Things that he would build.
The spire that had once held King Kong, at least cinematically, wasn’t even visible from where he stood, but he could picture it. He imagined the giant ape holding on with one hand while being strafed by fighter planes, all for the sake of love.
Ash was doing this out of love, too. Love for the entire world, not just a single building. The destruction of this building would set the Breakers back years and let him push through legislation to save the environment while they scrambled to rebuild what they had lost in the rubble.
He walked into the impressive Art Deco lobby and nodded at the pair of security guards. Both were beefy men, once athletic and now just big, probably high school athletes. They didn’t look like they’d be much good in an actual emergency, but maybe they would surprise him when put to the test today.
He set his briefcase on the silver casters and watched it disappear into the black box of the metal detector. He walked through the human metal detector and waited for his briefcase to come out the other side. The Empire State Building’s security would not stop him.
The security guard watching the screen, Rodney Ponder, had watery blue eyes under square glasses. Those eyes barely glanced at the contents of Ash’s briefcase. Rodney wouldn’t have known what to make of the Oscillator if he had noticed it. The device looked innocuous enough. “Working on a Sunday, Mr. Wright?”
“Just a few hours.” Ash held out his hand for the briefcase. “Then I can get home to the family.”
Like anyone would call his and Rosa’s relationship a family.
Rodney handed him the briefcase, handle pointed toward him. “You have a good Sunday then, Mr. Wright.”
Ash nodded without replying.
He strode across the shiny stone floor, past the Art Deco flourishes, and onto the elevator. His card key offered him access to his floor and provided a log of his presence here, as did the surveillance camera mounted in the elevator. He would have to follow his planned protocol carefully to avoid suspicion.
Keeping that in mind, he didn’t glance at the Breakers’ giant teak door when he got out of the elevator, unsustainably harvested as he was sure it was. Instead, he pivoted toward the green Wright logo and went through the glass doors leading into his own company. Transparent doors, nothing to hide.
The weekend receptionist, Sage, looked up when Ash stepped through the door. “Salutations, Mr. Wright.”
Sage had so many piercings that he had to be wanded every time he went through security. Tattoos covered both arms. He was visual proof that Wright was a young company, vibrant and rolling with the trends. Yet he still annoyed Ash.
The young man worked weekends and evenings, trying to show his value and work his way up through the ranks, as he’d been taught. He wouldn’t take the risks that Ash had taken — he would never go off to found his own world. He wasn’t smart enough to recruit for Spooky, but he got things done in his own limited fashion, and he was useful.
“Sage,” Ash responded, but kept walking. No one expected him to stop for conversation, and today, of all days, he would do nothing that would stand out.
Fog occluded the view from his window. A shame, because this would be the last time he’d have been able to see it, but he chose to shut down that avenue of thought. He answered emails, returned calls, did all the things that a busy executive had to do on weekends.
Until he decided that it was time.
He stood and stretched, running his fingers over the smooth grain of his bamboo desk, which was sustainably harvested. A beautiful piece of furniture, and he would miss it. Again, he glanced out the window, but fog still shrouded all but the closest buildings.
No more wishing for a final glimpse of the view. He had made his decision, and he would implement it, just as he had with thousands of decisions before. They had, by and large, helped to heal Earth, and this would, too. It was all about perspective and long-term thinking.
He gathered up his briefcase, resisting the urge to fill it with pictures and plaques that lined his walls. They mattered to him, now, in a way that they hadn’t before. He had barely registered their presence, but now he knew that he would miss them.
Then he hacked into the surveillance cameras for the building. He’d done it before, just for fun, and had turned off various cameras in a random pattern often enough that he hoped the security staff would view this as a routine occurrence. He quickly knocked out the cameras that covered the front door of his company and the stairwell. He also took out those outside the Breakers’ office and a few on floors nineteen, thirty-seven, and fifty-six. They’d be down for about three minutes before someone noticed and rebooted them. He’d tested that, too.
Wright was meant to be seen as an egalitarian company, and he was grateful for that as he prepared to head to the men’s washroom. Most CEOs had private bathrooms, but not Ash. No one would think it unusual that he was using the regular washroom — he did it all the time.
He slipped the Oscillator out of his briefcase and dropped it into his pocket. The device bumped against his hip as he walked, but it was just a light tap. So dangerous, yet it fit in his pocket.
Sage had abandoned his post — probably to use the restroom himself. That was a stroke of luck, and Ash changed his plan accordingly. Instead of using the emergency exit behind the bathroom, he went straight for the front door and down to the stairwell. That would save him at least thirty seconds.
The stairwell was always empty. He’d never seen a soul in it. No one took the stairs to the eighty-fifth floor. Even the most ambitious health nuts recognized that as crazy. The stairs were packed surprisingly close together, so narrow that two people would barely be able to walk side by side. In modern buildings, stairwells had to be bigger.
He hurried down one flight. If he tilted his head, he could see down several floors by looking between the stairs. Vertigo gave him a thrill of panic, and he looked away.
The walls were painted gray to the height of his head, then white above that, and a utilitarian gray steel railing was on both sides. Above the railing someone had knocked a hole in the drywall and exposed a steel beam. The hole had been there for months, and no one had fixed it. Ash could have smashed through the wall anywhere, of course, but he didn’t have to. This hole was the perfect place to set the device.
He took the device from his pocket and held it in his open palm. The gray paint looked shabby here, the welds attaching the cylinder to the base comically exaggerated. The Oscillator looked like a cartoon creation, not an object that could do damage in the real world.
But it had done damage. He was convinced that Quantum had tested the device on the High Line tracks as he had said. If it had worked there, it would work here.
Moving quickly, he clamped the device to the beam and turned it on. He’d already determined the correct resonance for steel, and he set the dial to match. He didn’t wait to see if it worked. If it didn’t, he could come back tomorrow and try again.
Instead, he hurried up the gray stairs, past Sage’s empty desk, and to his office. He was sitting at his computer when the surveillance cameras came back on, and he leisurely packed up and walked to the front door on camera.
Time to go home for the day.
Chapter 46
Joe’s computer speakers screamed at him. He blinked at them once or twice, trying to remember what the sound was for.
The Oscillator.
His mother stood in the doorway. “What is making such a sound?”