Head for the elevator. But first, snoop on Amy’s computer.

Spying

You crack your knuckles. Time to do some serious hacking. This is it, the big-time, the kind of stuff you’ve only done in your late night fantasies where you’re a master criminal, living large and making women swoon with your infamy. Sneaking into a corporate high-rise by night, ready to roll up your sleeves and apply all your training and time and a half your cunning to crack the–

“Oh.” On one of several post-its stuck to the edge of her desk, you see one explicitly labeled as her login and password.

So much for hacking.

With a shrug, the fantasy subsides and you power on her computer. Great, it’s updating. Drumming your fingers, you glance around her office. Nothing you haven’t seen before. Some generic artwork of an ocean wave, more dust than you’d think Ingrid ought to be leaving. After a moment of hesitation, you start opening drawers. Office supplies, a pack of six-ounce plastic diet coke bottles under another post-it reading BEHAVE! in purple marker. It’s hard to feel too guilty digging around in here. After all, you’re going to be looking through her browser history for porn; not like you’re going to find anything as embarrassing for her as–

“Huh.”

There, in the big drawer, is what you immediately recognize as a ball gag sitting on a pile of glossy straps that you belatedly realize is some sort of fetish bondage gear. Beneath it is a set of shiny chrome metal handcuffs.

Damn, Amy. Unable to resist, you lift it from the drawer, inspecting the outfit as it dangles from the end of your finger. It’s a tangled web of narrow, black leather straps, the whole thing so involved that you’re not even sure what it might look like on a person or how to put it on. After a second, you see there’s still a price tag on it. Damn. Amy’s shelling out five hundred bucks on a fetish outfit? And keeping it in her office? You can only assume she hasn’t worn it yet, considering the tag and the unsullied condition. Glancing up guiltily at the blackness beyond the window pane, you give it a sniff, but pick up nothing but leather. Hell, maybe after dropping her writing and cooking classes, she’s dabbling in bondage slavery.

With a shake of your head, you tuck it back into the drawer as close to how you left it as you can. The patch – a basic OS update, nothing related to tonight’s passcode changes you’re relieved to see – is done installing. A quick reboot, and the login screen is there. You enter Amy’s username and password from her note, and you’re in. It’s hard not to smile at her desktop, a very staged but nevertheless heartwarming picture of her curled up on a couch with her knees in the air holding a little tawny cat over her head, an expression of glee on her face. (The cat looks less delighted.)

You open her browser, but are soon disappointed to find that the recent history is utterly banal. A food order, some boring online shopping, a google search for “animals of different species who are best friends.” (You lose a few minutes to the click bait on that one yourself.) Still, you doubt she was jilling herself to that labrador and its cheetah friend, no matter how delightful their snuggles.

Perhaps another browser with the shortcut hidden? She wouldn’t be the first to have one browser for work, one for play. You do find another, the lousy one that comes with the OS, but there’s no history at all there. Last opened six months ago to a page that begged the user to set it as the default browser.

Well, crud. Apparently she’s got the brains to turn on incognito mode before she gets down and dirty. Good on her, though professionally you’re still a little miffed at executives browsing porn on their work computer. Hopefully she’s at least cautious enough to keep it to the safer sites. Ah, well.

You’re almost to the office door before your curiosity, fueled by the sight of that fetish gear, angrily reasserts itself. Pursing your lips, you decide there’s one more thing you could look for. You log back in. Seems unlikely, but it’s always possible she has a little folder tucked away somewhere with some downloaded favorites.

You open her file explorer, then expand the section that shows recently accessed files. Sure enough, the top file is a video with a lengthy file name of random characters. Jackpot! Last viewed about fifteen minutes ago. Curiously, only created a couple hours ago. Must have downloaded it incognito. With a sly grin on your face, you double click to see what gets a gal like Amy Marchiano hot and bothered.

Your grin soon fades. The footage looks like some kind of security feed, a time stamp and some other incomprehensible numbers and terminology in small print along the bottom edge. It has no audio. It appears to be footage of a business office, a high angle showing a man sitting at a desk, its surface mostly bare. He’s staring hard at his screen, though you can’t see a face from what seems to be a ceiling-mounted camera. A moment later the door swings open. You can’t see who opened it, but you don’t need to.

It’s obviously Ingrid, because the man in the chair is you.

Your grin vanishes. In mounting disbelief, you watch as the buxom custodian chats you up. The gracious, flirty smile on her lips is still very much in your recent memory. In spite of the obvious certainty of what you’re seeing, you find yourself praying it will show something other than what happened. No. Ingrid climbs into your lap, goes to work on that zipper, and her wriggly lap dance begins. And all the rest of it.

You were recorded. The realization suddenly makes it all slam home, that you’re in a VP’s office in a secure building, logged into her computer, sock-footed. What stupid heist movie did you watch that made you take your shoes off earlier? You knew that looking through someone’s porn history might make for a disturbing revelation, but you’d figured maybe some tentacles or something. Not… this.

Your curiosity shifts with impressive efficiency from nosiness to survival mode. Toggling the video to fast forward, you hurry through the blowjob, the exchange after. Still no sound, you confirm. As Ingrid wipes some of the cum off her face with her cleaning rag… did she glance at the camera? You pause, squint, adjusting frame by frame. Impossible to say if she’s giving the screen a look or if it’s simply where her eyes wander for a moment while she’s prettying up. Could she really be…? No. Not Ingrid. No way.

But an hour ago, you’d have thought there was no way there was a camera in your office. No way Amy would be invading your privacy like this. Yes, yes, it’s an ironic accusation, but this is way worse than what you were trying to do!

Then you begin analyzing it professionally. You were hired as Monarch’s IT security consultant. It was a common misconception among clientele that their “conventional” security wasn’t linked to their IT security. More than once, you’d had to lay down some lectures on some high-ranking people to convince them to fill you in on their entire security apparatus. After all, if someone had the same camera in Amy’s office – oh shit! No, no, don’t see one – it would compound the security problem of her post-it problem by a factor of everyone with access to the feed.

Monarch definitely didn’t tell you about anything like this. Obviously, or you wouldn’t have let the janitor suck your dick in the middle of your half-cocked espionage! Fuck! First these “executive pass codes” on some ultra-secure system, and now a hidden camera in their consultant’s office? One that Amy knows about? Shit, one that maybe even Ingrid knows about? What the fuck is going on at Monarch?!

With a deep breath, you shut down Amy’s computer, taking a last look to make sure everything is still in place. With that, you make for the elevator, purloined pass code in hand. Time to find out what Nolan King is working so hard – and so fucking badly – to hide.

You make your way out of her office. There’s no way to lock it, but with no trace of your presence and her having been agitated by your approach, she’ll assume it was her forgetting rather than foul play. Your ears detect nothing and no one on your way through the halls. Only…

Shit. Where the hell did you leave your shoes? You would have sworn you left them in reception, right outside the hallway to Amy’s office. Under the bench? No. Behind the receptionist’s desk? Not there either. Well, shit. You’re on your hands and knees squinting into dark nooks at the edges of the room when you pick up a far-off ding of the elevator opening. Straining, the otherwise totally silent floor lets you pick up the squeaky wheels of a custodial cart. Ingrid, maybe, but equally maybe not. You’re not sure what you would say to her even if it is.

You take the alternate route towards the stairwell, keeping well clear of the interloper. Tomorrow, someone will find a random pair of shoes, put them in the lost and found and someday after you’re long gone from Monarch someone will pitch them. You have more shoes.

The door on the next flight down is open, so after listening a moment, you make your way in and head through the deserted office space for the elevator. It arrives quickly and better yet empty, only needing to come down the one floor. Inside, the secret panel Jenna used weeks ago to access 7 is easy to find. Every elevator ride since that day you’ve been training your eyes to spot it. Once you pry it open with your fingernails, there behind it is a numeric keypad.

Moment of truth.

Amy’s six-digit code is already seared into your brain; there’s no need for the paper. You punch each number deliberately, smoothly, yet as your finger depresses the final number, your heart sinks when nothing happens.

For a moment. Then the elevator begins moving downward.

The steel doors part, and for the second time, you are looking at a plain white hallway, dead-ending just past the elevators. This time, there’s no Jenna flashing those big beautiful tits. But this time, there’s no Jenna to block your way.

The elevator closes behind you after a moment. Unlike the other floors of the building, the lights are on here. It’s jarringly white, enough so that it would still be jarring if you’d come from normal lighting. The hall goes down some fifty feet before ending at a pair of double doors set with windows.

Peering in, you can see you’ve reached a T, the hall going left and right, though you can’t see far in either direction. There is no sign of anyone though, so you open the doors and slip inside.

Where you immediately run almost headfirst into Aubrey Merriman, striding down the hall toward you from not ten feet away.

“Will? Saxon?” It seems to take both of your names for her to make sense of your being here. She looks as confused as you feel terrified.

“Um, hello Aubrey. I… Hi.”

“May I ask what you’re doing here? Or how you even…” You hear a buzz from her pocket. She pauses to retrieve her phone, glancing at the notification. “One moment, please. I need to reply to this.”

You don’t have anything to say, so you stand by, a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, waiting for her to return her attention to you. You glance around surreptitiously. Several doors along the hallway, though none of them with labels that you can see. No, there is one. The number 711 on a door at the end of a hallway to your right. For a moment, you think you see a pretty blonde woman’s head, hair shaved on one side, walk up to the window. She peers out at you for a moment, and it’s like your vision zooms in, making out a lovely face in incredible detail. There’s something familiar about her, but you would remember seeing such a woman, you’re sure. Then she steps away and disappears, right as Aubrey is putting away her phone.

“So. I imagine I don’t need to remind you that this part of the building is restricted,” she begins. You open your mouth to spout an explanation – what, you don’t know – but she obviates the need. “No, I don’t need to hear it. I have places to be, and thanks to Ms. Diamond, I’m already behind schedule. For now, simply accept my assurance that whatever gave you the impression that your duties extend to this area, it is in error. So why don’t you go home, rest up from your day, and we will speak again soon. All right?”

You nod. “Right. Yeah, that’s… that sounds good. Thanks, Ms. Merriman.”

“Please, Will. Call me Aubrey.” She pats your cheek twice. “Go on, now.”

“OK. Good night, Aubrey.”

“And a good night to you as well.”

You beat a hasty retreat. Only when you get back in the elevator, slumping down into the corner, do you realize how lucky you were she didn’t notice you were creeping around barefoot on top of it all. The fewer questions she has, the better. Feeling like you very much got away with something, you decide to play it extra careful and exit the building from the stairwell doors to avoid any further interactions.

A cab ride later, you crash into bed, exhausted – but with good reason. You’re weary but fulfilled, now, with the certainty that you were right, even though you never would have guessed the extent of it.

Something is happening at Monarch.

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, when morning comes:

• Go to work. See what happens.
• Don’t go to work. Give it a day.
• Call the police. Get some help.