Chapter 11

I woke up a further two times that night and it was the same for the rest of the week. I couldn't stop seeing Danny's beautiful little face all pale and lifeless amongst the other dead. It made my heart ache and my head hurt. How could I stop something when I didn't even know what the hell I was meant to stop? They were all dead but there was no clue as to how they died, they were just there on the floor and I was stood with Ezekiel, who ironically enough was the name for the Angel of Destruction. Does it mean I have to hurt him so that they don't die? I hope not because murder isn't within my capabilities.

 Stumbling up to Lucius' office, I tapped on the door before walking in without waiting for a response. I was completely shattered and was glad that it was Friday. It meant that I would have two days to try and catch up on sleep but for some reason I knew the weekend was going to cause me more stress that I earned from working with Lucius.

He was sat behind his desk, his eyes closed as he lounged back into the plush leather, his feet resting on top of the pile of papers that I had spent an hour arranging yesterday. I felt like using the files in my hands to beat him around the head but instead I cleared my throat, not wishing to piss off the man who literally held my life in his hands. If he fired me, I would have no home so as much as the man annoyed me sometimes, I just had to put up with it.

Lucius' eyes flashed open and he glared at me before his eyes landed upon the files in my grasp. He sat up quickly, only managing to knock off half of the paper on his desk, whilst he held his hand outstretched for the files. Rolling my eyes in disdain, I slapped the files into his hands before crouching down and retrieving the rest of the files, making sure I didn't show him anything unnecessary in the process. Some people, who would want to impress the fool, would probably bend over making sure their butt was facing his direction so that he could admire the view but to me that screamed trying too hard and I don't want to impress him anyway. Besides if I did that the man might get the wrong idea, he often got the wrong idea, like with the girl from accounting who he tried to seduce but it turned out was in a committed relationship with a catalogue model called Trudy. He couldn't walk straight for a week after that incident.

Chuckling at the thought, I quickly rearranged the pages and then placed them neatly back on the pile before slumping onto the chair in front of Lucius' desk. He eyed me over the top of the files, a pout on his lips as he looked between me and where the papers had been scattered on the floor as if he could magically make me redo the whole thing.

 "You're no fun." He muttered under his breath after a moment before opening the files and reading through them, a frown getting larger and more distinct as the time went on. "Not good, not good at all." I watched nervously as he ran a frustrated hand through his hair, his eyes moving back and forth in rapid stilted movements as his eyes read over the pages. After about two minutes he slapped the file on to the desk and looked across the mountains of paper to me and gave me and overly sweet smile which meant I wasn't going to like the task. "Miss Holmes, I have a new job for you." He smirked at me probably sensing my apprehension, with him I have to be apprehensive about every word that comes out of his mouth.

When he didn't speak straight away, I rolled my eyes and tapped my fingers impatiently on the arm of the chair, hoping it would irritate him enough for him to finish his sentence.  "What job have you got for me oh wise and wonderful Lucius?" I finally asked with sarcasm laced heavily into my words but being Lucius he decided to ignore.

"You think I'm wise and wonderful?" he grinned to himself and puffed his chest out in pride. "I always knew she would fall for my charm. Now to get her to-" I cut him off from that track of mind not needing his sudden heated gaze to know what his mind was thinking about. What is it with this guy? He seriously has issues. Maybe we should bring back Blondie the light bulb. I'm sure she can glow for him again if he asks her to. I shuddered in revulsion at where my own thoughts had gone before I gave Lucius a pointed look. He jutted his lip out and pouted but thankfully his eyes returned to their normal mischievous selves. "Fine party pooper, you know you want me." He smooched his lips together at me and I had to stop myself from laughing in his face. He's good looking but he is also a jackass which in my opinion cancels everything out.

"You wish. Now can you please get on with it, you're burning daylight here and I'm warning you now, there is no way I'm staying afterwards, you saw how that ended last time." I shuddered at the memory. Taking a long look at my face, Lucius lost all playfulness and instead looked me directly in the eye, his whole posture more serious than I had ever seen it. Well apart from that night but that was partly anger too.

"Fine. I need you to go to the records room. Some files will be on paper and some are electronic but I want you to start with paper. After what you have discovered, well it has made a lot of us here in the company concerned. I want you to go through the files paying close attention to the Solaria Project. List the discrepancies and report back to me what you find." His voice was taut and his face was hard which meant there was no way I was getting out of it anyways so I just nodded in response. "Work until four and then go home and get some rest, you look awful and you're making me tired just looking at you."

Resisting the urge to flip him off, I pushed up out of the chair and started towards the door, only to pause with my hand on the frame. I glanced back over my shoulder at Lucius who was staring at my butt licking his lips. What an ass. Clearing my throat, his gaze immediately snapped to my face but he didn't even show any hint of embarrassment that he had been caught, if anything it seemed to delight him more. When is the sex crazed maniac going to get lost and let the nice Lucius through, I thought bitterly but a small smile quirking at my lips when I remembered how good he had been with Danny. It was Lucius' turn to clear his throat this time and I couldn't let that pass by without sending him a scowl and then behaving like a stroppy child by folding my arms across my chest giving him a pout. "Where is the records room? It would help if I knew where I was going."

"It's in the basement, in case you don't know where that is, you take the elevator and press the button that has a 'B' on it. But if that's too hard for you I can take you down there if you like, I always wanted to get down and dusty in the records room." I was about to come back with some snappy retort but Lucius had a look of concentration that was too funny to disrupt, his eyes looked up to the ceiling as if they held all of the answers whilst his finger absently tapped his chin. "No, wait a minute...I've already done that." Sighing in defeat, I turned and left the office. And to think I actually thought something meaningful or important was going to come out of his mouth.

I stopped off at the cafeteria on the way down to the basement and got a couple of snacks and some nice steaming hot coffee knowing that I was going to need the caffeine to keep me interested in this task. It's weird, since I started working here I've just become a highly paid admin worker, all I ever seem to do is paper work and he always seems to want to get rid of me. Not that I'm complaining, there is no way that I want to be within ten yards of his office when he is getting down and dirty with some new piece of meat, which is at least three times a day. I'm secretly hoping he will come down with some disease as payment for his sexaholic ways but not all dreams come true unfortunately.

When I reached the basement I couldn't help but groan. Every inch of space before me was piled high with boxes creating a maze of paperwork towards the back wall which was covered end to end in filing cabinets. "I guess they're a little behind with the filing." I muttered as I sidestepped  a pile that seemed to teeter ominously from the foreign breeze before stilling, the corners of the top sheet of paper fluttering slightly as if to say next time Savannah, next time. I shook my head. I was seriously going stark raving nuts working in this place.

The record's room was really creeping me out, the lights were those horrible florescent strip lighting and these ones kept flickering in promise that they were going to give out when I least expected it. It seems there are many things that I will have to talk to Lucius about on Monday because there is no way I will ever be back down here unless they sort this place out, it's a potential disaster zone and I can quite easily imagine myself knocking a lot of the teetering piles over and ruining the careful system that was obviously in place here. I rolled my eyes at myself, the only system they have here is dump it wherever you can and hope someone else will sort it for you.

I made my way to the back of the room and found a rickety desk that looked like it had seen better days, sat in the middle of a small clearing in front of the wall of filing cabinets. I pushed off the few pieces of paper that were littered across the top before sweeping a hand across the surface to remove the dust. Placing down my snacks, I did a quick three sixty to try and see where I should start. There was so much paper work that it was hard to even fathom where the Solaris files might be.

"I suppose I should start with what is filed." I murmured before walking along the rows until I came to a cabinet where some person had thoughtfully labelled the drawers, 'Solaris Project' with letters beneath telling which art of the alphabet was included in the drawer. Starting with 'A' I pulled out a wad of files from the cabinet and then took them over to the table spending pain staking hour after painstaking hour trawling through the files and highlighting any discrepancies.

What is more worrying is the fact that they go back over three years which means this person has been screwing the company over for too long. What I don't understand is how someone could get away with it so long, I glanced up at the papers stacked around me and frowned. Maybe I do understand; how the hell is this company still making profit when this is their records room?

Needing to get out of the room I went back up to the upper levels and got some more coffee and a nice big roll before heading back down. Walking around the corner to the doors to the records room, I saw that they were ajar and there were people talking together in hurried voices, one of them at least attempting to keep the conversation quiet but whoever he was with, didn't understand the concept of covert. I tiptoed into the room and was shocked when I picked up the end of the conversation.

"...destroy it all. I will not be implicated in this, it could destroy my chances with them and I will not put my life on the line because of your shoddy work." The voice sounded like it had been through a shredder or the person smoked 40 a day but it was unnerving nonetheless and his co-conspirator seemed to think so too as she heard a slapping sound before a moment later there was a yelp.

"I'm sorry, I will destroy the evidence. Please forgive me my lord." The voice was younger and still held the naivety of someone who hadn't truly lived life. How had a kid gotten caught up in this sort of mess?

I was about to creep closer to see who was behind the stack of boxes when I felt a hand on my arm and a voice I had heard before reached my ears. "Filthy human, you should have kept your nose out of other people's business." My whole body tensed and my eyes fluttered closed as the person spun me around so that their hot breath that smelt of tic tacs and a faint whiff of alcohol. "You will look at me or I will slit your throat before you can blink." Trembling within the man's painful grasp I slowly pulled open the lids to my eyes and stared open mouthed at the face that I had seen only once but was imprinted within my brain.

"You?!" I gasped before renewing my struggles, needing to get from his grasp and warn Lucius, he needed to know who was betraying him. In a moment though, my energy drained and I was left panting after my futile attempts to escape. In defeat I stopped thrashing and instead turned to glare at the man who held me, my eyes would have him six feet under if looks could kill.

"Yes me, and I'm afraid you're not going to tell Lucius about this encounter." His voice was smooth but I could detect the sneer behind it. "You're going to forget this entire encounter, that is if you survive but with what my boys are planning, I highly doubt it."

I struggled harder against his grip, even lifting my knee to try and hurt him so that he could never father children but he set his cold harsh eyes upon me and my whole world stopped. A buzzing sounded in my head much like the static on a poorly tuned radio. As it got louder the pain in my head got worse and my vision got murky as warm liquid dribbled from my nose before catching on the peak of my top lip and dribbling into my mouth. I spat out the metallic tasting substance so that my blood spattered on my captor. He let out a growl as I heard footsteps coming towards us but I was greeted by the sound of the gravelly voice.

"Another log to add to the fire?" His voice was laced with amusement as he passed by and I could smell the distinctive scent of scent of petrol clinging to him.

"In a moment." My captor spoke with equal amusement before grasping my face so that I was forced to look into his eyes. The static increased until it was so painful that all I could think to do to relieve the pain was shut my eyes tightly but my captor somehow forced them open. He tutted and shook his head like it was a great pain for him to see my like this. "Such a shame, but nosey little humans shouldn't interfere where they're not wanted."

 Before I could register what was happening, my whole body was flying through the air and a moment later I crashed into stacks of boxes that then fell on top of me, burying me under a pile of paper. Pain erupted from everywhere, my head was pounding as the static continued, like someone had taken a cheese grater to my brain and was shredding it piece by piece which my side throbbed from where it had thudded to the ground. I tried to push myself up from the floor but my arms and legs felt like lead and the weight of the stacks of paper pressing down on me drained the last of my strength. Not having any fight left in me, I collapsed onto the dusty floor, allowing the darkness that had been threatening to overcome me, fill my mind and drown out the pain.

Before I fell into oblivion however, I caught the flicker of white hot flames out of the corner of my blurring vision as they consumed the maze of paper around me with an unnatural force, enshrouding me in unbearable heat. But what do I care when oblivion is so comfortable? With a soft sigh, I allowed my limbs to go limp as my eyes fluttered shut and prayed that the darkness would take away the awful pounding in my head.