SATe [✔]

[2] whelve

A quick look at my watch told me it was 10:08.

I was late, and there's no way he wasn't going to say something. He was always a stickler for getting to places on time. I was pacing up these stairs as quick as I could manage, holding my baton firmly in my left hand and gripping my phone in the other even tighter. I'd already made the mistake of dropping the baton down four flights of stairs and having to run back for it, and I didn't have the mental dexterity to do it again.

Maybe I could call in sick and not bother with this shift at all?

This building didn't make me feel any better about it. There was something about it that filled me with a sense of dread and anxiety; there were floors and floors of offices with no personality that masked the rooms of experiments and business deals in the back. The whole building was owned by people with more money than I'd see in my lifetime who would surely take it out on me if anything went wrong.

I should've taken the elevator; the steps to the sixteenth floor were already tedious enough, but now I found myself late. Late on top of everything else that had happened today; the dyed purple uniform, the empty fridge, the broken-into car – the entire day was shaping up to be a disastrous one.

"You're late kid." Chester had said when I stepped into the lobby of the floor I'd be guarding for the night. He'd spoken in a husky drawl, sauntering in what felt like slow motion towards me. He'd been on the clock all day, so I wasn't entirely surprised to find him like this.

Chester was a shaggy-faced man with more attitude than a regular person but a cheeky demeanour that would make up for it at the right moment. One of his only downsides as a boss was being a hair-splitter for rules and time regulation – so currently he was looking down at me, "Save the explanation, Bastian. Just get to your post. Henry will do the yelling for me, won't he?"

"Yes, sir." I agree, looking over at Henry; currently rocking back and forward and glaring at me – it was all theatrics, but I had to hand it to him, Henry could be intimidating if he wanted to be. I give Chester a slight nod and dash over to Henry with a little hesitation.

Henry was a man who worked hard and didn't bring his stress out on others; the type to buy his wife flowers just because, the kind that'd call his parents regularly only to check-in, and the type to leave out a bowl of milk because he'd seen an abandoned cat walking in his backyard. Henry felt like an older brother than I'd never had; scolding me when he saw fit but patting me on the back straight afterwards to make sure his words didn't genuinely hurt me.

"Did he say I should yell at you?" He says smugly, dropping the glare he'd adopted for Chester's sake. I look at the scruff he'd forgotten to shave that morning and just smile.

"He expects that you will," I admit, pulling a handkerchief from my back pocket and wiping my forehead, I already regret rushing to get here. I look down at my watch again, shaking my wrist, so it shows the clock face; perhaps I should get it fitted to my actual wrist – I always told the guy I would. It was only 10:10; I wouldn't even consider it being sincerely late, "It was only nine minutes."