by Andrew Gates
As much as she hated to admit it, even Dr. Sanja Parnel had to obey the rules.
The three of them walked up to the lift controls and summoned the elevator. The doors opened up right away. Another big red flag covered the walls inside. These guys love their patriotism, I’ll give them that.
The lift took them exactly where they needed to be. Sure enough, Fielder’s office was on the other side of the wall with the title Elected Official Horace Fielder, Sector 5 imprinted next to the door. Sanja was not looking forward to this.
She walked to the door and pressed it open. Inside were two receptionist desks, one on her left and one on her right. A disgustingly large woman greeted her from the desk to her left.
“Hello,” she greeted with a warm smile.
“Dr. Parnel,” she said sternly. “I have a meeting with the EO.” She chose her words carefully. Fielder liked to be addressed as the Chairman. She would not give him the honor.
“Yes, of course,” the blob of a woman responded. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
She turned and opened up a door behind her, the door to the EO’s personal office. As the woman went to get Fielder, Sanja took a look at the desk to her right. A young man sat behind it. Judging by his appearance, he was of north Indian origin and must have been in late high school. He was very good looking for his age, though his suit was far too big for him.
“What’s your name?” she asked to the boy.
The boy looked up, surprised.
“Me? Uh, Michael,” he answered nervously.
“What’s your last name?” she asked.
The boy seemed confused by this question but he answered nonetheless.
“Pandit. It’s a north Indian name, Kashmiri,” he explained. Sanja was impressed. There were few who knew that much about their surname’s origin.
“I know,” she answered. “How old are you?”
“18,” the boy answered. “I’m an intern. I only just started working for the Chairman a few days ago.”
Sanja smiled ironically.
“Boy you picked an awful week to start.”
The receptionist reentered the room.
“Sorry to keep you all waiting. The Chairman will see you now. Will you all three be joining?” she asked.
Sanja turned towards her new assistant.
“No, I will be all. These two are just here to hold my bags,” she answered.
The look on Zoran’s face showed he did not like being kept out of the loop. But Sanja did not need any help dealing with Fielder. Zoran would only tell her to play it diplomatically, but she knew Fielder better than he did. The EO was nothing but a nuisance so she intended to treat him that way.
The doctor followed the woman into Fielder’s office. It was big, and meant to appear so. The EO arranged his furniture in a clearly deliberate manner to make full use of the space and decided a long time ago to paint his room a patriotic red like the flag, rather than the classic government black. The color made her sick.
Elected Official Fielder sat behind his desk, pretending to look at some important documents on his monitor.
“Ah, Ms. Parnel, thank you for joining me! I hope everything is well,” he said, looking up from the screen. “Thank you, Carol, you can leave us.”
The woman nodded and left the room.
“Take a seat, Ms. Parnel,” Fielder said, motioning to a rolling chair before his obscenely large black desk.
“Doctor Parnel,” she corrected, knowing full well his mistake was intentional.
She studied him as she sat down. His hair seemed greyer than the last time they had met, his face looked paler and his stomach seemed a bit too large for his shirt. A politician’s body alright.
“Yes, Doctor, excuse me,” he replied as she sat down.
“We both know why you’ve called me here,” Sanja explained, getting right to it.
Fielder leaned back in his chair.
“Oh? Getting right to it, I see. And why is that, doctor?” His tone suddenly changed from friendly to hostile.
“You want to slow down my investigation,” she answered.
Fielder laughed sarcastically.
“Slow down your investigation? Well, while that would certainly bring me joy, I can’t say that one meeting alone will be able to do that.”
Sanja leaned forward.
“Just tell me what you want to tell me, Fielder. We’re both alone, behind closed doors. Say what you wanted to say and we can be done with this meeting.”
“My, you sure are blunt. Well since you seem so inclined to get right to it, I suppose that’s what we’ll do. Look Sanja, I don’t know how you have this much authority to do what you’re doing, but it’s not helping,” he explained.
He called me Sanja.
“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” she answered, though she knew full well what he meant.
The EO leaned forward, matching her.
“Perhaps you can explain to me why three days ago you ordered all the green zones in the entire station to be shut down?” he asked.
“Simple. To help us apprehend a fugitive. It would be easier to find him if the station was clear and empty.”
“And did you?”
Sanja leaned back again.
“No. You know full well we did not. But let’s see you try to run this kind of search operation,” she explained.
“I don’t think I will. Honestly, I don’t think we should be running this search operation in the first place. I think you’ve overstepped your power. What you’re doing is pulling our resources unnecessarily to catch a man whose only crime is pissing you off,” he explained.
“Tracey Saljov murdered five people,” Sanja shot back.
“Because you forced his hand.” The EO pointed to her as he said it.
Sanja paused and took a deep breath. She could tell this entire meeting was going to be him scrutinizing her decisions.
“The President has granted me the authority to lead this operation however I best see fit. And in this case-”
“Look here, I don’t know why Ortega trusts you so damn much, but he doesn’t get the final say in this. I’m bringing a bill to the floor next week to defund your entire operation. You know it’ll get the support,” he explained.
“The President will veto it.”
Fielder grumbled. Sanja knew she had him.
“I don’t know if you’re in bed with Ortega or what, but this has to stop,” he said.
Sanja smiled.
“Funny, you’re the second person to say that to me,” she responded.
“Who was the first?”
“Tracey Saljov.”
A frustrated Fielder stood up and placed both his hands behind his back. Sanja was not sure if this was meant as an intimidation tactic, but it looked weird.
“Enough games. Your obsession with Saljov is running wild. I know he accessed classified data, but so what? What is it you don’t like about him?”
Sanja chuckled. Where to start?
“Well he’s been a pain to the investigation from the beginning. The data breach was significant, of course, but he’s always been a pain. He’s outwardly defiant for the sake of being defiant. He could have finished his time with the Navy but chose to leave early. He put himself in his own AWOL position on purpose just to annoy us but then gets mad at the government when we react. What kind of man does that? Only a man who has it out to be disruptive. He thinks everything he does is for the greater good, but it’s just pointless and stupid. When I brought him in for questioning after the Cassidy disaster, he was blatantly disrespectful and incredibly arrogant.”
“Look, Sanja I don’t want to hear it,” Fielder interrupted, placing his hands in the air.
Did he just interrupt me again?
“You want to know what I think?”
“What do you think?” Sanja asked, curiously.
Fielder leaned down again.
“I think you don’t like to lose. Saljov is defiant and that bothers you. You’r
e a woman who likes to be in control. You saw a chance to put him away for good and you took it so your ego wouldn’t be hurt. It was a power play. But now that he’s escaped, you’re panicking, and you’re taking this whole thing to the extreme just because you cannot stand not being in control of the situation.”
Sanja was hurt by those words, not because they were false, but because deep down she knew he was right. She liked to be in control and Tracey Saljov was the one thing she could not control. But obviously she would never admit that.
“I think you’re forgetting that he interfered with my investigation,” Sanja replied after taking a moment to think of her response.
Fielder sat back down again. He was clearly losing his patience.
“I don’t think he was.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean he accessed pictures of the surface, right? From a probe sent up before any of this shit even happened. So what? How does that affect your investigation? I have the answer, Sanja: it doesn’t. That’s because your obsession with Saljov is not about the investigation. It’s about saving face,” he said.
“How was I supposed to know he’d escape, huh? There’s no way I could have known we’d end up in this situation,” she replied, changing the subject ever so subtly.
“That’s another thing,” Fielder responded, pointing to her again. “We have… how many inmates there? It’s a secure facility. Armed guards, regular inspections. How did one man manage to escape from a place like that?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out,” Sanja replied. “He took the toilet apart and used the rod inside as a weapon. Somehow the screw fell off from rust damage.”
“And aren’t the toilets routinely inspected for things like that?” the EO asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t make the rules. That’s your job.” It felt good to finally give him a little jab.
“Tell me about the inspection process,” he continued, unfazed by her remark.
“You want to talk about toilets now?” she asked.
Fielder said nothing. He just looked at her. Goddamn I hate this guy.
“Fine,” she continued, “there’s a process, a routine. It’s all handled digitally. Guards are given a task list on what to look for when they inspect the cells. Despite the cold, it can get fairly humid in the cells, so rust damage on the toilet comes up as a task about every week and a half. The guards check to verify everything is okay.”
“And what if that task list was manipulated?” the EO asked.
“What do you mean?”
“If inspecting for rust damage is a task that’s given to the guards digitally, perhaps someone affected the list intentionally. Someone went in and changed it so the rust would never be checked in that cell and the screw would come off easily,” he explained.
Finally, some legitimate discussion. Sanja welcomed this new line of dialog.
“Are you suggesting Saljov had help?” This was not something she had considered before.
“I am,” Fielder answered, “and I think it’s because he’s drawing sympathy. I think your overreaction with this man has made him somewhat of a martyr. I think whether you realize it or not, you’re inciting some kind of hidden rebellion. And it’s all centered around your handling of this poor man.”
“Now don’t you go calling this murderer a poor man,” Sanja debated.
“You made him a murderer, Sanja!” Fielder became very vocal. “Don’t you see that you put his back against the wall? Your actions forced his hand. You made him this way.”
Sanja finally stood up.
“I don’t need to take this from you. I have a number of high ranking military commanders two taps away on my personal pod. I may not be an elected lawmaker like yourself but that doesn’t mean you control me. If anything, I control you, Horace. I operate outside this political game of yours to get results, not to be lectured.”
“And I don’t let my ego dictate my decision making, especially when it concerns public safety like this,” he said. He stopped and stared at her for a moment, then put his hands in the air as if to suggest he had nothing more to say. Sanja simply stood there and looked at him. He took a deep breath and wiped some sweat from his aging face. “Do you still have that body building puppet working for you?” he eventually asked in a much more casual tone.
“Yuri is the best person on my staff,” Sanja replied.
Fielder laughed.
“That’s because he does whatever you say and intimidates the hell out of whoever he sees.”
“That’s right.”
For some reason that comment made him smile.
“Well doctor, it seems there’s no negotiating with you. You’re too blinded by your pride and too arrogant to listen to reason. Just know I will be introducing this bill and it will shut you down.”
Sanja held out her hand. He stood up and shook it, looking her in the eye the entire time.
“No, it won’t,” she answered as she broke the handshake. With those words, she turned and walked out.
Well that meeting went how I expected.
Yuri and Zoran were waiting for her in the waiting room outside the office. Zoran was sitting down, looking nervous, while Yuri stood in the corner by the boy’s desk, looking as emotionless as ever. He still had her purse in his hands.
“All done?” Zoran asked, standing up to meet her.
“All done,” she responded.
“Thank you for coming,” the large woman said nicely.
Sanja forced a smile and walked back over to the young intern.
“Michael Pandit, do you think you could show me out? I get all turned around in this complex,” she said to him.
The intern looked across the room to the large lady at the other desk. She nodded back to him.
“Uh, yes sure,” he said, standing up. “It can get confusing, I know.”
Sanja and her men followed the intern out.
“I thought you knew your way around this place,” Zoran said as they stood before the elevator.
Yuri placed his arm on Zoran’s shoulder. Nothing needed to be said. Zoran understood instantly that he should shut the hell up. Yuri always has my back. He’s dumb but he sure is loyal.
“So Michael, why did you decide to work for the Chairman?” she asked. It pained her to refer to Fielder by that title.
“Uh,” the boy hesitated, “well, I grew up in the Sector. All my life I’ve been in Sector 5 and I wanted to do my part.”
That’s how they all start out. So naive, Sanja thought. Politicians were as useful as a blind lighting technician. All the EOs ever did was argue while the military or private contractors got the real work done. Sanja’s team had done more in response to the Cassidy disaster than anyone in the OCAFCEO.
But for now, she would let this young man have his fantasy.
“That’s very nice of you,” she responded as the doors opened, revealing that red flag once again. The four of them stepped inside. “Which floor are we going to?” she asked, playing dumb.
“We’re only going down one floor,” the intern answered, pressing the button.
Sanja smiled. Whether he knew it or not, young Michael Pandit was hers now.
Michael’s grip was strong. Sanja could feel his long fingers wrapped tightly around her right breast as the young man pulsed in and out of her. Like most men his age, he seemed to think moving quickly was the best way to get off. But Sanja did not mind. It would take a few sessions before he learned finesse, not that she would be there to experience it.
Michael let go of her breast and wrapped both his arms tightly around her body. Sanja could tell he was about to finish soon. So early, she thought, unimpressed.
The boy picked up speed, sliding in and out. Sanja could feel his sheer strength filling her up. His breathing picked up and his embrace tightened. After a few more hard thrusts, he called out in ecstasy and his grip loosened around her body.
That’s what I like to see, she thought to her
self as the boy slowed down.
He pulled out and fell down next to her on the bed.
“Wow,” he said. Sanja noticed how sweaty he was.
“That was fast,” she replied. “You’ll work on it.”
Michael turned his head to look at her.
“I’ve never been with a woman like you before. You’re amazing.”
“An experienced woman, you mean.” Sanja was well over twice this young man’s age.
“Yeah, well… yeah,” he said.
Sanja sat up and crawled off her bed. She walked to her dresser and pulled out a loose fitting t-shirt.
“That was great,” the young man continued, not knowing when to stop talking.
“Get yourself cleaned up. Your parents will probably be wondering where you are,” she said as she slipped on the clean white shirt.
The boy nodded, hopping off the bed. He started looking around the floor for his clothing. Sanja went to the bathroom as the boy picked up pieces of his suit.
After brushing her teeth and using the toilet, she returned to find the boy sitting on the bed with nothing but pants on.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “Get dressed.”
“I thought I’d stick around for a bit. My parents won’t be too worried,” he answered.
Sanja shook her head.
“No. Get out, Michael. I have work to do,” she explained.
The boy started putting the rest of his clothes on.
“Can I get your personal number?” he asked.
“You cannot.”
The look on Michael’s face was one of utter disappointment. What did you expect? Sanja wondered. Why would a woman like me have a relationship with a boy like you? She found the very idea absurd. Young men like him always had such ridiculous ambitions.
Michael finished getting dressed while Sanja put on some loose fitting sweatpants. Neither of them said a word. When they were finished, Michael exited the bedroom and Sanja escorted him out of her home.
“You can get home right? You said you live in Sector 5,” she asked.
Michael nodded as she opened the door for him.
“Yeah, I live close. Although it’ll take me awhile without my power scooter, but I’ll be alright.”
“Good.”
