Chapter 12

The office building echoes with the sounds of destruction that haven’t yet come to pass. Everything, everything is as pristine as the day I arrived for my interview. Untouched and unscathed, it’s all in its place.

My footsteps sound off through the empty office as I wander through like the last mourner in a mausoleum. I move out into the center of the office and run my fingertips over the surface of a pillar. In my mind’s eye, I can see myself clinging to it until my arms cramped with the impossibility of holding on. The shiny picture frames glint out at me from their unbroken positions on the walls, even though I know what it was like to close my eyes and pray that their shards wouldn’t come my way.

How?

I feel like the normal reaction would be to sigh and blame it on an overworked mind. I refuse to do that. I will not entertain the notion that I don’t know what I know simply because it’s impossible.

Which means that something impossible has occurred.

Perhaps I was in a simulation. Some sort of anti-theft VR.

Or corporate espionage VR. Maybe Zagreus Hart’s cronies bugged the place, knowing I’d go back for the files. Maybe everything I searched on my phone was really me entering key pieces of information into their own recording device.

Yes, I know that sounds far-fetched, but it’s considerably nearer-fetched than the idea that my faculties abandoned me. I’d sooner believe that the number one company in technological innovation has created something to make me believe I’ve lost my mind, than believe I’ve actually lost it.

On my own, I don’t do imagination. Never have. As a kid, I refused to open my ‘Santa’ gift until my parents admitted it was from them. (Keeping up with the pretense would only have humiliated us all.)

The only conclusion to draw is that I’m onto something. If the simulation scenario is what happened—although I’m open to any number of explanations—then there must be implicating information within the documents.

I leave the main foyer of the office quickly. Even though I know that none of it was real, none of it really happened, I’m still nervous to the point of panic. The images of objects nearly bludgeoning my head feel real enough to have me break out in a nervous sweat.

God, it just felt so real.

Once I’m in the file room, I relax. Files, information, statistics and the like are my friends. I know them. They’re predictable, comforting even. Besides, nothing in this room almost killed me, so that’s a real plus.

My ease doesn’t last long.

A moment later, a terrible crash rings out, severing the still silence of the slumbering office. It’s followed almost immediately with a roar of a yell that sends shivers over my entire body.

“Hailey!” the voice roars again.

I hate to say it, but it’s a voice that I know well, although last time it was saying my name in a much more intimate way. It resonates in vibrating shivers to the very center of me.

So, naturally, I hide.

I don’t know if this is a simulation or maybe projection-type gaslighting to make me think the building collapsed, but I do know that Grant is involved. His timing is too convenient. There’s the picture of him in the files—which are pretty much the only thing I am sure about. You can’t argue files.

They’re concrete. I remember seeing them before all this happened. In hindsight, I even remember Grant’s floppy hair (I remember thinking it was unprofessional).

Since the two things that I know are that Grant is bad and files are good, I opt to hide in the file room, even as he calls my name from the foyer. His voice becomes more and more frantic. There’s an edge to his voice, a waver that’s cut with a raw edge. Almost like he’s worried. About me.

As silently as I can, I scoot to the back of the file room and crouch down low between two towering boxes of files that should have long since been shredded.

Thank goodness for inefficiency.

(Except, I do make a mental note to reprimand the intern who had been given the task of dealing with these boxes.)

With my back pressed impossibly flush with the wall, I still my breathing as best as I can. My arms wrap around my over-the-shoulder bag, like the files are some sort of life raft.

He’s going to give up and leave.He’s going to give up and leave.

I chant this to myself, despite the fact that I can hear his calls for me getting closer and closer. Not once does he stray, even though there’s a perfectly good client lounge within sight where I would much rather be. No, it’s like he’s drawn to me, following an invisible string that’s tied to my pounding heart.

“Hailey!” he yells. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Okay, seriously. What’s with this guy and bringing me to a secondary location?

Then, his footsteps are in the filing room.

My brain races to try and come up with an escape plan, but how do you outrun a guy who can fly? And manipulate centers of gravity?

No, there’s no chance of outrunning him. I’m pretty sure I can outsmart him though. I just can’t let on that I know he’s working for Zagreus Hart the (alleged) supervillain.

“Hailey.” His voice is both a sigh and a growl when he steps in between the box towers into view.

“Oh, hi Grant.” I try to make the fact that I’m crouching amid dusty files in the middle of the night look natural, like maybe this is some new fitness trend I saw on social media. “You know, you’re not really allowed back here. Privacy issues.”

“We need to go. Now.”

Mmm, how about no?

“Sure, sure. I just have a bit of work to do. Let’s meet for a midnight dinner. There’s this 24-hour breakfast place just—”

“Now, Hailey!”

It is so not the time, but the command in his voice is quite possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. In a different scenario, one that doesn’t involve mistrust and cowering, I would love for him to say that while I’m on my knees.

Oh, why do are all the good ones either taken or evil henchmen?

“It’s just you look so nice in your, uh, spandex, and I’m not really dressed for going out…”

Grant goes to run a hand through his hair, but his hair gel is pristine and impenetrable. He makes a frustrated sound.

“God damnit, just come with me. I’m not going to drag you.”

The words aren’t even out of his mouth when the building rumbles. Exactly like the first shake yesterday that climbed and climbed into the frenzy that had me clinging onto the pillar for dear life while office artifacts arced through the air like bludgeoning darts.

“Fuck it. I’m going to carry you. Just know that I really do respect your agency.” He throws me over his shoulder fireman-style and jumps into the air to fly us out of the filing room.

Right as we leave, the floor-to-ceiling shelves that house our thousands upon thousands of boxes of files groan and snap, tumbling over like dominoes. If I had stayed any longer, I know I’d be at the bottom of it all.

And to think, I just joked with a paralegal that these files would be the death of me. Move over, Nostradamus.

Grant adjusts me as we fly. He slides me down his body so that he’s holding me underneath him as he flies horizontally through the zigs and zags of the office.

A loud crash, one that I remember from yesterday—I think it was an award from the government for outstanding environmental work—smashes against the pillar and makes me yelp. I don’t know if it’s because I remember how scared I was yesterday when it smashed right beside me or if I’m scared now, being here in this deathtrap. Again.

“I got you,” Grant murmurs into my hair, pressing me closer against him. It’s the sound of his heartbeat that reaches me in the far-off place of fear I’ve found myself. It brings me enough into the present to notice that most of the objects aren’t coming towards us. They’re giving us a wide berth, like we’re inside of some invisible forcefield.

It’s not perfect. Occasionally, an object reaches us, but each time, Grant turns so that his body takes the impact.

Like yesterday, I have no idea how long it all lasts. It seems like an eternity until we’re out through the already-broken wall of windows and into the waiting night sky. In truth, I know it lasted only a couple handfuls of heartbeats.

Time, what a tricky thing.

Back in the righted position, Grant still has a firm grasp on me, although I can feel his fingers tremble on my waist and his eyes on my face. There’s a pull to him. I can sense the tension and fear in him and every part of me screams to comfort him. I want to be there for him, let my heartbeat calm him, like his did for me.

Lucky for me, I don’t make decisions with my heart.

I gather information. I use my head to act knowledgeably.

“Wha—” I start to ask, turning to face him. When I do, the sight of his open emotion steals my words. With shaking fingers, he reaches up and strokes the side of my face. His thumb lingers on my bottom lip.

In another time, I would close my eyes and tilt my head up, parting my lips a breath apart. He would kiss me with the kiss that eclipses all others. It would be a celebration of being alive, a promise of our lives to come, and a merging of two people entwined by fate.

Instead, I clear my throat. “What’s going on?”

He looks dazed, still staring at my mouth. “I don’t know. One second I was…somewhere else. The next, I was here. Again.”

I nod, looking anywhere but at his longing eyes. “Same.” I pause. “Where were you before?”

Now it’s his turn to avoid my eyes. “That’s not really important,” he hedges.

“Answer the question,” I say, going full lawyer. Then, I dial it back. He’s going to know that I know if I insist on interrogating him. “We need as much information as we can to figure out what’s happening.”

Grant shrugs. “I’m just happy you’re okay.”

“My current leading theory is VR.”

“VR?”

“Virtual reality.”

Grant rolls his eyes. “I know what virtual reality is. I just don’t think that’s what it is. I mean, this is definitely happening.”

“And what makes you so sure?” It takes every ounce of control to not phrase that as an accusation.

Grant tugs at his spandex collar, revealing an angry welt from where some debris hit him. “Feels pretty real to me. If I had to wager a guess as to what’s happening, I’d say time loop.”

“A time loop?”

“Sure. I’m guessing a resetting at midnight one, if your watch is accurate.”

It reads 12:24. I guess midnight would make a good guess. I probably wandered around the office and filing room for twenty minutes before the shaking started.

But, really? A time loop?

“It could be some sort of booby trap VR—”

“That we both got trapped by?”

I bite my tongue. Obviously, if this were a trap he’d have to be in on it.

“Right? Pretty ridiculous that we would both get caught in it,” he adds.

I bristle. Ridiculous has literally never been an adjective that’s been associated with me.

“But time loop is a perfectly fine first logical step to take?”

He nods. “It all adds up. Right at midnight I found myself in the same place I was the night before at midnight. Everything, and I mean everything, is exactly the same. The same raccoons fighting in the alley. The same taxi driving over a curb. The whole building re-collapsing is proof enough, though, really.”

I roll my eyes, even though I’m having trouble locating an error with what he’s said.

“All of that could also be explained through VR.”

He shakes his head, a smile on his lips and a memory in his eyes. “When I close my eyes, I still have the taste of your pussy on my tongue. There’s no way any program could make me imagine how fucking delicious it was.”

A small moan escapes as my thighs clench together. Yeah, there’s no way virtual reality could make me imagine that orgasm. If anyone had that kind of technology, I’m pretty sure the entire economy would fail as people just stopped showing up for work.

No, the time loop is a solid theory. Although, it’s going to take more than one repetition to ensure it’s an actual loop and not just an echo. It’s a lot better of a theory than my VR one or the notion that I’ve suffered some mental break.

It’s a good theory. One that he came up with pretty quickly.

Too quickly?

“You never finished telling me where you were before this possible time loop reset.”

Grant turns to look at the building, just as it gives its final sigh before it tumbles to the ground.

“I was sleeping.”

“Right,” I answer dully as the building cracks and sloughs off its gravitational defiance. Bit by bit, it crumbles into a shadow of its former great self.

“Do you want me to bring you back to my place again?”

It takes everything I have not to spit at him that I know it’s not his penthouse. No, I never reveal my strategy to opposing counsel right away. Instead, I search for a bit of truth.

“I think I’d like to go home, to my home, to sleep.”

It’s all I trust myself to say. I already know that which Grant is going to find out really soon: lies, like everything else, eventually fall apart and decay into nothing.

With an effort, I tear my eyes away from the ruins of the tower. It won’t do to dwell on thoughts of what could have been.