Chara stood against the railing of the ferry, watching the gangway be secured to the dock. There were gulls meandering there and on the road behind it, the same way pigeons did back home. Other than that, Auge Island seemed a lot like Horizon. It was late afternoon, and they’d only left at midmorning. Somehow, she’d expected the journey to take all day.
“I hear they sell excellent pralines somewhere around here,” Joseph said behind her. “We’ll have to track them down after we’ve gotten through the boring part."
“What is this trip for?” Chara asked, pushing back from the rail to look at him.
Joseph shrugged. “Some meeting, I guess.” Then he pointed at the skyline, where a dome swelled over the shorter buildings lining the shore. “That’s where we’ll assemble—I have to make an appearance for politeness sake, even though all the real connections happen over the dessert breaks.”
Someone must have signaled from the gangplank, because the crowd at the top started moving along down it. Joseph picked up his briefcase, and Chara pushed away from the rail, ready to follow him forward.
“Isn’t there anything good in the meetings?” she asked, trying to get some salient detail about her husband’s work to stick, “Maybe someone will present a creative idea?”
Joseph sighed, sounding unusually morose. “If I wanted creative ideas, I’d try the people I already employ—like Elise from the other day—somebody who actually does the work, and has a chance to see how it could be done better. Everyone here is too removed to know anything. And to be fair, I include myself in that.”
They caught up to the crowd then, and Chara was too focused on not jostling anybody and staying near Joseph to ask a good follow up question. When they spilled off the dock onto the street with the rest of the passengers, Joseph let them straight toward the conference building, assuring her that he’d already arranged for their bags to be taken to their room.
“You don’t have to come to the meeting,” Joseph explained as they scanned their ID badges and entered the main lobby, “I wouldn’t, if I were you. They have pastries out here, and I’ll probably just be texting Vicky the entire time.”
“Alright,” Chara said, not sure if it was because she didn’t want to intrude on Joseph’s plans with his friend, or because of the cityscape out the window that needed drawing, or else because of the coffee bar she’d just spotted.
“I’ll be in room 9A,” Joseph said, gesturing ahead, “Feel free to interrupt if you need anything. I’d love the excuse.”
For a moment, Chara couldn’t tell what she was supposed to be looking at, since there wasn’t any door—then she saw that the poster on the wall was a building map.
“Have fun drawing,” Joseph said, and then he was walking away. He must have seen her comprehension in her face.
Most of her supplies were back in her suitcase, but Chara always had a small sketchpad on her. So she went and made herself a coffee, then headed over to the tall table by the window with only two seats.
The buildings were shorter here than in Horizon, and the tops of them made a jagged line. It was a more exciting, if less elegant shape than the skyscrapers she was used to. The entire scale was smaller—and that left room for little details like window sills, and fire escapes, and clothes lines—things your heel could find purchase on if you were running across them. If you were someone who could run across them.
Chara closed the notebook. A little forcefully. Then she looked up and around—she couldn't quite tell if she had made a noise—and someone was standing there, staring at her.
“Sorry,” the woman said. She was very blonde, hair pulled up in a bun. Her clothes were dark, styled like a uniform, and she was holding a broom.
“Oh!” Chara said, suddenly tracking. “I don’t mind—I can move if you need.”
“You’re fine,” the janitor said, “You just looked up suddenly.”
“I—” Chara started.
The fire alarm went off.
Quickly, Chara snatched up her notebook, pencil, and coffee, then headed around the corner and out the front doors. It was easy—the lobby was the first room in the building. Also, she hadn't noticed any sign of an actual fire. It was probably a false alarm.
Still, after she came out the one way exit and into the side alley, she hurried over to the open paved area in front and craned her neck back, looking for smoke. She was the first out, and she wasn’t quite sure where the emergency gathering area was—but the man who had been sitting at the help desk came out and wandered over to stand a few yards away from her, so she must not be far off.
There wasn’t any smoke—there weren’t even clouds.
Slowly, like so many classes let out to lunch, groups of stuffy men in slacks spilled out of the building and into the courtyard. That’s why it was easy to spot Joseph—the man next to him was wearing jeans.
Victor made eye contact with her, and then he elbowed Joseph in the side, hard. Joseph saw where he was looking, and waved. Chara was already making her way over through the crowd.
“There you are,” Joseph said when she got close, “Sorry about that—but at least things are exciting this year.”
“Where’d you get that?” Victor asked, nodding down at the coffee in her hand.
“Just in the lobby,” Joseph said, shifting his briefcase to the other hand to point back at the building. “Actually, if you’re planning to go grab one, would you—”
“I thought we weren’t allowed inside,” Chara said, then realized she’d interrupted.
“No, I will not ask what happened while grabbing coffee,” Victor said, pulling out his phone, “I’ve been banned from your company’s premises.”
Joseph laughed, short and awkward. “You’re kidding. Weren’t you just in there?”
“There was a data breach,” Victor said, tapping methodically at his screen. “I wrote the article covering it—apparently your people suspect I had something to do with it.”
Chara was so startled by the sudden appearance of a topic she was informed about, that she didn’t resist at all when Victor handed her his phone. He’d pulled up a web browser, Data Breach Reveals Staffing Malpractice the headline read.
“And no, I was not just inside,” Victor said, crossing his arms. “Couldn’t get past the ID check. I’ve been out wandering the coffee-less streets.”
“Well,” Joseph said, biting his lip, “That’s unfortunate.”
“I didn’t know you were a writer and a photographer,” Chara said, handing back the phone.
“I’m a reporter,” Victor said, sliding the phone into his pocket. “And I’m staying at the Hampton—are you two heading that way?”
“No,” Joseph said, brows furrowing, “Oh! Oh, but Chara, if you wanted to head back—”
“I’ll stay with you,” Chara said.
“Right,” Joseph said, rubbing at his chin, “That’s fine—it’s just, things have been thrown out of whack, and there’s some people I’ll need to—”
“That’s fine,” Chara said, pulling her sketchbook from under her arm, “I can entertain myself.”
“Sorry about that,” Joseph said, which was a little ludicrous. She’d been sitting and drawing anyway.
Then they all stood there, awkwardly doing nothing.
“Weren’t you headed back to your room?” Chara asked Victor.
“Yup,” Victor said, sounding somewhere between resigned and smug. He turned on his heel and wandered off into the crowd.
“I’ll be on the bench over there,” Chara explained, pointing over to a spot on the edge of the courtyard. She’d seen it on the way out of the alley the emergency exit had led out into—it had a good view of the corner of the building, so she could practice two point perspectives.
“Sounds great!” Joseph said. He seemed a little frazzled, but he had just been in an obnoxious meeting, and she couldn’t imagine that the other businessmen were taking kindly to this interruption.
Chara left him there, confident that he would rally well enough to do whatever his coworkers needed, and headed over to the bench. She could see the shadow of the rooftop she’d been drawing from inside cast down along the road—but now that she was remembering her old thought process, she realized that she needed to draw something different. So she started with the corner of the conference building and worked her way down along the wall she’d been staring out from. She hadn’t been able to see any of it from her previous angle.
Chara didn't know whether to be troubled or not about Victor's article—she'd helped him get the data after all, and Joseph had seemed more upset by Victor's access issues than their cause. Maybe he didn't care, or maybe he was even glad it had happened. Joseph probably disliked staffing malpractice even more than she did. But if Victor hadn't told Joseph already, then she had better not either. Even if he suspected something, he might need plausible deniability in order to deal well with the other businessmen. And it had better not come out that she had been involved—she wanted access to that coffee station.
Absently, Chara looked up to note how thick the borders of the conference building’s windows were, and the janitor from before was standing at the emergency exit. Chara stared after her, dumbfounded, as she opened the door and walked in, closing it gently behind her.
That didn’t make sense at all. Weren’t they all supposed to leave the building? But it had been a while, and Chara hadn’t seen any smoke, so maybe it really was safe. Maybe the only reason the businessmen were still gathered in the courtyard was because they were old and stuffy and indignant.
But that didn’t explain why the door had opened from the outside.
Quietly, Chara set her notebook and pencil down on the bench and slipped forward, down the alley and up to the door. Now that she was close, she could tell that it wasn’t shut all the way. She didn’t even have to turn the handle to open it. Stepping over the threshold, she examined the edges of the frame. There in the corner was a cloth napkin, black like the edges of the door, folded and wedged to keep it from shutting.
And then, from some far corner of the building, Chara heard a very particular noise. It was like the faint buzz of a lightbulb, but instead of constant and mostly imperceptible, it was loud and brief. She jerked her head around, but there was only the empty lobby behind her, the mouth of the corridors open against its far wall. The noise came again, three times in quick succession, and there was something else with it now—rapid footsteps and general ruckus—like the sound of children playing tag.
But Chara knew better. She’d recognized the first noise, from her old news reports that she wasn’t sure if she could stand to watch anymore. It was the sound Irradiance’s power made when it activated.