The Fire Within

Chapter 11 - The Invader

The people who worked on the thirtieth floor of Harper Inc. had had a sleepless night. Just after the incident of the previous night, Kevin had called his uncle to deliver the news. Robert had then immediately arranged for a meeting of the Unspeakables and everybody had turned up at the office within the next hour. They first examined the damage in the record room and yawned through the meeting which went on for about three hours.

Sarah reached the building of her office carrying with her tremendous anxiety and fear. She had to muster enough strength to appear calm and confident before stepping out of the elevator onto the thirtieth floor. The scene that greeted her could be described in one word – chaos.

People were bustling about in the lobby carrying papers and files in their hand. Two men were seated on the couch, in deep conversation with each other. Cole was on the reception desk, talking on the phone. Jessica was nowhere to be seen. Sarah started to walk, keeping her head down in order to avoid any eye contact. Thankfully everyone was too absorbed in their work to notice that she'd gone straight to her office.

Sarah quickly closed the door and sat down in her chair. She just had a few moments to gather herself before the door burst open, revealing a breathless Jessica standing at the door, holding a file in her hand.

"I only have a moment before I have to get this to Kevin", Jessica said, waving the file in front of Sarah. "So did you hear what happened?" she asked, her voice shrill. Her eyes held a mixture of surprise, excitement and Sarah thought she even saw a little bit of fear in them.

"No. I just arrived."

"You didn't get my text?"

"I – My phone was dead." Sarah averted her gaze.

"Anyway, the most scandalous thing happened yesterday... "

Jessica rambled on for full fifteen minutes, detailing the incident to Sarah, who felt even worse hearing it. The only relief she felt was when she gathered from Jessica's speech that nobody in the office had any clue as to who might be the intruder. Their conversation was cut off by the ringing of telephone on the desk. While Sarah picked up the receiver, Jessica realized she'd been away for too long and dashed to Kevin's office.

Thirty seconds later, Sarah was in Robert's office, handling him the delivery report that she'd finished the night before. There were three more people seated across Robert's desk, patiently waiting for him. Sarah carefully watched him to detect if his behavior towards her was any different. However, Robert looked very tired and stressed and barely glanced her way. When he dismissed her rather abruptly, she couldn't tell if it was because of her or the tremendous stress he'd been put under because of the incident.

Sarah didn't know how the day had passed so quickly, as she was either busy with the work Robert gave her or immersed in her thoughts. It was almost three in the afternoon when she found herself sitting along with Jessica and Cole in the cafeteria and a plate of untouched food before her. They'd just told her that the door of the record room was now sealed and additional security measures were being added to it at the moment. Sarah had no intention of ever stepping foot through that corridor. There was absolutely no way that Sarah could go near the door again even if she wanted to, what with the security being doubled and everybody on high alert.

To top it all, Jessica and Cole seemed to be sucked into the endless loop of theories and rumors revolving around the incident. They fed on all different versions of the story like hungry vampires.

"I don't get it", said Jessica shaking her head. "I mean, what could they be looking for? There are no secrets in there; just a bunch of old company files. Unless you're really into history and stuff", she snorted. "But that's ridiculous too. You could get it on Wikipedia."