Chapter Thirty-Nine
The first detail Nadia noticed upon entering the fiftieth floor proper was the lighting. Most obviously, that there actually was light in the first place, but also that they were a dim, orange-toned affair. She could see without her flashlight, but the fact that everything now looked like her parent's house during every childhood Halloween she could remember gave it a surreal quality she wasn't wholly comfortable with. She half-expected a group of people in home-made paper masks to come leaping out at her from nowhere, fake blood spilling from their eyes while blasting prerecorded shrieks from their gaping mouths. Giving herself a shake, she let her eyes adjust to the weird tone of the light before getting her bearings.
The stairwell door had opened into a small hallway, the end of which she had already reached. The small passage opened up into a much larger space, reminiscent of a smaller-scale lobby, with the elevators set in the wall just to the left of the stairwell access. Across from the elevators was a desk set against a wall which, she assumed, served a similar purpose to the one on the floor below; this one, however, was a fair bit bigger, though in the half-light it was difficult to get very many other details about it. Running her hand over it, she confirmed it was indeed the same highly polished wood. Letting her curiosity guide her, she took a peek behind the counter and felt about in the shadowed space, her finger tracing the outline of a door set into the desk. A safe, perhaps? Stepping around the desk to shine her flashlight into the space directly, Nadia saw that the small door in question was slightly ajar. Stooping down, she opened the door further and grinned as she saw that her guess had been a little off. A mini-fridge. Huh. That's not a bad idea. With Fitch's penthouse upstairs, I suppose they would need a guard here around the clock. Stiffening as her reasoning reached its conclusion, she glanced around. But then... why is no one here now?
Once again feeling like she should be on the lookout for monsters of the cardboard cut-out variety, Nadia decided it was time to move on. Glancing to each end of the hall she was presently in, she saw the wall to the right of the security desk had an office door set into it. Taking a few steps backward, towards the elevators, she craned her neck and saw the beginnings of another door a little further up the hallway, suggesting that there were a series of offices similar to those on the floor below. Turning to the opposite wall, she saw just one door; shining her flashlight at it, she saw the words 'A. Coleman, President' on a small horizontal sign sticking outwards from the wall beside the entryway. I thought Fitch was the President? Or... CEO, whatever. Aren't they the same thing?
Frowning, she decided to take the hallway past Mr. Coleman's office, hoping to find a similar office bearing the correct name. She was disappointed, however, when she saw that the offices set in the wall past the corner one were just for other executives, like those she had seen on the previous floor. Sighing, she continued down the hallway, noting that the centre block of the floor contained three large, utterly dark rooms that she could see very little of; the glint of orange light off of a large whiteboard in each room suggested some kind of conference hall, however. The washrooms were set into the next corner she passed, though these she regarded with only vague interest. Emerging now in the hallway furthest from the elevators, she paused momentarily as she saw a second stairwell door sitting beside another elevator. Realizing that these must be the ways up to the penthouse on the top floor, she took a moment to crack the stairwell door open and listen; hearing more than a few unfamiliar voices from upstairs, she hastily closed the door again and hurried on her way. Whoever they were, they hadn't sounded like they were coming down just yet, but that didn't mean she had any desire to be here when they did.
Coming to the next corner, she flicked her flashlight on to survey the sign beside the door, feeling a small surge of satisfaction as she read 'G. Fitch, CEO' on it. Switching her flashlight back off, she opened the door slowly and saw a waiting area, complete with a secretary's desk and some padded seats connected together. Emerging into the room properly, she also saw a black and trim-looking couch tucked into the corner of the waiting room, which gave her momentary pause; she had never seen a designer couch before. She wondered, briefly, if it was meant to be slightly bent in the middle the way it was. Shrugging, she was about to flick her light back on to examine the room properly when she saw something that caught her attention.
The door that led from the waiting room into what she assumed was Fitch's office was a solid affair, oaken and without a window, but it had been left ajar. Even in the orange-toned state the entire floor was presently in, she could see the hints of a harsh, flickering red light in the gap between wood and wall. Shoving the flashlight into a back pocket, she hurried to the door and began easing it open. She saw some of the room's contents as she peered through the widening space, including a large, glass case set in the corner, though its contents were a mystery to her in the insufficient light of the orange strips. Steeling herself, she opened the door fully; afraid, but fairly certain, of what she would find inside. The truth of the situation did not disappoint those fears.
Giselle Fitch was lying, inert, on the floor. Most of her features were lost to Nadia, as the woman was hidden in the shadow of the man crouching over her, but her face... her face she could see. Her eyes were wide, but obscured by the red lights Nadia had seen the hints of from the other room, while her mouth hung open in a silent scream. The red lights, of course, were pouring from the eyes of the man hunkered down over her; they were twin streams of ethereal light, with wisps drifting away from the main flow every so often before bursting into miniature flashes of crimson. The orange light of the room seemed almost to shy away from the lights coming from his eyes. Perhaps it was the innate harshness of the colour, or perhaps it was something else, but it seemed that the only illumination allowed on Fitch's face was that which made her look to be painted with blood.
Squinting at the woman's face in the dark, Nadia rubbed at her eyes as she tried to pierce the sanguine haze. Remembering her flashlight, she pulled it free and shone it at the strange, somewhat grisly scene before her and felt her heart jump into her throat. The white, fluorescent light in her hand did not fare much better than the orange hued one had, but it provided enough clarity for her to see the face of Orion's victim properly. She knew Giselle Fitch was only in her thirties at most, perhaps early forties. The woman her flashlight revealed looked nothing like either of those age groups. Her skin was sagging, becoming lined with wrinkles and creases, as her eyes sunk further into her face and her mouth, still agape, became full of yellowing teeth. Her red hair was paling, too, her curls losing their vibrant colour even as they straightened and thinned.
Feeling her skin crawling madly, Nadia switched her flashlight off to spare herself the details of what was happening. Moments later, however, a new source of neutral light began to emanate, forcing her eyes to once again see the horrible scene before her unfolding; this new light, however, was a pale glow and appeared to be coming from Fitch's mouth. A misty, almost gaseous mass was beginning to seep from between her failing teeth, coiling and surging about in the recesses of her sagging cheeks like a snake that did not want to be dragged from its hole. Covering her mouth, more to prevent her nausea from coming to its natural conclusion, Nadia turned her flashlight back on and saw the woman's skin tone beginning to change to grey as her apparent ageing, now better described as withering, accelerated.
The ice crawling down her spine spurred Nadia into motion, shaking herself free of the roots her feet had been burrowing into the floor. Sprinting forward, she lowered her shoulder and barged into Orion, knocking them both sprawling. The torrent of red that had connected his eyes to Fitch's burst open, flooding the room with crimson lights, the most horrifying fireworks display Nadia could ever remember being witness to. The larger groups of lights snaked their way through the air and back into Orion's eyes as he lay on the ground, chest heaving as he seemed to come back to himself; concern for Fitch's well-being, however, was first in Nadia's min
d. Shining her light onto the woman, she saw what had been done to her slowly beginning to reverse. Her skin regained its elasticity and became smooth and firm once more, while her hair seemed almost to curl itself with invisible irons, even as it became loudly red again. With the reversal complete, the older woman seemed to deflate into an utterly limp state. Nadia was relieved, however, to hear the faint sounds of even breathing coming from her mouth and nose; she had only fallen asleep.
Rounding on the man she had come here to find, she pointed back at Giselle. "The hell was that? Were you seriously going to just suck her dry?"
Straightening up, Orion rotated the shoulder Nadia had collided with. "Yes. She would not have told me the things I wished to know and so I was forced to extract them another way."
"And that makes it all right to put soul on your dinner menu? And not the fish, you know what I mean."
He growled. "Miss Lawson, I am in no mood for a continuation of our previous conversation. Because of you, much of the information I had gleaned from her mind is lost, or scattered. Furthermore, you have followed me all the way here, increasing the risks that we will be caught. Your stubborn, insistent desire to put yourself in positions of great danger baffles me."
Nadia giggled quietly, causing the man's eyebrows to arch upwards. "Thomas said that a lot, too."
He sighed, but she could tell his anger was fading. She took a few deep breaths herself; now really wasn't the best time to be arguing with him over his methods, anyway. "All right, I'll admit I jumped in without thinking it over, but I couldn't let you go through with killing the poor woman. I don't think I'm ever going to be okay with your 'extracting' from people; not if you do it that way, at least. Couldn't you just have taken the information, you know, gently? Like you did with me? It seems a lot... I don't know, 'better' sounds like such an inadequate word, but that's the one I'm going with."
He rolled his eyes, a much more noticeable action in the half-light. "No, I could not have, Miss Lawson. You were willing to allow my intrusion. She was not. And, as I said, because of your interruption, what information I could gather from her is now almost entirely lost, aside from some vague recollections."
She crossed her arms. "I would apologize, but I still feel pretty justified for doing it."
His red eyes met hers in the dark, and then glanced away as he sighed. "Perhaps it was for the best. I did not find a great deal of information in her mind to begin with." Shaking his head, he looked back at her. "But enough about this; what are you doing here, Miss Lawson? I had thought our last conversation would have been just that, our last."
It was Nadia's turn to sigh, but she held her gaze firm instead of looking away. "Well... I wasn't happy with how it went. I want a do-over."
Orion blinked once or twice at her in apparent consternation. "A 'do-over'?"
"You heard me," she confirmed. "I want to try it again. I admit I was acting childish and pretty rudely, besides. But you really don't give a girl much to go on, you know? You don't communicate very well at all and that makes it hard to know how to talk to you."
He seemed to think this over. "I suppose not. But... is this really the most opportune time, or location, for such a conversation?"
"Fair enough," she conceded. "But... later? For the do-over, I mean?"
"Later," he agreed, nodding slowly.
Feeling some optimism seeping back into her, Nadia grinned, but paused as a thought struck her. "How did you get in here, anyway? I was sure you were pretending to be Pasta-Jacket, but I had to handcuff him to a railing after he punched me in the stomach."
Orion coughed, quietly. "It is not important."
She frowned at him; he was being evasive, again. "See, this is what I'm talking about, you've got too many secrets and... why aren't you asking me where I got a pair of handcuffs? I mean, it's not something I typically carry around and you're familiar with me so you would already know that, which means... it isn't new information. You already know how I got them."
He winced, but said nothing; unfortunately for him, the glow emanating from his eyes made his expressions painfully obvious, even in the dim light. Spotting his reaction, Nadia pointed a finger at him, her mouth temporarily agape as she put two and two together. "You were that guard! You fought with me; you handcuffed me to a chair!"
Orion sighed. "You were not supposed to be here. And I did leave the keys for the handcuffs behind deliberately so that you could manage an escape."
Nadia socked him in the arm. "You scared me half to death! I thought I was busted for sure and you were just playing a part? Not cool, mister. Not cool."
He shrugged. "I did what I had to do to ensure your safety, without compromising my disguise."
Placing one hand on her hip, she used the other to poke his chest. "You could have just told me who you were, you know."
He smiled quietly. "Would you have believed me?"
She sighed. "I guess not. I was pretty sure you were Pasta-Jacket, at the time."
The smile became more smug. "You see?"
"Yeah, all right, fine. So, what's our plan for getting out of here?"
Any response Orion might have made was cut off prematurely as the phone on Miss Fitch's desk began ringing; moments later, the device switched itself on, immediately going to speaker phone. A silky smooth voice, dripping with self-assurance, came over the line, "Pardon the interruption, my little mice. This is your host speaking. I don't know about you and let's be honest, I don't really care, but I think it's time we had a little chat."
In Icarus' Shadow Page 57