by Amy Cross
"You need to move along," the guard says, staring at me.
"But -"
"You need to move along," he says again. "Mr. Mendez has indicated that you don't work here, and that's good enough for me."
"Look," I say, holding out my security card. "If I don't work here, how did I get this? Check it. Rip it apart if you have to. It's completely genuine. I was given it on my very first day here. It's got my name, my date of birth, all my details. If you look in the files, you can probably check every time I scanned in and out of the building!"
Taking the card, Mendez squints as he looks closely at the details. "It looks authentic," he says eventually, "but that just means it's a good fake. I've already double-checked the system, and there's no mention of any such employee. The reference numbers on this card don't match any details that we've got on file, and terminal 5b is occupied by a very fine analyst named Hanna Seltzer who has been in her position for the best part of a year. Also..." He pauses for a moment. "To be blunt, Ms. Jones, I've never seen you before in my life, and you most certainly have never been a part of my team."
Staring at him, I try to work out just what kind of shit he thinks he's pulling. Does he seriously think he can fire me by just pretending that I never existed? Does he think I'll walk out of here with my tail between my legs and not put up a fight? I have tons of evidence that shows I've been working here for the past year. I have my pay records, I have documents at home, I have professional relationships with my co-workers and clients. If Mendez thinks he can just erase me from existence, he must have completely lost his mind.
"Ms. Jones?" the guard says after a moment. "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave the premises, and I'm telling you right now that you're banned from returning at any point."
"I know what this is about," Mendez says suddenly, with a faint smile breaking across his face. "This is some kind of job-seeking stunt, isn't it? You think you can impress me by being bold and forceful. You think I'll look at this security card and figure I might as well give you a job." He laughs. "Nice try, Ms. Jones, and almost tempting. Unfortunately for you, I'm rather more old-fashioned. I don't give people a job just because they grab my attention, or because their social networking profiles look good. This isn't going to get you anywhere, but I have to say, if you keep trying stuff like this, you might just strike it lucky somewhere."
"Lydecker," I say, staring at him.
"I'm sorry?" Mendez replies.
"John Lydecker," I continue. "You sent me to find him this morning. He didn't show up, and you told me to go and get him. This is why you're firing me, isn't it? There are laws against treating people this way."
"Who's John Lydecker?" he asks.
"Who's John Lydecker?" I open my mouth to ask the question again, but for a moment something just seems to seize up in my mind. I honestly don't know if I can handle this much insanity in one day. "Who's John Lydecker?" I say eventually. "Are you serious? He's the asshole who hasn't shown up to work for two days! He's the asshole you sent me to find! You told me I'd better come back with him, or else! I guess this is the 'or else', is it? You think you can airbrush me from existence just because I didn't find your precious John fucking Lydecker?"
"You ever heard of this Lydecker guy?" the guard asks, turning to Mendez.
"No," Mendez replies. "Of course I haven't. This woman is clearly out of her mind."
"Out of my mind?" With that, I snap. I swear to God, I'm normally a calm person, but I've had enough. Rushing around the desk, I reach out to grab Mendez by the collar, but unfortunately I'm stopped at the last minute by the guard, who wraps his big, bearlike arms around me and manhandles me back across the lobby.
"Enough!" the guard shouts, dragging me closer and closer to the door.
"Let me at him!" I scream, trying to get free so I can go back over to Mendez. Standing behind the desk, looking shocked, the little bastard is staring at me as if I'm some kind of alien who's just arrived from outer space. He probably thinks he's managed to get rid of me permanently. "This is bullshit!" I shout, even though I know I shouldn't be doing anything that makes me seem angry or out of control.
"You need to calm down," the guard continues as he drags me through the door and out onto the sidewalk, where he finally lets go of me before stepping back to block the entrance. "You also need to not try to come back into this building," he adds, "or I will restrain you and I will call the police, do you understand? You're very lucky that the authorities haven't been involved already, but I'll have no hesitation in calling them if I think that you pose a material threat to this building or to anyone inside. That's my job, and I'll do whatever I think is necessary."
Trembling with rage, I stare at him, trying to work out whether there might be some way to get past him. Looking over at the window, I can see Mendez standing behind the desk, staring at me with a look of frightened incomprehension. I've got to admit, he's a damn good actor, and he's managing a pretty convincing impression of a complete idiot. It's hard to credit him with such ability, but I guess that even a man like Mendez has to be good at something.
"Ms. Jones?" the guard continues after a moment. "Do I need to call the police, or are you going to do the right thing and accept that this discussion is over?"
As I take a series of deep breaths, I realize that passersby are starting to notice me. I start smoothing out the creases in my shirt and putting my hair straight, hoping to regain at least some dignity.
"Ms. Jones?" the guard adds. "Are you going to leave the vicinity and refrain from bothering Mr. Mendez again? Are you going to make a smart choice right now?"
"Sure," I say after a moment, deciding that perhaps a direct physical confrontation isn't the best option. "I'll leave the vicinity, but do you know where I'm going to go? I'm going to go and find a lawyer, and then I'm going to slap this company with the biggest fucking lawsuit in the history of lawsuits. I'm going to bring a mountain of evidence and I'm going to prove that Mendez is nothing more than a cowardly little piece of crap who doesn't even have the balls to be honest when he's firing someone for no reason." Feeling as if I might be able to cry, I take another deep breath in order to steady my nerves. "You'll see," I continue. "It might take a while, but eventually I'll get this all straightened out and I'll get an apology and a settlement. A huge settlement. Do you understand me?"
"Absolutely," the guard says calmly, "but I need you to move away from the building now."
"Have you really never seen me before?" I ask, hoping to appeal to his conscience. "I've walked through that door six days a week for almost a year. I've seen you sitting at your desk. Once or twice, I even spoke to you. At Christmas, I gave you a card. I figured people always ignored you, and I thought it'd be a nice gesture. I mean, I never expected you to be eternally grateful or anything, but I thought you'd at least remember. Are you seriously saying you've never noticed me? Not even once?"
"I'm sorry, M'am," he replies. "I'm usually pretty good with faces."
"Your name's Nelson," I continue. "I remember that. Nelson."
"My name's on my badge," he points out. "I'm really, truly sorry M'am, but I can't help you."
Sighing, I turn and start walking along the sidewalk. I can feel the guard's eyes burning into the back of my head, and when I get to the next corner I glance back and see that he's still watching me. I swear to God, I have never felt so completely humiliated in my entire life, and I'm going to make sure that Mendez is ruined for the way he's treated me. As I take a right turn and head down the next street, I realize that I'm close to breaking point, and finally the first tears start to well up in my eyes. I stop in the darkened doorway of a small shop and crouch down, unable to keep from sobbing. I worked so damn hard to get that job, and now it's been taken away by a complete asshole who thinks he can just treat me like trash. I hate the way he's managed to turn me into a bawling wreck, and I hate myself for reacting this way. I need to be strong, but instead I'm sobbing in a doorway.
Finally, after
a few minutes, I manage to dry my eyes and pull myself together. I get to my feet and start walking again, quickly making my way to the nearest subway station. It's getting late, and after everything that's happened today, I just want to go home, crawl into bed and hope against hope that somehow things will be better tomorrow. After all, they can hardly be worse. The journey home is agonizingly slow, of course, and by the time I emerge from the station I'm feeling so exhausted, I can barely even manage the brief walk to my building. I head up the steps and through into the hallway, and after checking to see if there's any post, I traipse up the stairs. Rooting through my bag and eventually fishing out my keys, I let myself into my apartment and, as I push the door shut, I let myself relax.
Feeling completely dazed and confused, I drop my bag in the hallway and walk through to the kitchen, where I flick the light on before opening the fridge. I reach out to grab some pomegranate juice, before realizing that something's wrong. The stuff in this fridge is completely unfamiliar. I stare and stare, but it's like I'm looking at someone else's stuff.
"Turn around slowly," says a voice behind me.
Spinning around, I'm shocked to find a stocky, muscly man standing in the nearby doorway, wearing nothing but some underwear as he aims a handgun straight at my face. Behind him, in the hallway, a woman is staring at me with a horrified look on her face, and I slowly start to realize that the decor in the apartment is completely unfamiliar. I'm home, but this isn't my apartment.
Dr. Stef Grant
Today
"How are we going to signal him?" I shout as we hurry along the street, heading back down to Battery Park. "He's not expecting us until this evening!"
"We'll find a way," Cooper replies. "I told him to stay alert, just in case we needed to come back early. We'll get his attention and he'll come back to pick us up. Don't worry. Sutton's a good guy. He'll be keeping an eye out for us."
"What was that thing?" Lacey asks. "I mean, what caused that to happen to her?"
"I have no idea," I reply. "Right now, we just have to get away from here. Whatever happened to Gretchen, could happen to -"
"Don't say that!" Lacey shouts.
"It's true," I reply firmly.
"You still don't have to say it!" she continues. "She suffocated! I don't even want to think about what it must have been like for her! Did you hear the noises she was making? She was trapped in her own skin, in her own body! She was moaning like -"
"I heard!" I shout, determined to shut her up. "We all heard!"
As we reach the end of Broadway, we cross the deserted road and start running across the wet grass of Battery Park. This whole situation feels completely surreal. Although I prepared myself over and over again for this mission, and although I constantly reminded myself that there was a danger of unexpected events catching us off guard, I never truly believed that we'd face anything like this. I guess that was just my naivety, but I was convinced that whatever we found when we arrived, we'd be able to get to the bottom of it fairly quickly. I never, ever expected to have something happen that was so completely out of the blue and so utterly impossible to explain.
When we get to the waterside, we all stop and stare out at the choppy waters. My heart immediately sinks as I see that there's no sign of Sutton's boat. There's nothing but gray water stretching as far as the horizon.
"Where is he?" I ask, trying not to panic.
"He's probably just taken shelter," Cooper replies. "The water's rough. He probably figured he'd go somewhere a little calmer. That's a perfectly normal thing to do. It's a smart move."
"Where?" Lacey asks, sounding as if she's on the brink of a full-on meltdown. "Where did he go?"
"I don't know the area," Cooper says, fumbling in his bag and finally producing a map, which he unfolds and holds up for us all to see. "There has to be some place nearby that he decided to use," he continues. "Don't worry. He's around somewhere. We just have to figure out where he'd have gone. There must be a spot that gives him some shelter from the weather."
"I don't see anywhere," I reply, scanning the map for anything that looks even remotely like a harbor.
"He's gone!" Lacey says. "He's abandoned us!"
"Shut up!" Cooper shouts, turning to her. "You don't know Sutton! You don't know anything! He's here somewhere. We just have to find him." He folds the map back up. "The absolute worst case scenario is that he's taken the boat somewhere and we'll have to wait right here until he comes back for us in a few hours. I agree that it's not ideal, but it's not the end of the world either."
"We can't wait here!" Lacey shouts, turning and looking back across the park, as if she expects to see something looming from between the buildings. There's absolute, genuine fear in her eyes, and to be honest, I don't blame her. We've only been here a few hours, and already one of our own team-members is dead.
"What do you want to do?" Cooper asks testily. "Swim out there and hope you run into him? Stand and whistle?"
"We don't know where..." Lacey starts to say, before her voice trails off. "You can't seriously say that there's no danger here. What happened to her... It could happen to any of us!"
"But it hasn't!" I point out. "We were pretty much all together all the time. There can't have been one moment when she was exposed to anything that didn't also reach us, so if the same thing was going to happen to you or to me or to Cooper, it would have happened by now!" I wait for her to reply, but there are tears in her eyes as she stares anxiously at me. "We're not in any immediate danger," I say eventually, hoping to get her to calm down. "We can wait here for the boat to come back."
"She stepped over the line," Lacey says after a moment.
"She what?" I ask.
"She stepped over the warning line."
"We all stepped over that line," I point out.
"But she was the first," she continues. "She was the one who..." She pauses. "That's the only difference. It's the only thing she did that the rest of us didn't. She broken the line first."
"There's no way that could have caused what happened to her," I reply.
"Then what did?"
"I don't know!" I shout, as I realize that I'm getting close to tears. I turn away from Lacey, feeling as if I might wrap my hands around her throat if I have to stare at her for even a minute longer. I take a series of deep breaths, hoping to calm down, but I can't stop thinking about Gretchen's desperate final moments, as she was literally sealed inside her own body; I keep imagining her hand, grasping out toward us, hoping for someone to save her. No-one deserves to die like that.
"We have no choice," Cooper says eventually, his voice bringing a welcome sense of calm to proceedings. "Sutton simply took the boat to a safer harbor. That's a good thing. He's the most reliable man I've ever met in my life, and I guarantee you that he'll be back before 5pm." He pauses for a moment. "You have my word."
I turn to him, and I can see that he truly believes what he's saying.
"He'd better," Lacey says, turning and walking over to the edge of the water.
"He will," Cooper says again, fixing me with a determined stare as the rain returns.
Five hours later, as the clock reaches 6pm and the sun dips below the horizon, we're shrouded in darkness as we stare out at the water. There's no sign of Sutton.
Caroline Jones
Fifteen days ago
"This is my apartment!" I shout, trying and failing to stay calm.
"I'm going to ask you one more time," the police officer says, eying me with evident suspicion. "Where did you get this key?"
"It's the key to my apartment!" I insist, reaching out and trying to grab the key from his hand. "I've lived here for more than a year! All my stuff was here! I've got a tenancy agreement! This is insane! You can't kick me out of my apartment like this!" I turn to the man who was holding the gun earlier, and who called the police. "This isn't your apartment," I tell him, my voice trembling. "I don't know what happened here, but someone's playing a trick on you. Someone obviously broke into my apartm
ent, moved all my stuff out, and then rented it out to this other family!"
"All in the space of a single day?" the officer asks, raising an eyebrow.
"We've lived here since June last year," the guy says. "You can ask Mr. Hermanetti. He's our landlord."
"He's my landlord!" I shout.
"Calm down," the officer says firmly. "M'am, don't make me warn you again. I will restrain you if necessary."
"Thanks," I mutter, "but I've had enough threats of being restrained for one night." Realizing that he's frowning as he stares at me, I decide not to go into the gory details right now. "Forget it," I continue. "It's been..." I pause as I realize that it hasn't just been a bad day; it's been the most colossally awful day that I could ever possibly imagine. First I was sent on a wild goose chase looking for John Lydecker, then I was sacked by a man who couldn't even bring himself to admit what he was doing, and now there's some random person living in my apartment.
"This is a lease," the officer says, holding up the piece of paper that he was given a few minutes ago. "It clearly states that Mr. and Mrs. Albers are the legal residents of this property. All the terms and outlined and as far as I can see, this is a perfectly valid document. It's even signed by the various parties." He pauses. "I don't suppose you happen to have a lease, Ms. Jones, do you?"
"Of course I do!" I reply. "It's here! I don't carry it around with me! It's in the apartment!"
"Where in the apartment?" he asks.
"I don't know!" I shout. "They've moved everything around!"
"We didn't move anything around!" the guy shouts.
"Everyone calm down!" the officer says.
"She's a liar," the guy adds.
"I'm going to get in touch with the landlord, Mr. Hermanetti," the officer continues, "but I have no doubt whatsoever that this story is going to check out. You know why?" He turns and looks down at a nearby cabinet. "Was this here when you claim to have lived here, Ms. Jones?" he asks.
