‘Everyone has to breathe.’ They consider the point for a moment. ‘You think the directors figured they could get everyone to work harder if they pumped in this stuff?’
‘Long-term, it would brain-damage your workforce. That would be counter-productive. Wouldn’t it?’
‘Then they must have introduced the crack element in order to get the presentation prepared in time.’
‘So how is all the other stuff getting mixed in there?’
‘Maybe the system is fucked.’
They look at the gleaming pipes and cylinders, and listen to the insidious hiss of air.
Miranda takes the vent casing off and climbs inside the duct. She enters an unnerving maze of tubes, tunnels and conduits. The dark passages get narrower as she follows the quickening chirrup of the finder, pushing her way into ever more claustrophobic spaces. Following the signal, she turns into another pipe with a smaller gauge –
– and discovers that she is stuck. No matter how hard she wriggles, she can’t free herself from the constricting walls of the pipe. The key-finder is beeping faster still.
Ben and Meera, meanwhile, have torn up a floor grating in Room 3014 and are now, coincidentally, peering down into another of the interconnected vents. Meera is trying to make sense of what she’s seeing. Why would the system radically change the air?
Miranda is starting to panic. She is completely trapped. There’s no way forward and no way back. The key-finder is going wild, almost a continuous beep. She twists in the hot darkness, and finds a loose steel plate above her. She manages to raise her foot and kick at the plate. It’s not bolted, and flies away.
Felix’s rotting corpse falls on top of her.
Miranda screams, fighting off the maggot-infested cadaver as it leaks over her neck and arms, its putrefying face falling against hers, its stomach bursting open in a liquefied mess, releasing its gases. Fumes roll off the body, travelling up through the ventilation shafts, all the way to the sensors in Room 3014 …
… which go wild as they try to rebalance the air composition.
The sensors react to the rotting cadaver, sending chemical gauges into red-zone overload.
An electronic alarm starts whining somewhere. Lights flash. It’s never a good sign when systems in public places do this.
Bathed in pulsing crimson light, Ben and Meera see the startling effect on the sensors. They are connected to tanks of air additives, the mechanical valves of which start rotating. Now they are unstoppably turning by themselves, until they are wide open.
‘Whoa!’ Meera jumps back. ‘Something big just hit the sensors.’
‘Was it something we did?’
‘I think we should get out of here.’ The pair of them duck out of the room, shutting the door behind them.
Above Swan’s desk, next to his framed Bible quotes, a sensor light starts pulsing red. Newly toxic air is pumping out of the vent above him. He’s sweating, and Bible-thumping mad.
Above Clarke’s head, too, a sensor light starts pulsing as poisoned air pours through the vent in an unpleasantly warm stream.
Above Fitch’s head, an identical sensor light pulses as the deadly air pumps in more heavily than ever before.
Air vents above all of the remaining working staff start to deliver corrupt air as the remaining green LEDs switch over to red.
In the security guards’ station, the same thing is happening. Poisoned air pumps in, and red lights flash. One guard pulls his Taser from his holster, and cracks it into life with a wicked grin.
All over the building, the air is being replaced.
8. FRIDAY 12:07 PM
Miranda desperately hammers on the wall of the pipe. The matching key on Felix’s collapsed, putrid body is flashing with the finder. She can’t move back because the corpse is blocking her exit. There’s no way of moving forward. The air is clouding up, getting hard to breathe.
Through every floor, staff members are feeling the effects of the contaminated air. Collars are torn open, work is stamped on and thrown into bins – it’s an effect they have been feeling for weeks, but infinitely multiplied.
Clarke comes out of his office, looking crazed. He sees Ben’s, Meera’s and Miranda’s empty workstations. ‘Where are they?’ he asks, in his softest, most menacing tone. ‘What the bloody hell is going on around here?’ He ignores the fact that half his staff seem to be missing. That’s the trouble with obsessives; they home in on one thing and won’t leave it alone. ‘Young people think they’re so clever,’ he rants. ‘We’ll see about that. Why is there no discipline in this office?’
Swan picks up his Bible and moves towards June’s desk. ‘Miss Ayson, you always know where they are.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Swan, I don’t,’ June is happy to tell him. ‘And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.’
‘Then we’ll find them together,’ grits Swan. ‘It’s time we made an example of these slackers for Mr Clarke.’
He drags the surprised June toward the fire escape stairs.
Meera and Ben call the lift – none of the lifts have a thirtieth floor marked, but apparently they do come up here. They look up at one of the giant hissing ventilator grilles, working right above their heads. Ben studies it suspiciously. ‘We shouldn’t be breathing this. Let me know if you start to go nuts.’
The elevator doors open before them just as a group of directors turns into the corridor.
In the reception area, the pounding video screens are showing the kind of relentless, upbeat visuals that would drive anyone mad. Unable to take it any longer, Ms Thompson attempts to switch them off.
When she is unable to do this, she tries to tear the plugs from the wall, but they won’t come out. In desperation, she drags the monitors down from their mounts by clambering onto them, sending them to the floor, where they explode in crackling rainbows of pixel light.
Miranda can’t catch her breath. There is no more air left in the shaft. She hammers weakly on the walls. She feels her stomach lighten, and suddenly throws up.
Motorcycle couriers don’t think about too much when they deliver packages. This one is whistling cheerfully to himself as he dismounts and strides inside the SymaxCorp building. Glad to get out of the rain, he crosses the lobby and is directed to the twentieth floor receptionist.
As soon as the lift doors open, he knows there’s a problem. The air is thick, smouldering with soot and pieces of burning paper. Ms Thompson is seated at her granite desk, surrounded by small but fierce fires.
‘I got a package for the marketing department,’ he tells her. Ms Thompson carefully sets the package down in front of her. Something explodes on the wall behind them. He tries to ignore the problem. ‘I need a signature. If you would initial …’
He gives the receptionist his signature pad and a pen. She snaps the pen in half and throws it over her shoulder, then stares at him as if she is going to kill him.
‘Sign underneath …’ he suggests.
She squirts lighter fuel over the pad and sets fire to it.
‘… And, er, print your name. Or perhaps I’ll just go. It’s not a good time, is it? I’ll just go, eh.’
The courier turns and walks away fast, trying to get the hell out, but the receptionist beats him to it. As Ms Thompson stares at this man in leathers who dares to pester her with demands, her eyes cloud liverishly. She brings him down with the kind of extraordinary flying tackle that Clarke wishes his son might one day make, and for good measure twists the poor boy’s head back to front inside his crash helmet.
‘All helmets must be removed!’ she screams shrilly, before returning to her desk and collapsing onto it with a skull-fracturing thud.