As Thad and the shocker bot closed the remaining gap between them, each of them picked up speed. Ten feet. Seven. Four. Two.
The arc of electricity between the bot's two extended rods swelled, crackling and buzzing only inches from Thad's highly polished gift-shop boots.
Thad jumped toward the wall beside the shocker bot. As he flew over the bot, he pulled his knees as high as he could. He felt a hot tingle of electricity on the bottom of his left foot, but evidently his replica hero boots offered more protection than he expected.
The bot swiftly rotated to keep the charge arc directed at Thad as he went, then to the side of the bot. Thad extended his right leg toward the wall, and when his boot made contact with it, pushed off with all the strength his twice-a-week squat sessions had given him. It was enough to propel him back to the middle of the path, where he landed three feet behind the shocker bot.
Thad stumbled a little when his feet hit the carpeted floor, but he recovered and stayed on upright to continue running. He heard the shocker bot coming after him, but he didn't look back. He knew his first real-world parkour attempt had paid off, saving him from several days confined to the mail room on crutches and giving him just enough of a lead on the bot to have a chance at exiting the maze before his coworker got to the elevator.
He turned the next corner and saw Alexander seated at his desk.
Alexander looked up from the papers in front of him. "Thad?"
Thad only nodded slightly to Alexander as he ran for the only other path away from the desk. He knew that had to be the way out Alexander had revealed.
Two lefts. Three rights. Then straight.
"Thad, what's going on?" Alexander said as Thad ran from the small office clearing in the maze.
A few seconds later, Thad came to a three-way intersection. He took the left path without hesitation.
Come on, Thad. Maze'll change soon.
He held nothing back as he ran, slamming against the wall a little at the next intersection and pushing off it to keep going down the next path to the left. He could feel that he'd hurt his shoulder, but he didn't care. The thought of Sly Jimmy with Allison would be much more painful. Jimmy's reputation for being being handsy had gotten him written up more than once, but Thad knew Allison would get the Jimmy treatment if he was given half the chance.
Seconds later, he took the right turn. Then he heard the shocker bot behind him again.
Fast. Not good.
Glancing back would shave a fraction off his pace, so he just hoped the evil carpet saucer was still trailing too far to juice him into submission.
Right again, then a short stretch.
Last turn ahead.Yes!
Thad had been listening for the sound of the elevator ding and hadn't heard it. He hoped that was due to the fact that Sly Jimmy had yet to push the button to call the elevator—not because Jimmy had already left the floor and the maze walls had blocked the elevator noise.
No!
Thad had turned the last corner. At the end of the short maze path in front of him, Sly Jimmy was looking back at Thad from within the elevator. Thad ran flat out for the elevator and dove in an attempt to get between the sliding door halves as they were closing. Jimmy leaned on the mail cart, laughing as Thad flew through the air toward him.
The elevator closed. Thad hit the brushed metal door right at the seam in the middle and fell to the floor.
As he leaned his bruised shoulder against the elevator door, he touched his cheek to the metal and heard the motor moving his usurping coworker and the mail cart up to the sixth floor. He glanced at his reflection and noticed the slowly bleeding cut above his left brow.
"This is over, Jimmy." He wiped the blood away, though more began to ooze out. He brushed his fingers over the waist of his pants as he looked at his Mr. Awesome replica hero boots. "Time to save her from your villainy." Reaching up and over to the wall, Thad pushed the button to bring the elevator back to him.
Chapter 5
SIXTH FLOOR.
Thad had taken a tissue from the courtesy box held in a square hole in the elevator wall, just above the buttons for each floor. He bunched up the tissue and held it to the cut over his left eye to stop the bleeding.
His reflection staring back at him made him question whether he really would get promoted to be a superhero someday. Mr. Awesome never went through something like this, he thought.
Leprechaun maybe. Poor guy. Super luck, alright. Who knew his powers were going to make bad luck as often as they made good luck. Hope he's enjoying his retirement.
The elevator door opened.
Thad stuck the tissue in his pocket and stepped into the room. Sly Jimmy wasn't there, but Thad figured he must be in one of the offices at the back of the larger sales display room the elevator open into. Past the long display tables, evenly spaced throughout the room was a row of seven doors. All of them were closed, but that was normal. Thad knew the people working the phones at the desks in each of the room preferred to keep the doors shut. All of them making sales calls at the same time would easily drown out any conversation happening in the hands-on sales display room.
"Welcome to the Supers Incorporated Hands-On Demonstration Floor, sir," a man said as he approached Thad from the left. Thad hadn't noticed him in the corner of the room before then. The man was a little older than Thad, but not by much. He wore black slacks and a light blue golf shirt, collared and tucked into his pants. His belt buckle was a simplified version of the Supers Inc logo—same outfit all the sales team wore.
"Oh, I'm not-"
"Not exactly sure what you're looking for?" the man said, interrupting. "I'm Kevin." He offered his well-practiced smile, then put his hand in the air beside Thad's shoulder, as if he was touching it to guide him, but he didn't make contact. He held out his other arm toward one of the long, wide display tables. "Let's take a look at some of the many wonderful devices the Supers Incorporated team has for you to consider. Distress beacon? Call a super in your time of greatest need. Super Pack? Best backpack on the market. Bullet-proof, light weight, and water resistant up to thirty meters. How about a pair of Mr. Awesome Hero Boots?" He glanced at Thad's boots. "Oh, wait. I see you have those already. Excellent choice, sir."
"Gift shop." Thad wished he had the ones on the display table. They were much tougher than the ones on his feet, but he'd looked at them before. Two months of his income wasn't something he could justify, no matter how much he would like to have them—at least not until he got that promotion he'd been working toward.
"Ah. Well, maybe it's time to upgrade."
"No, I can't. Really," Thad said, taking a step to the side to get clear of the man's non-touching embrace. "I'm here looking for-"
Kevin put a hand in front of Thad, a couple of feet from out from Thad's face. "Wait. Don't tell me." He lowered his hand. "I have a knack for this. Let me guess."
"You don't understand." Thad's frustration came through in his tone. He looked past the man to the doors at the back of the room. They all were still closed, so he knew Sly Jimmy couldn't slip out past him, but he had no patience or need for a sales pitch from his own company. Not to mention the fact that, on his mail room wages, he couldn't begin to afford anything in the room.
Kevin chuckled. "Oh, I think I do..." He raised his eyebrows and leaned his head forward slightly.
Thad didn't know why the man was doing that, but he didn't care. His shoulder hurt. His head hurt. And his patience was thin.
"Your name, sir?" Kevin proffered his practiced smile again.
"Thad, but I'm not looking to buy anything. I'm actually looking for someone. Now, if you'll excuse me."
"Forgive me." Kevin rolled out his apology thick.
Thad shook his head a little. "No problem. You must be new here. I don't recognize you, and you obviously don't recognize me. This isn't my first time up here."
"Of course it's not, sir. I can see that now. You're a discerning buyer." He plied his hands together in front of him and flash
ed the smile again. "And you're right. I am new here, but trust me. I am well versed in all of our inventory." He held up his forefinger. "For example."
He stepped to the closest table, walking around to the left side of it. "You're looking for someone. Not something. Right?"
Thad sighed and started walking toward the doors at the back of the room, but Kevin stepped in front of him.
"I can help you, sir. Really." Kevin held up something he'd retrieved from the table. "This."
Thad sighed again. "I'm not your customer. Someone came up here. I need to find him. Did you see anyone come out of the elevator a minute ago?"
"I did not," Kevin said, glancing to a small desk in the corner of the room, before looking at Thad again. "I was going over some paperwork. But don't worry." He moved the device closer to Thad. "Take this. It will help you find whom you seek." He hit Thad with the smile again, evidently thinking it was his secret weapon to win over customers.
Thad put up his hand to decline the high-tech dousing rod he'd seen demonstrated once before. It relied on a magnetic resonance field generated by the holder of the rod when the holder thought of the target person. Thad had doubts about its efficacy, but it was a perennial best seller to both the FBI and the US Marshals Service. "Not necessary. I know he's behind one of those doors. If you don't mind, I'm just going to go get what I came for."
Kevin's smile vanished. "No, sir. You are not." He stepped in front of Thad again. "Those rooms are for Supers Incorporated employees only." He shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
Thad had tired of wasting time listening to sales pitches and receiving schmoozing smiles. "Look, Kevin. I do work here. In fact, I've been in this room a heck of a lot more than you. You've been here, what, a week?"
"I've been with the company for almost two months."
Thad groaned out of frustration.
"But here," Kevin said, "in sales...four days. But I know the inventory."
"I'm sure you do, Kevin. And that's great. But I've been with Supers for a year. I work in the mail room. I do the mail runs every day, including to this floor." He nodded to the row of doors at the back of the room. "But one of my co-workers, a real joker, is back there somewhere with the mail cart. I've been trying to catch him since the second floor." Thad sighed, feeling the ache in his shoulder and a mild headache coming on. "And I'm tired of missing him by two seconds on every floor."
"Oh." Kevin stared at the floor for a moment, then looked up at Thad. "Then I've got some bad news for you."
Thad knew what Kevin was about to say, and he didn't like it.
"Your friend-"
"Co-worker."
"He, uh. He had a mail cart?"
Thad nodded, feeling his stomach knot.
Kevin looked at the elevator, then glanced at his desk in the corner of the room. "He already came and left. He handed the mail to me. It's on my desk over there." He looked at his desk again, then back to Thad. "He must be up on eight now."
Thad shook his head, then ran to the elevator and pushed the up arrow. "No. Not eight. It's under construction.
"Oh," Kevin said. "So, what's on nine?"
"Augmentation Technologies Department. But he's going to ten. The cart has the mail for the even floors."
"What's on ten?"
"Same department," Thad said, pushing the arrow button a few more times. "It takes up three floors." He shook his head. "And there's a ton of rooms he could be in."
"Catch him at the elevator."
Thad didn't fault Kevin for the idea, since he was new and had obviously not been to the tenth floor. But he knew it wouldn't work. "Elevators on every side of the floor. They move a lot of equipment around."
Kevin held up the high-tech dousing rod. "Sure you don't want this?"
The elevator bell dinged, indicating it had arrived. The doors slid open and Thad stepped inside and shook his head to decline the offer as the doors closed.
A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened and Thad saw his friend Franklin talking to a woman. They were ten feet from the elevator, both wearing white lab coats. Franklin had a bundle of mail in his hand.
"Thad! What are you doing here?" Franklin excused himself from the conversation with his co-worker and walked over to greet Thad coming out of the elevator.
Thad looked down at the letters, then back up at his friend. "He already came and left. Didn't he?"
Franklin glanced at the letters, then looked up at Thad. "I was wondering why someone else made the delivery. Got something else going on today?"
Thad turned a little to reach back to the arrow button and pressed it, keeping the door from closing, then he let out an audible sigh. "Rough morning. But no. All I have going on is catching up with the jerkwad before he gets up to..."
Franklin grinned. "To her floor?"
"Yes, actually. Sly Jimmy has no business going up there."
Franklin drew back a little. "Oh, yeah. With a name like Sly Jimmy, I see your point. Fraid he'll put a ring on her before you can ask her to go steady?"
"No," Thad said. "But he's got a reputation. She should have to deal with him."
"Uh, huh." Franklin grinned. "Well, good luck."
"Thanks."
The woman woman had been talking to moments ago, came back over from the side of the room where'd she gone. "See you in a bit, Franklin. I need to run down to the basement lab."
Franklin nodded to her as she passed him and joined Thad in the elevator.
"You don't mind do you?" she said to Thad.
He looked at her, then glanced to the panel of buttons to her right and noticed she'd already pressed the button for basement level three, which housed the Augmentation Technologies Department's Testing Facility.
Crap.
Thad took a step toward the closing elevator doors, planning to get out and rush to one of the other elevators on the floor, but he was too late. The doors closed before he could get between them to trigger the safety sensor to reopen them.
"Were you in a hurry?" the woman asked. She had a friendly, grandmotherly appearance, though her skin was smooth. Thad couldn't actually tell how old she was.
"Actually," he said. "Yes." He stepped in front of her to reach the buttons. "Do you mind if I get out first?" His question was rhetorical, for politeness. He'd already pushed the button for the ninth floor.
She shrugged. "It's fine. Sorry. I didn't know."
Thad nodded to her. "Thanks. It's just...there's a guy trying to ruin my day."
The elevator stopped at the ninth floor and the woman stepped in front of the doors and turned to Thad. "Don't worry about it. I get it. The other day one of my co-workers thought it would be funny to lay Phantom's suit over the only working toilet in the women's room. We had the suit to do some repairs. I almost peed myself before I realized why the commode had vanished."
The ding sounded from speaker above the buttons and the doors opened.
"I'll take another elevator," she said. "You go deal with the whoever is giving you a hard time."
"Thanks." Thad offered her a static wave and a nod as she was turning around. When she'd cleared the threshold, he pushed the button for the fourteenth floor, remembering twelve was still under construction. He held the button down to override the elevator's instructions to go down to the basement.
"Okay, Jimmy. Let's see you how quickly you deal with the daycare."
I don't think I've ever made it out of there without some kid putting a paper hat on my head or having to break through the super-tyke Red Rover line to get to the elevator.
Thad chuckled. He felt relieved, knowing victory was coming, and he'd achieve it with the help of a dozen unruly kids in the childcare facility set aside for the offspring of the supers.
Chapter 6
FOURTEENTH FLOOR.
As he waited for the elevator get to the fourteenth floor, Thad reminded himself that the key to handling the supers' kids was to stay on their good side. He knew none of the k
ids had been born with powers, and most rarely exhibited any, but there'd always be a few. And it seemed like every few weeks another one of the children sprung something on him.
Lady Druid's daughter Sylvia was the first one on the childcare floor to wield superpowers. She was seven, and had been raised without a father or siblings, accompanying Lady Druid on scientific expeditions to the Amazon and other remote places around the world before her mother joined Supers Incorporated. Ironically, Sylvia had spent so much time only with her mom that when she started spending days in the Supers Inc childcare facility with other children, she withdrew.
Lady Druid almost quit the company over the situation, but a simple gesture she made for her daughter one day proved to make all the difference for Sylvia. The strip of material Lady Druid took from her superhero outfit and tied into Sylvia's hair as a ribbon made Sylvia feel as if her mom was always with her. Sylvia, comforted by this sense of her mother's presence at all times, adjusted to being with the other children on the fourteenth floor. It was only weeks later that Sylvia revealed a weaker form of her mother's powers to grow and control vegetation of any kind. But making flowers bigger and causing them to wrap around her fingers—which she loved to do—were deemed harmless and acceptable.
Since then, a handful of other supers, followed suit and gave their children a piece of their superhero outfit. Then the supers would drop off their outfit on the tenth floor for repair, saying the damage must've happened in the course of a mission.
Thad heard the children's laughter before the elevator doors slid open. And when they did open, he saw Sly Jimmy in the middle of the room, pulling at the mail cart, struggling to tear it free from numerous vines wrapped around cart's wheels and the posts connecting the bottom and top shelves holding the mail.
"You kids are rotten," Jimmy said, scowling at a few of the children, who were sitting with the others in a large circle surrounding him and the mail cart. "Get these stupid things off here!"
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