Go to work. See what happens.

The Grind

“All that to say… something weird is going on over at Monarch. Or maybe, like, five somethings. I can’t see the connection, but it’s all off somehow. The easy women. Secret codes for secret floors. Covert surveillance, psycho cops smashing in car windows, and whatever the hell is going on up on 7. Who was that woman in, what was it... 711? I swear I know her from somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me remember where.”

There is no response, as you expected, so you continue. “I just… fuck, I don’t know what to do about it. I really don’t. Part of me feels like the bitch deserves whatever they throw at her after what she put me through. Still, all the rest. They’re spying on my office! They recorded me having sex! Still, some part of me can’t help but think that whatever’s going on has to be way more trouble than it could possibly be worth. Shit!”

You roll over on your bed. The sheets are long gone, kicked off hours ago as you tossed and turned. Your exhaustion, it turns out, didn’t take. “What do I do? Tell me what I should do, and I’ll do it.”

Mo’s eyes slowly open as if annoyed to see you’re still disrupting his rest. He wriggles, ending slightly closer to you, and when you reach out to give his head an apologetic pat, he surprises you with a single lick to your wrist. By the time your hand withdraws, his snores fill the room.

“All right, buddy. I’ll go back in.”

The rental car place opens at 8 AM. Your driver drops you off at 7:55, and the staff has you on the road by 8:15 with a pine-scented ride that’s apparently a “luxury” model on account of its satellite radio. Monarch is back in the direction you came, and with your mind still racing, nerves jittery, it’s habit and instinct that steers for you. So much so that you’re on Avery’s street before you remember she’s not riding with you any more. Up all night obsessing over the prior evenings events and still you nearly forgot. Who could blame her, though? You’ve certainly given off the impression of a man who doesn’t get attached to his women, and if one of those women might kick in your door and go ape shit on you… Well.

It’s a strange thing, realizing you have meetings to attend to in spite of what all you’ve seen last night. Your morning is a blur of activities, following up on prior audits of the staff in Monarch’s archives. Mia quietly murmurs a vague well-wishing as you pass through, but only that. Seems your star looks a little less on-the-rise after being associated with a very public meltdown the night before. Maybe she simply caught the same anxiety that afflicted Avery.

Still, you’re relieved to find that meetings are all that await you. No security guard waiting outside your office to haul you in for questioning over banging the janitor, stealing pass codes, breaking into 7. You actually ride down the elevator with one such guard, a mountain of muscles who looks like he must spend half his life in a gym pumping iron as he fantasizes about stomping some corporate malefactor. The sum of your interaction, however, is his banal commentary that “can’t beat that summer weather out, hey?”

It’s going on noon before you finally have a chance to get into your office. At first surreptitiously, but then with mounting boldness, you look for signs of the security camera that captured your fling with Ingrid. You have a pretty good idea where it would have had to be from the video, but you’re looking at bare wall. You even run your fingers over it, as if they came in overnight to remove equipment and patch the wall, but no. Whatever recording device was used for Amy to score that footage last night, there’s no trace of it today.

You take your lunch – egg salad again today, dammit – in the break room across from John and Arlen from IT. It’s the perfect level of small talk, a hodgepodge of local sports, weather, and boring shop talk. It’s so banal it actually lulls all those voices shouting in your brain to do… something. There’s too many of them talking too fast to understand what.

Then you go back to your office, and the break is over.

Come by my desk when you get this, Mr. Saxon. We need to talk about last night.
– AM

That’s all Aubrey’s message says. Your blood runs cold. It’s so terse. Does that mean anything? Your prior communications haven’t been exactly verbose. That’s not exactly comforting. After she caught you breaking into 7 last night, it could be bad indeed. You were lucky to make it out of there without being fired on the spot. Is she angry? Suspicious? If she’s concerned, then why wait half the day to call you up to her office?

Besides, didn’t she say something about wanting to talk over Brook’s **** on your car? It feels like another lifetime, but it could only be that. Or has she seen the same footage Amy found? Getting canned for scoring a blowjob from the inexplicably attractive custodian sounds pretty mundane compared to some alternatives, but it’s still pretty career-ruining.

It’s an ugly feeling, helplessness. Still, maybe you can delay. You were clever enough not to let her see you’d read her message. Delay, and see if you can’t scare up something to go into that meeting with.

Amy. Amy’s a soft touch if ever there was one. Maybe you could storm into her office and confront her about the recording. She won’t know the tech end of things; you can always claim you found their camera and tracked her access digitally rather than spilling the beans about your malfeasance. Though maybe her own intrusion trumps any right to indignation she might have over yours.

You do still have her access code, too. Maybe that’s the way to go – head back to 7, see if you can learn anything. Bold, yes, but being able to tell Aubrey to her face that you know what she’s up to will level that playing field at minimum.

With a sigh, you wonder if maybe you’re overblowing things. Yes, something strange is going on, but the risk only means you should be more careful, not less. Perhaps the thing to do is simply to go see Aubrey and see how it goes.

Decision time! Voting takes place for patrons $10+ at https://www.patreon.com/icebear. Results will continue to be posted here for free, though, so no pressure.

Your choices:

• Go directly to the CEO suite and speak to Aubrey.
• Confront Amy and coerce her into helping you. (Don’t tell her everything though.)
• Confront Amy with what you saw and heard last night and hope it shocks and/or shames her into helping you.
• Go to 7.