by Brian Olsen
“You’re right, Mark,” Dakota said. “But we know that the game is being played from here, despite what Mr. Wilcox thinks. So that must mean J84z33 is playing the game somewhere else but routing it through these computers, and is doing it without anybody from IT realizing.”
“Or just without Mr. Wilcox realizing it,” Alan said. “Could be somebody else on this floor behind it all, we don’t know for sure.”
They stood in silence for a moment, thinking.
“So...should we smash them, just to be safe?” Mark asked.
“It wouldn’t do you any good,” Mr. Wilcox said, stepping into view from behind one of the server racks. “I’m not in there, mostly.”
He was holding a small Phillips head screwdriver in his clenched fist. He lifted his arm above his head and swiftly swung the point down towards Dakota’s face.
Dakota flinched back, bringing her hands up to cover her head. Caitlin was standing next to her and pushed Wilcox, throwing him off-balance. The screwdriver scraped against Dakota’s arm.
Mark pulled Dakota towards him and stepped in front of her, then grabbed Wilcox’s head and slammed it into the nearest cabinet. The disheveled man recoiled from the impact and fell to the floor.
“Guys, look!” Alan called out.
One by one, all of the office doors on the floor were opening. From each, an Information Technology employee stepped out, each with a different sharp or blunt instrument in their hand and murder in their eye. There were no blank faces in this group, and there was no hesitation in their movements.
“Run!” Mark shouted.
They sprinted down the center aisle, with Mark bringing up the rear. He looked behind – there were about eight employees chasing after them. Most of them were in roughly the same physical condition as Mr. Wilcox and had little chance of catching up, but one fit young woman was sprinting up beside the roommates, a line of servers separating her from them. She was trying to reach the door before they did, and it looked as if she might succeed. She was wielding a sturdy golf club.
Huh, Mark thought. She doesn’t look like a golfer.
He put on a burst of speed to try and intercept her before she could take a swing at any of his friends. He overtook his roommates and accelerated. The golfer appeared and disappeared as she passed the server racks. Mark reached the end of the farm and took a hard left turn. He put his head and shoulders down and tackled the young woman just as she emerged. She was taken completely by surprise, and they both hurtled into the fake potted plant located next to the door. She hit her head against the wall with an unpleasant thunk. He stood up as she fell down, and snatched the golf club from her hands.
She looked up at him, dazed. “Who are you?” she asked. She looked around. “Why am I at work?”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Mark shouted as his roommates caught up. “You’re just going to get all mind-controlly again in a minute so sit in that plant and shut up until the urge to kill comes back.”
Eyeing the club in his hands warily, she didn’t protest.
The deadly IT drones were almost upon them. Alan smacked the large round button that unlocked the door from the inside. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” he yelled.
The four ran out the door and down the corridor. They reached the lobby just a moment ahead of their pursuers. After pulling the door shut behind him, Mark slipped the golf club through the handles.
The bloodthirsty technicians slammed into the double doors, but the golf club kept the glass barriers shut. The front of the pack pounded once or twice, then stopped. As one, the group took off down the corridor, in the opposite direction from the server farm. A moment later, Mr. Wilcox and the lady golfer appeared, injuries ignored, hurrying to catch up.
“They’re going the long way around,” Dakota said, indicating the doors on the other side of the lobby.
One of the elevator doors glided upon. “Let’s go!” Caitlin urged.
“No!” Alan shouted. “Not the elevator! If they could control Pete’s car...”
Caitlin stepped away from the elevator bay, looking green.
Dakota pushed open a door at the end of the elevator bank. “The stairs, then. Up or down?”
“Up,” Alan said.
“Down,” Mark replied. “CEO’s office is out, man. We’d be cornered up there. We’ve gotta get out.”
“Mark’s right,” Caitlin said. “We can’t fight off the whole building. We should get out of here and think of something else. Maybe the news, they’ll want to talk to Alan.”
“Just go!” Dakota barked.
The foursome bundled into the stairs and started the long trek down. Mark kept a worried eye above them, but he didn’t see or hear any sign of pursuit.
They were halfway between the thirteenth and twelfth floors when he heard it. He shushed his friends, and they stopped. Footsteps echoed sharply up the stairwell.
“Someone’s coming,” he said. “From below us.”
“Should we go back?” Caitlin asked.
“Follow me,” Alan said. He continued down to the twelfth floor and opened the door to the lobby slowly. He peered out, then waved for them all to join him. They followed him cautiously.
Mark saw that there were no glass doors on this floor. Instead, there was a warren of cubicles behind the receptionist’s desk. It looked deserted.
“This way,” Alan continued.
They trod softly past the front desk into a room just off the cubicle maze. They filed in and Alan closed the door behind them.
“This is Human Resources,” he said. “I was in this conference room on Monday, we can hide out in here. Catch our breath.”
“This is where you met that guy who had been snooping around on his own, right?” Dakota asked.
“Andrew, yeah. Maybe we could find his desk, find some information, see if he could help us. If he’s forgiven me for clocking him with a phone. I wonder if he went to the police?”
“I’m gonna say no,” Mark said.
“Why?”
In reply, Mark just pointed. There, on the floor, partially hidden from view by the conference table, was a young man wearing an ugly yellow tie. The carpet beneath him was stained black with dried blood. A letter opener stuck out of his throat.
They were all silent for a moment.
“He’s been here for two days,” Alan said finally. “He’s wearing the same clothes. They killed him and then just...left him here and went on working.”
Caitlin looked away. “Can we find somewhere else to hide, please?”
“Yes,” Dakota said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, there’s another staircase in the back. There’ll be security guards in the lobby, so let’s get to my office, we can hide in there and...regroup.”
Mark didn’t move as his roommates headed out the door. He stood, staring at the bloody corpse on the floor.
He felt Dakota’s hand on his elbow. “Mark?” she said softly. “We have to go.”
“I’ve never seen...” He trailed off.
“It’s okay.”
“This is real.”
“Yes. Come on.”
He followed her out of the conference room to a stairwell at the far end of the floor. They opened the door and listened, but there was no sign of anyone above or below. They crept up two floors to fourteen and made their way to Dakota’s office.
Dakota closed the door behind them. “I didn’t see anybody. We should be okay for now.” She sat at her desk and started typing.
“Are you checking your email?” Alan asked. “Seriously?”
“Just my work email. I want to see what they said about you, how they explained it. See if Ackerman made an internal announcement.”
Mark looked around. He had never been to Dakota’s office before. It wasn’t as nice as Pickle’s – four offices the size of Dakota’s would probably fit in one the size of Pickle’s. There was one tiny window, which looked out on the darkened windows of the office building next door.
&
nbsp; The walls in the corner behind Dakota’s desk were filled with paper, large sheets neatly tacked up. He took a closer look. It was some kind of chart – business names, connected by lines, in various configurations. This must be that organizational chart she had spent the past few months working on, he realized. The shape reminded him of something, but he couldn’t figure out what.
“Here it is,” Dakota said, snapping him out of his reverie. The other three crowded around behind her. “There’s not much information, just what was on the news. It was sent from Ackerman’s email account but it’s the generic press release.”
“That picture of me is terrible,” Alan said. “I would have worn my sexy shirt if I had known I’d be on TV.”
“This must be causing a lot of confusion,” Dakota continued. “Look at the recipient. That’s the distribution address for every single AmSyn employee, all over the world. The board must be swamped with phone calls and messages from the other branches asking what’s going on.”
Mark’s attention was drawn back to the chart. “What does this remind me of?”
“What?” Dakota asked him.
“Your chart. It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what.”
“Uh...I don’t know. It’s an organigraph, it’s a kind of organizational chart. I started with the traditional hierarchical chart but AmSyn’s structure is far too complex and dynamic for that, I had to change tactics. It’s interesting, actually...”
Mark braced himself. He had started Dakota talking business and now there was no stopping her.
“...when Walter Ackerman took over as CEO of American Synergy in the nineties the company was on the verge of collapse. He believed that the way to save it was to diversify its holdings. It was more than that, I’m simplifying, but that’s the part that’s relevant to my chart. He changed the name to Amalgamated Synergy and started buying up different companies in different industries. Kurihara was one of the first. It was a tiny Japanese car company about to go bankrupt. Nobody in America had heard of it, but Ackerman got them focusing on high-end gadgets for the luxury car market and they took off. He did that for a lot of companies.”
“What about the chart?” Mark asked.
“I’m getting to that. Under Ackerman, AmSyn became one of the top multinational companies in the world. It’s not as big as News Corp or Time Warner or the real heavy hitters, but it’s more diverse. You can point to almost any industry and say ‘AmSyn does that.’ And that’s where things get weird.”
She pointed to the chart on the wall. “Trying to chart Amalgamated Synergy’s structure would have been hard enough a year ago. Now, it’s impossible. Profits are way down – stock was down even before today’s surprise announcement. They’ve been buying and selling properties at an incredible rate. Someone in Mergers and Acquisitions gave me access to their files and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. This chart doesn’t even show a fraction of it. Look at this.”
She clicked on a file on her desktop, then rolled back to give them a look. “I print out sections of the chart to help me visualize, but most of it is in this file. Look, it’s zoomable.”
She clicked around on the picture, and as she scrolled in and out, the image grew and shrunk. She zoomed in on the central hub, AmSyn itself, and it broke down into different divisions. She zoomed in on the main New York branch, and it broke down further into different departments. She zoomed back out to show the web of subsidiaries.
“And this is far from complete,” she said. “I could spend a lifetime and never finish it.”
“Holy crap,” Caitlin said. “You made all this?”
“I’ve been here three months, I had to do something. Wait, this is the best part. I’ve been showing you the structure currently, or at least as current as I could make it. But I put timestamps on all the corporate deals...here. Let me start a year ago. Okay, look.”
She clicked a button, and the chart began to change. It was like a time-lapse video, Mark thought. It was showing them the shifts in the company’s make-up over time. The lines connecting various divisions and subsidiaries would light up as changes in the structure affected their endpoints. Mark suddenly realized what the chart reminded him of.
“Neurons!”
His roommates looked up from the blinking chart and stared at him.
“What about them?” Alan asked.
“Synapses firing between neurons! That’s what this looks like.”
“Does it?” Dakota asked, looking back at it.
“How do you know?” Caitlin asked doubtfully.
“A class I took in college.”
“Weren’t you a Phys. Ed. major?” Alan asked him.
“I had to take a lot of physiology courses. I took a class in basic neuroscience and it was really interesting. It stuck with me. That’s all.” Mark paused. “Sorry, I know it’s not useful, but it was driving me crazy.”
The door to the office swung open, revealing a handsome Hispanic man about their age. The four roommates, as one, jumped back behind Dakota’s desk with a startled shout.
“Jesus!” the man shouted. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“Julio?” Dakota asked. “What are you doing here?”
She had pulled a pair of scissors out of her pocket and was brandishing it like a weapon. At Caitlin’s suggestion, they had all brought sharp implements from home for protection. During the bar fight at Slot Machine, drawing blood had seemed the most effective method of shocking their attackers back to reality.
“I come in late a lot. I can’t write at home, my boyfriend’s loud. What are you doing here? Are you seriously working? I know you’re not going to stab me with those scissors, bitch.”
“No, sorry.” She put the scissors down on her desk. “You surprised us, that’s all. I didn’t think anyone would be coming in. These are my roommates, I just stopped by to get something.”
“The way you bounced on Monday I wasn’t sure you were ever coming back.” He made his way into the room and took a seat at his desk.
“Hold up,” he said, noticing Alan. “Aren’t you the temp from Monday? Wait...you are the new CEO! Damn! Sandra said it was you but I told her she was nuts. Were you checking on us undercover or something?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Alan said.
“Well, congrats, I guess. Are you guys going to hang here for long? I was hoping to have the place to myself. I mean, it’s your company, you can do what you want, but I’ll go home if you’re going to stay.”
“No,” Dakota said, “it’s fine, we’re on our way out.”
One by one, the four made their way to the door, keeping their distance from the new arrival. He shook his head at them and turned on his computer.
Mark was the first to the door, so he was the one to take the punch to the head from the large white woman waiting just outside.
“Ow! Shit!” he yelled. He reacted instinctively and punched her full in the face. Her nose crunched and she fell to the floor.
“Sandra!” Dakota cried.
Mark recognized the name – she was another of Dakota’s co-workers. He felt a shove from behind and had to jump to avoid stepping on the woman he had just flattened. He heard a crash and turned just in time to see an Asian woman swinging a laptop at the place where Dakota had just been standing. Alan had seen it coming and pushed Dakota out of the way, knocking her into Mark. The laptop smashed harmlessly into the doorway.
The woman was slight of frame. While she was recovering from her swing, Alan grabbed her arms and pinned them behind her back. She struggled and kicked, but couldn’t get free.
Mark heard Caitlin grunt from inside the office. She had been bringing up the rear. He sprinted back inside and saw her pinned down on a desk, Julio standing over her with his hands wrapped around her throat. Before Mark could get to her she brought her knee sharply up into her assailant’s groin. He didn’t react as explosively as most men would, but he released his hands for just a moment. Caitlin was ready and rolled
free.
“I am sick of being strangled!” she said, and went for his tender parts again, this time with a perfectly placed kick.
He went down this time, and Mark saw confusion in his eyes, mixed with pain. Mark grabbed Caitlin’s hand and the two ran back into the hallway. Sandra was still on the ground, and Alan still had hold of the other woman.
“What do I do with her?” he asked.
“Let her go,” Dakota said.
“But she’ll attack us again!”
“Let her go!” Dakota shouted. “We have to run!” She pointed down the hallway.
She was pointing back towards the rear staircase. Mark could see a crowd of people pouring out of the doorway. The first person out saw him and began running towards them. The rest of the crowd quickly followed.
“Shit!” Mark shouted.
Alan threw the woman in his arms to the ground and ran in the opposite direction. His roommates followed.
They headed for the elevator bank. An elevator was open, waiting for them, but Alan passed it and ran for the stairwell. He opened the door, took a step in, then jumped back, pulling the door shut with a slam. “It’s the guys from the server farm!”
“Did they see you?” Caitlin asked.
In response, the door was violently pulled ajar. Alan yanked it shut again, and held on to the handle.
“They saw me.”
The Asian woman had caught up with them. Mark grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her to the floor. He could hear the approaching crowd close behind her.
“Into the elevator,” he said. “We don’t have a choice.”
Dakota and Caitlin rushed into the waiting elevator, and Mark quickly followed. The door started to close.
“Alan!” Mark shouted. He stuck his arm in the path of the door, but it didn’t stop.
“Hey!” Alan said, sticking his leg in the door. “Don’t leave without me!”
The door opened again and Alan jumped on. “Close it, close it, close it!” he shouted.
Mark stabbed at the door close button and the elevator responded. He could hear both groups of pursuers in the lobby, but nobody made a move to stop them.
