Enter the Janitor (The Cleaners) (Volume 1) (7 page)

Chapter Seven

Dani craned her neck to look up at the building Ben drove toward. They’d come back downtown, a few blocks south of the Sixteenth Street Mall. The skyscraper he navigated underneath sported a national bank logo, windows shimmering in the sunset.

“This isn’t where we left earlier,” she said as she continued picking dirt out of her hair. Forget a bath. After the dust devil’s attack, she needed a blast from a fire hose.

Ben cleared his throat like a cat readying a hairball. “’Course it ain’t. There’re entrances to HQ all over town. Some are for emergencies only.”

“Is that what this is?”

“Princess, there’s a fine line between emergency and catastrophe. We ran over that line and left it bleedin’ on the pavement about ten miles back.”

“Oh.” She grabbed the armrest as he took a hard turn. “So this guy we’re going to see …”

“I’m goin’ to see him,” he said. “You will tech’nicly be in his esteemed presence, but be a good girl and keep quiet, okie-dokie? This is way over your head.”

“What am I, janitorial eye candy? Give me a break, Gramps. If I can wrap my mind around calculus, I can handle a little office politics.”

He grunted, a noncommittal noise that let her chalk up a point for herself.

“Am I supposed to kowtow and kiss his feet?” she asked.

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“There are no stupid questions, especially about things I have no clue about. How else am I going to learn?”

His laughter made her bristle. “Permission is always stupid to ask for.”

“Why?”

“’Cause if someone says ‘no,’ you can’t claim ignorance later.”

The van rattled to a stop. Trying to show initiative, Dani hopped out, jogged over to the elevators and hit the call button. Right beside the elevators, a large window looked in on an untidy office, dimmed lights, and a Back-In-Twenty-Minutes sign suction-cupped to the other side of the glass. She checked over her shoulder as Ben joined her.

“What floor?” she asked.

He pressed a hand against the window. Dani squawked as a translucent face thrust out of the glass, defined by deep-set eyes, a trimmed beard, and sharp nose. It studied them both before fixing on Ben. When it spoke, its voice sounded far off, as if coming down a long tube.

“Your business?”

Ben pointed at the ceiling. “I’m here to see Destin … er … the Chairman.”

“You have no appointment.”

“Since when do I need an appointment to talk to my own boss?”

“Everyone needs an appointment to meet with the Chairman. Especially you.”

Dani heard something pop, and realized it was the knuckles of Ben’s fist.

“Step out here and say that, washer-boy. Just ’cause you watch the streets from up high don’t mean you get to spit on my bald spot when I walk past. Now you gonna admit me or am I gonna report you to your superior?”

“My superior is Ascendant Francis, who gave specific orders that you were not to be allowed access to the Chairman unless you went through him.”

“He said what now?” Ben’s voice roughened.

The glossy eyes blinked.
“I’m only acting under orders, Janitor. If you shatter this junction, it will come out of your pay.”

Ben rapped the pointy nose with his knuckles. A sharp chime echoed through the garage.

“What don’t come out of my pay these days? Listen, Destin told me he’d be available in case I encountered serious trouble, so unless you wanna be responsible for keepin’ vital information from the Chairman, you’re gonna go to him lickety-split. You’ll tell him I’ve discovered an imbalance—a big, nasty one, too. And you’ll tell him I ain’t leavin’ until he hears me out.”

“I will have to alert Ascendant Francis of your presence.”

“Fine. Do that. But see what Destin says first.”

The face withdrew and left the window unmarred.

Dani licked dry lips. “What was that?”

Ben’s shoulders remained tensed. “Window-watcher. They guard and maintain the glassways. They also wash the windows of buildings in areas of operations. Keeps the paths open.”

“Glassways? Paths?”

She hated how tall he was compared to her. It made her feel small and ignorant whenever he looked down at her, especially with his current impatient expression.

“Patience is a virtue, a’ight? You’ll learn as we go. You’ve already been exposed to more in a day than I was in my first month.”

The window-watcher’s face reappeared.
“Come through.”

Ben stepped forward, leaving Dani to stare as his body passed into the window and vanished without so much as a ripple. She reached out to test the surface. As she did, his wrinkled, knobby hand shoved back out, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her through.

She stumbled into a bright hallway with white walls, ceiling, and floor. She blinked away the glare as Ben entered another set of elevator doors at the far end. He turned to wave her on.

“Will you quit dallyin’? I’ll leave you here until I’m done, if that’s whatcha want.”

She ran and slipped between the doors just before they
snicked
shut. Inside, silver walls gleamed and a golden light shone down on them, pinning their shadows beneath their feet. The cab hummed and shivered as it … ascended? Descended? She couldn’t tell. She kept glimpsing movement out of the corner of her eyes and checked around for more faces and figures until Ben nudged her with an elbow.

“Stop starin’. It’s rude.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but his distant gaze told her he wouldn’t hear or care about any insult she might sling his way. So she frowned at her feet until she grew uncomfortable enough with the long, silent ride to try for small talk.

“This boss we’re going to meet …”

It surprised her when he answered. “Destin. Destin Felsman. He’s Chairman of the Board and he’s given his life to the cause of Purity.” He said the last part the same way one might say,
“He has a fondness for running over kittens.”

“That’s bad? I thought everyone here fell into that category.”

“Well …” Ben picked at the grime under his nails. “He takes things a little further than most. For instance, Destin don’t shower when he gets up in the mornin’. He has an entire decontamination room with sonic scrubbers and a flash chamber that strips off a layer of skin. Better than coffee, he says.”

She felt a rush of eagerness to meet this mysterious Chairman. Maybe they had more in common than she’d anticipated. “Does he … uh … ever let anyone else use this room?”

“Kiddin’? He wouldn’t dare let any grunts near the place. Wouldn’t want us leavin’ our sorry stink around, wouldja, Destin?”

She glanced around the elevator again. “Um … is he listening?”

Ben squinted into the light. “Yup. We’d be there already if he didn’t have so much fun givin’ visitors full-body scans. Just one more way the upper crust likes to remind us of our place on the food chain. Ain’t that right, boss?”

“Always a pleasure, Benjamin.”
The tinny voice sounded from everywhere at once.

The elevator jolted to a stop. The doors opened on an enormous office, devoid of almost any features beyond white marble walls, floor, and ceiling. An expanse of gold carpet led down to a stainless steel desk topped with a glass slab, with pearly obelisk statues and crystal paperweights spotting the surface.

The window wall behind the desk provided a view of downtown, with an array of pebbled rooftops, gray alleys, asphalt and rusting steel moving up to the horizon where the sun nestled among the mountaintops.

In between the gleaming desk and the gritty city beyond, a white-suited figure sat in a leather chair, head bent over shuffled papers.

“Ever think you guys take the whole white and shiny motif a little too far?” Dani whispered. “I mean, I get the symbolism, but isn’t it a little cliché?”

Ben chuckled. “Sure. But it’s always easier to reinforce the stereotypes. Problem is, when you work your entire life buildin’ an image, you start to believe it whether it’s true or not.”

Their rubber boots squeaked until they reached the carpet. She couldn’t smell a thing—aside from herself, that is. In fact, the absence of all other smells seemed to increase her own odors, making her uncomfortably aware of dried sweat, toilet water, burnt hair, and the lemon scent of the wet wipes. Her nose wrinkled and she itched to get her gel out, though she suspected it’d do no good.

This discomfort grew as they neared the desk, and she suddenly had the urge to fall on her knees and beg to use the fabled decontamination room.

Have some dignity
, she told herself.

Dignity? Let’s start with getting clean and work up from there
, herself replied.

The man she assumed to be Destin looked up as they arrived. He wore a three-piece suit identical to Francis’, minus the fedora. His thin blond hair was combed to one side, not a strand out of place. The paleness of his skin made his blue eyes stand out startlingly bright, the only handsome feature in an otherwise plain face. He also wore white gloves, and a white rose stuck out from his lapel. When he spoke, his voice came out clear but colorless, as if any strong emotions had been scrubbed away along with his outer layer of skin that morning.

“Good afternoon, Benjamin. When I said to contact me if you ran into any trouble, I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Or in person.”

Ben made a sarcastic salute. “Heya, boss. I’d give a ‘hello’ kiss, but I didn’t bleach my lips recently.” He plunked down on a corner of the desk, ignoring Destin’s pointed look at where the grimy jumpsuit smudged the glass. “Wanna tell me what’s up with usin’ Francis as a guard dog?”

Destin set aside his silver pen. His fingers left no prints on its gleaming surface. “I am unaware of Ascendant Francis taking on any such function.”

“That right?” Ben asked. “You didn’t tell him to turn me away if I didn’t come here without an appointment?”

“I gave no such instruction. Ascendant Francis does understand the value of my time, so perhaps he is being over-zealous in encouraging that same respect in others. What I wish to know now is whether I was wise in allowing you to interrupt my work. You spoke of discovering an imbalance?”

Ben pulled out the clear orb he’d retrieved from the dust devil and rolled it over to Destin, who stopped it with tip of his middle finger.

“What is this?” the Chairman asked.

“I really gotta tell you?”

Destin cupped the orb in his palm. “It appears to be a Pure core. Is there any reason I shouldn’t already consider this a waste of my time?”

“It’s a Pure core I tore out of a dust devil.”

The Chairman’s thin, platinum blond eyebrows pinched together. “Impossible.”

“And that was right before we cracked a second, Corrupt core in the same creature.”

Destin leaned forward and eyed Dani. “We? Is this true, Ms. Hashelheim?”

“Uh, as far as I know.” She swallowed against her dry tongue. When had she become so nervous? “This thing attacked me while I was … cleaning toilets. That,” she pointed at the crystal orb, “came out of it.”

Destin set the core down with a click. “Interesting.”

“Interesting?” Ben echoed. “It’s enough to make me wish I didn’t have an ******* to **** outta. If someone is out messin’ with combined energies, then it could be worse than the time Peters lit that gasbloat on fire. And the two cores ain’t the only thing. Dust devils are constructs, right? They need someone to kick ’em into gear.”

Destin ticked his pen back and forth. “I am aware of that fact.”

“Well, whoever was behind this one hijacked it. Turned it into a communication spell, another thing we didn’t know was possible. He spoke to me. Or tried to. I think he’s in trouble. Maybe bein’ tortured, driven insane by his own divided powers, however he got ’em. And that’s not figurin’ in the blot-hound I had to put down twice last night.” At Destin’s questioning look, Ben clarified, “The one that jumped back up after I’d already torn out its core. Stronger than before. Like somethin’ or someone was fuelin’ it.”

The Chairman poised his chin over interlaced fingers. “Why wasn’t I made aware of that?”

“It was in my report on Dani here.”

Destin shook his head. “I reviewed the facts of her recruitment but saw nothing about any blot-hound anomaly.”

“Then maybe you and Francis oughta have a little chit-chat. Meantimes, we gotta figure out what’s causin’ all this twisted business.”

“If there is such a threat, then it must be dealt with,” the Chairman said. “Yet I admit to hesitation. If both cores were available for comparison, it could be proved that they came from the same construct. Without them, the story is suspect—not that I consider it such. But even Dani’s witness can be disregarded as the mistake of a new employee who doesn’t yet know what she saw.”

“Don’t pull this blather, Destin. We need to get everyone on high alert. It’s gonna cause a sh … er … spitstorm if someone’s figured out a way to combine the energies of both Pantheons.”

“I will, of course, notify the necessary parties, but I won’t spread unsubstantiated rumors that might cause more chaos and distraction than the actual problem.”

Ben stood and made fists. “What happened to the Destin who preferred action over borough cracks?”

“Bureauc—” Dani started to correct. At his look, though, she fell silent.

Ben fixed on the Chairman again. “Huh? What happened to the guy who shattered an entire sheet of blackshards before we could even see our reflections in their panes?”

“He became Chairman of the Cleaners, Benjamin. I’ve not forgotten our time in the field, but I have a different perspective now. Different priorities.”

“Oh, sure. I guess you do get all sortsa new perspectives when your head gets stuck up your—”

“Janitor!” Destin shot to his feet. “You overstep yourself. My position and influence has kept you with this company thus far, and I find your ungracious attitude tiresome. I am responsible not just for my own life and yours, but for all the Cleaners in this country, not to mention coordinating with our global efforts.” He riffled the papers on his desk. “Did you think I sort through these just to keep my desk tidy? That I limit our conversation because I might be late for a round of golf? Benjamin, you know me better than that. While I would love nothing more than to hold your hand, I am pressed on a hundred sides. Any decision I make could affect thousands, if not millions of lives. Be glad you do not have that weight on your soul.”