response. He turned and ran to the elevator, completely ignoring the no-running rule. After all, the situation was definitely worse than a lab explosion, maybe even than a super villain attack. Sliding on the elevator floor, which inexplicably had also been waxed that morning, he smacked the button for the second floor before slamming into the wall at the back of the six-foot-deep cube. He knew Sly Jimmy would start on the lowest even floor and work his way up. Not only did it make logistical sense, but Thad knew Jimmy would want to take advantage of the posh cafeteria on fifty after the mail deliveries, the only place in the building which allowed supers and normals to eat together at lunchtime.
The elevator conspired against Thad, closing its doors at a glacial pace, then mocking him with a grinding sound before finally lurching into its ascension.
Come on. Hurry up.
Thad knew the fact that he was in the service elevator wouldn't keep Jimmy from heading to the fourth floor when he finished the deliveries on two. He's seen Jimmy use the public elevator more than once, despite the prohibition on its use for mail deliveries. And even the hero elevator wasn't out of the realm of possibility with Sly Jimmy.
Supers Incorporated Page 2