Page 2 of Static/Cling

He pushed the button.

Sparks glittered from around the lighted arrow in the middle. Behind the shiny doors something shuddered, then squealed. The doors opened about three inches, then stopped. There was no car on the other side.

“Seriously?” The boxes—because he hadn’t seen a face again in all this time—whined. “I amnotwalking up three flights in these heels.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Take the boxes.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He caught them as they levitated—quickly—in his direction.

“I’m going for coffee. Third—fourth floor. And when you get there, Blinky: Don’t. Touch. Anything.”

“Bielke,” he whispered, imagining he’d had a finger aggressively pointed at him with each of those words. Not that he could see around the boxes.

The door to the stairwell, when he found it, was thankfully opened with a push of his backside. It was also metal, so what static electricity was left humming under his skin exited through his left ass cheek, making him grit his teeth while regretting so very many of his life choices.

On the third floor, the door he pushed through opened into a construction space mostly obscured by hanging plastic he was not going anywhere near. Fourth floor it was. That floor looked like it spanned the entire building, and maybe the one next door. It was huge.

To his right were two metal desks pushed facing each other near a large window that overlooked the street below. To his left was another desk facing the wall with a puke-green baffle set up behind the chair. The cloth covering the portable divider was so stained, he couldn’t decide if the colour was because of literal puke, or if someone, sometime, had deliberately chosen it thinking it would make for inviting office ambience. He’d never had to look further than his own parents for proof there was no real accounting for the things that had happened in the sixties and seventies. But if anyone asked him for more evidence, this room and everything in it, summed it up nicely.

Straight ahead of him, a bank of copy machines from 1982, and a coffee maker probably older than that, held pride of place. The coffee maker sat on top of a series of—obviously, because why wouldn’t they be—metal file cabinets.

Down the middle of the room was a long row of folding card tables, their paint-chipped metal legs mocking him where they pierced the thin, synthetic, low-pile office-grade rug. Every chair in the main part of the room was—again obviously, because hello hateful universe—a folding metal one, painted dull brown as if they could pretend to be anything other than what they were.

It was like someone had plucked every last metal filing and carpet fibre in the room directly from his actual nightmares.

In the very farthest corner, near the best windows and sequestered by wood-framed office dividers, was a heavy wooden desk. The head-high baffles around that desk offered a view of the door through a strategic narrow break, whileprotecting the occupant from the rest of the room. They were an improbably delicate shade of lilac.

He assumed that desk belonged to the pinch-faced, high-heeled harpy who had gone for coffee.

From one of the desks by the window, a shaggy head turned to him as the person belonging to it hung up a phone. “You Bjorn?”

“Yeah.”

“Boxes on the table, says April.” They pointed at the recently replaced phone receiver.

“Thanks.” He moved carefully, being sure not to drag his heels over the carpet. Every little effort to not build up another charge counted, in his experience. Even still, a spark zapped his fingertips as they made contact with the tabletop.

Shaggy-hair got up, bouncing a tennis ball on the floor as he approached. He held out a hand. “I’m Roger.”

“Hi.” Bjorn shook his hand quickly, before he had a chance to build up any more sparks.

“That’s Sal.” He pointed to his desk mate. “They’re communications. The one you’ll be talking to if you ever go out on a mission.”

“Mission?” Bjorn frowned at him. “I’m the new janitor.”

Roger grinned. “Sure you are.” He went back to bouncing his ball as he spoke. “Like Sal is a receptionist, and I’m from the mail room. And Casper over there works in the warehouse.”

“We have a warehouse?”

Roger snorted and tossed him the ball, which he caught.

“Kassian,” the man sitting at the desk to the left of the door said. “My name is Kassian, and no. We do not have a fucking warehouse.” The form that emerged from behind the scary baffle towered over them all, including Bjorn, who was not a small guy. He was, in every way Bjorn could see, the opposite of Leif, who Bjorn had thought of for nearly a decade now, as exactly his type.

He’d never met a Kassian before, though.

“He’s the muscle,” Roger whispered, as if it wasn’t obvious from the size of the man’s chest and biceps.

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