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A screen illuminated the far side of the conference room, taking up the entire wall. A dark office shown through the monitor. Bookshelves filled with untouched books lined the space around an empty desk. Someone clearly designed the space for aesthetics rather than use.
The audio connected. A shuffling sound preceded the man as he came into view: the Director. He jostled himself into the leather chair behind the desk. It creaked with his weight, straining as he moved. A small lamp clicked on and brightened the picture.
The Director continued to get himself comfortable on the screen. Gretchen did the same in the conference room. She sat in one of the twelve seats available to her, watching a secretary scurry about the side of the room. The young woman cleaned a puddle on the beverage station, having broken a bottle of water. The liquid streamed across the table and absorbed into a stack of napkins near the edge.
A cough from the TV interrupted the nearly silent room. Gretchen brought her attention back to the man. She repositioned herself, trying to ignore the pinch at the front of her left shoe. The Director sat square to the camera, his full attention on the conference call. He smirked and cleared his throat once more.
“Sir,” Gretchen nodded in acknowledgment.
The Director wore a crisp white suit. It shone in the dim room, as if he and his power were glowing. Gretchen did not lose the irony of his clothing. Behind his back, he was called “The Shadow.” This was for his habit of showing up unannounced and from the corners of empty rooms. She preferred to call him “The Whale.” His colossal size and slow demeanor took charge in any room he occupied, even through a screen. The nickname was more to cut down the intimidation factor for Gretchen. Though it only worked half the time. No matter what she called him in her mind, he was still an insufferable person, tough to be around and work for.
“Gretchen,” the Director said, nodding to her. His eyes flickered to the space behind her. “Excuse me, you in the back?”
The secretary, still cleaning the mess, looked up. She flushed scarlet and froze. Gretchen could nearly hear the secretary’s heart hammering through her chest.
“Director, my apologies,” the secretary whispered.
“Yes, well, can you please make your way from the conference room? I have important business to discuss with Ms. Weber here. That’s a good girl.” His eyes left the screen before he could see the young woman’s reaction.
Gretchen watched as the secretary’s face flushed yet again, alarmed to be acknowledged by the leader of their organization. She nodded, piling up the wet napkins on the table. She shuffled from the room and shut the door behind her.
Gretchen turned back to the screen. “Sir,” she repeated, nodding once more. She knew perfectly well his pleasantries toward the secretary were a facade. She anchored herself in her seat, ready for his true colors to come barreling toward her.
The Director was fierce. Unapologetic. Cut-throat. He had worked his way through the company for the past thirty years, slowly gaining majority ownership by buying off small percentages at a time. Though he was supposed to report to the board and gain their approval on matters, he held control and wielded it to benefit himself. Gretchen braced herself for him to do exactly that, but he didn’t speak. He sat, stirring papers around on his desk, contorting with thought as he read through files Gretchen was sure were about her project.
“Are you ready, Sir?” Gretchen spoke up once more.
He shifted from thought to irritation. A grim snarl met her gaze. “Do you think I would come to a meeting unprepared?” He didn’t wait for her to answer as he cleared his throat. “Of course, I’m ready. You’re the one who has a project up in flames, figuratively and literally. It’s in your best interests to be ready.”
His scratchy vocals led Gretchen to believe he’d been overusing his power in the last few hours. She recalled his tyrannical raids on the office. She felt relieved she didn’t have to work in the same building as him anymore. The boss reached off screen and came back with a lit cigar between his thumb and finger. The smoke swirled up as he puffed the toxic air.
“Well, get on with it,” he said.
“There was an outbreak,” Gretchen started. “We lost fifteen test subjects, ages ranged from newborn to the eldest being twenty-three.” She refused to break eye contact with the monitor. Though she didn’t know the location of the camera, she knew the general place to look. She refused to look down, to look weak in front of this monster. “The outbreak is still undergoing investig...”
“I know about the outbreak, woman!” His voice slammed into her. “Last month, the project was a success. You gained ground, you found answers, and you were closer to an exact formula; a precautionary tool to protect against the device. Why isn’t that intel on my desk?”
“Yes, that’s true,” Gretchen dropped her chin slightly. “I had a formula to prevent the negative effects of the energy. But once people started dying, we had to run further tests to confirm the formula wasn’t what caused the outbreak.”
“And?”
“The results were inconclusive. We couldn’t come to an agreement on if our tests caused the outbreak.”
“Because your lab went up in flames, I suppose?” The man interrupted. His face reddened and grew hard. “How convenient. What new information can you tell me, Ms. Weber? Anything useful?”
Gretchen watched the cigar smoke waft around the man, floating out of view on the screen. She saw the smoke in her memory, heard the screams of the quarantined patients as they burned to death, trapped in the make-shift laboratory.
“All my records are gone,” she shook her head. She still hadn’t grasped the damage of the fire herself, the eradication of her entire career.
“Gone? Just like that,” he snapped his fingers.
His whispered words tracked a chill up Gretchen’s back. She nodded.
“And who started the fire?”
“I...I don’t know.” Her palms grew clammy. She tried to hide them under the table as she attempted to wipe them dry. “It wasn’t me. Or my team. I can promise you that.”
“And this has nothing to do with the outbreak? Or so you claim.” His words trailed off.
“They were two isolated incidents.” Gretchen’s gaze shot to the man’s, appalled he would insinuate a connection. “The outbreak was contained.”
“I got a report on my desk regarding the outbreak. Now, here we are with a new report elaborating a completely different incident from that same lab. Yet you’re refusing to believe the two incidents are related. How can two attempts at destroying your work not be connected?”
Gretchen flinched. The outbreak hadn’t been her fault, nor had anyone on her team been responsible, she was certain.
“The patients contracted a virus and began dropping like flies. It wasn’t intentional. We were able to contain it to a small group of patients. All those infected were lost. With the outbreak under control, we went back in to continue our studies, to ensure the outbreak was not related to our work.”
“You just said you never found evidence it wasn’t correlated.” The man stroked his chin. “So, it could be internal sabotage, yes?”
Gretchen ignored his interruption, knowing neither of them could assume an answer to his question. “Soon after the outbreak settled, the fire broke out. It took out the entire laboratory, three recovering patients, along with a few deceased subjects we were still studying.”
“And the fire took all your work with it. Now, that sounds like sabotage,” he repeated his thought. “You don’t think the outbreak was vandalism to begin with? Once their first attempt failed, the vandal would need to come up with another way to stop the project. Yes? So, he put it up in smoke.” The man puffed a round cloud from his mouth. “It seems to me you have a traitor on your team.”
“No one on my team would have done this.” Gretchen stood from her chair. Once an idea sparked, it was hard to change this man’s mind. She thought of the files piled in her hotel safe. They were all that were saved from the fire, barely significant. She decided against telling the Director about them. These files wouldn’t tell him anything about who set the fire, or if it was intentional. It could have been an accident. She groaned. She looked at all the clues, spoke to her team, and knew none of them would go against her.
“Sit down, woman,” the Director growled.
Gretchen obliged, only because of the throbbing in her foot. It would only grow worse if she remained standing. She straightened her shirt and sat, looking back at the screen with an attempt at a calm demeanor.
“What about Mr. Friedman?” The Director flicked the end of his cigar into his ash tray. “He’s seen success in every step of his journey. He’s only been with the company for what? A year?” His eyebrow lifted. “You’ve been working on your little idea for twenty-five years and only just now found the formula to prevent negative reactions from the machine. Twenty-five years of work up in flames.” He paused, relishing the control he held. “You’re telling me you can’t remember any of the formulas, any of the data to replicate it?”
“It’s not that easy,” she said. “And you know Friedman’s project has nothing to do with this.”
“It’s not that easy, or are you hiding it?” He ignored the Friedman comment, as she knew he would, and pushed on. “Did you sabotage your own lab to hide something?”
Gretchen knew this would be an angle he would bring up. She knew he would suspect foul play.
“I’ve been working on this, like you said, for over twenty-five years. Once my lab partner passed away, I continued on with our research.”
“Well, it sounds like she was the brains of the operation. You took twenty-five years to catch up to where she was when she died,” his interruption punched her in the stomach.
“I didn’t catch up to her. We never reached this level of research when she was alive. And she didn’t just die, she was murdered. Her and her husband. We all know it.” As soon as the words left her lips, her heart sank to her stomach. It was one thing to conspire the truth with trusted colleagues, it was quite another to voice them aloud.
“Don’t you dare talk about that family,” the man’s snarl crept out of the darkness. He had leaned back nearly out of frame since starting their conversation, but now his face came into full light. The lines wrapping around his eyes deepened. She could almost see remorse in his gaze, but then he moved back into the shadows.
Gretchen took a breath, the weight of his unsaid threat lingering around her. She pushed on, “we created a formula and now it’s destroyed. Regardless of if the laboratory fire was sabotage, as you suggested, the formula is still gone. We can’t replicate it without my notes. I can only start from scratch at this point.”
“There’s no time to start from scratch,” he huffed. “This project was supposed to be complete by now.”
“This project will never be complete,” Gretchen squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. “They promised me 20 more years with those babies...”
“You’ve worked with some subjects for 25 years. What difference would another newborn test subject make?” The man slammed his fist onto the desk, sloshing the brown liquid in an elaborate whiskey decanter positioned toward the edge of the screen.
Gretchen watched the liquid dance. The man’s face went from beet red to a lighter pink as a long silence stretched between them. The liquid slowed to a light wave. The toes in her left shoe had grown numb. She wished she could take them off to release the pressure. She was grateful for the distraction, no matter how painful.
Finally, the man took a breath. “You’ve gathered all your things from the facility, yes?”
Gretchen nodded. “I have my plane ticket to meet at headquarters tomorrow.”
“No, we need you here sooner than that,” he picked up the phone on his desk and punched it with his sausage fingers. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Ms. Weber. My secretary will put you on this morning’s flight. If you’re going to make it, you better start running.”
The monitor went black.