Abolition

Chapter Twelve

Friday. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I'm not looking forward to all the schoolwork I have to catch up on this weekend, even if finishing it means that I'm that much closer to completing the Deckerman Method. I'm really not looking forward to the inevitable yard work, either, because Steven will want to go double or nothing and I might've been lucky last week but there's no way I can pull it off two weeks in a row.

As soon as I walk into Weston Enterprises and Logistics—with time to spare, for once—things are...weird. The sound of shoes clicking against the atrium floor is missing the usual accompanying hum of conversation. Nobody makes eye contact with me, either; not that they usually do, but the people in the atrium are actively avoiding making eye contact with anybody else. A nervous tension suffocatingly fills the air, and the urge to tiptoe to the quicklifts in order to not disturb the eery peace is strong. I'm a professional, however, or at least I have been for over a week. I'm an adult, almost. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Except for the fact that there so obviously is.

The heavy atmosphere is even more stifling in the Tech Department, everybody hunched over their desks as the keep their heads down and pretend the world doesn't exist. My greeting for Oliver today—What the hell is going on?—is on the tip of my tongue, but when I turn the corner to our desks he's not there.

Oliver Penn, who probably wouldn't be dating Finley if there was even the slightest chance he could marry his job, is not at his desk.

His computer isn't on and there's no trace of his line on the ground. There's not a jacket hanging from the hanger, even though it's definitely a jacket-y type of spring day. There is not a hint of him even being here today.

I force myself to take deep breaths. It's okay.

I peel my jacket off, settle in my chair, and turn on my computer. I fiddle with my stapler as I wait for my computer to start, swallowing the impulse to get the hell out of here. That wouldn't help anything. It really wouldn't.

When my To Do list pops up on screen, the urge to get the hell out becomes a lot hard to ignore. There is only one item on my To Do list today: recover the files on Mr. Weston's wiped computer hard drive.

"Kirk."

By a miraculous feat of will I don't jump or otherwise give away my surprise. Polovsky is looking down at me like I'm an experiment that he doesn't know the outcome of yet.

I relax. Or, at least, I try to relax. "Where's Mr. Weston?"

Polovsky quirks an eyebrow. "Why do you think he's gone?"

"Apparently he wiped his hard drive. He'd only do that if he wasn't planning on coming back."

"Touché."

We stare at each other for a second. Everything in Polovsky's expression and posture is pressing me to back down, but I sit up straight and look him in the eye because oh hell no. I might be terrified, but I'm not just going to roll over.

I can't see over the walls of my cubicle, or around where Polovsky is blocking my only exit, but the air surrounding us is growing more and more tense with each passing second. My coworkers, for all that they'd had their attention single-mindedly on their own computer screens mere moments ago, serve as a captive audience that's riveted by what's going on.

I'm ignorant as to why they're paying such close attention to me, but maybe that's why Polovsky wants me to do this job. Because I'm new. Because I don't know something that everybody else does.