Mariah Benson.
The siren’s wail seems to seep through the soundproof glass, a physical thing that vibrates in my teeth. My phone is cold in my hand. Blake’s is the same. We are frozen, two statues on opposite sides of my desk, connected only by the red banner glowing on our screens.
MANDATORY CIVIC SHELTER ORDER. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
“Well,” Blake says, his voice unnaturally calm. He pockets his phone and stands, smoothing the front of his suit jacket. An absurd gesture of normalcy. “This certainly complicates the acquisition.”
“The acquisition?” I look up from the screen, my mind struggling to catch up. “Blake, the entire city is screaming.”
“An overreaction, I’m sure. Some kind of environmental scare. It’ll blow over in an hour.” He walks to the private elevator that opens directly into my office. He presses the call button. Nothing happens. He presses it again, harder this time, the soft chime mocking his effort.
“It’s not working,” I state, the obvious hanging stupidly in the air.
“I can see that, Mariah.” He turns from the elevator, that mask of relaxed confidence finally showing a crack. He runs a hand through his hair, the first time I’ve ever seen him look anything less than perfect. “What’s the protocol here?”
“The protocol?” I let out a short, sharp laugh that sounds more like a bark. “The protocol is for a city wide emergency I’ve never seen before? I don’t know, Harland. I’ll check the Benson Innovations apocalypse handbook.”
I swivel in my chair and tap a few commands into my desktop. The building’s internal security feed pops up. Red lines slash across every exit. ELEVATOR SYSTEMS: OFFLINE. STAIRWELL ACCESS: DENIED. MAGNETIC LOCKS: ENGAGED. AUTHORIZATION: MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY COMMAND.
“We’re locked in,” I say, my own voice sounding distant. “By the city. No one in or out.”
He walks back over, leaning down to see my screen, his proximity an unwelcome heat. The scent of his cologne, something clean and sharp like sandalwood and bergamot, fills the space between us. “Indefinite, it says. What does that mean? An hour? A day?”
“It means they don’t know.” I stand up, needing to move, to do something. I walk to the window and look down. The river of headlights he commented on earlier is gone. Cars are abandoned, pulled over haphazardly on the streets fifty stories below. The city, my city, is silent for the first time in my life. The sirens have stopped, and the quiet they’ve left behind is worse. It’s a heavy, suffocating blanket.
“So we just wait,” he says from behind me.
“It appears so.”
“Fine.” He walks back to his chair, all business again. He picks up his phone. “While we wait, let’s finish this. My offer for OmniCorp still stands. Twenty percent over market. All cash.”
I turn from the window, incredulous. “Are you serious right now? We’re trapped in a municipal lockdown and you want to talk about stock prices?”
“It’s the perfect time to talk about them,” he counters, his voice regaining its familiar, infuriating smoothness. “Your stock is volatile. My cash is not. The situation outside only proves my point. Stability is everything.”
“My company is not volatile, it’s ambitious.”
“It’s a gamble. A house of cards built on one ridiculous, over budget pet project that just got publicly eviscerated.”
“Get out of my office,” I say, the words low and dangerous.
He raises an eyebrow, a slow, deliberate motion. “I’d love to. But according to your state of the art security system, that’s not an option.”
He’s right. The realization hits me with the force of a physical blow. This is not my office anymore. It’s a cage. And he’s in here with me.
I press the intercom on my desk. “Sarah, can you hear me?”
Static answers. The internal lines are dead.
My cell phone. I pull it from my pocket. No service. A single, ominous ‘SOS Only’ message is displayed at the top.
“No service,” Blake says, looking at his own phone. “They must have shut down the civilian networks to preserve bandwidth for emergency services.”
Of course they did. Logical. Efficient. And terrifying. We are completely cut off.
“There’s a landline,” I say, gesturing to the sleek phone on my desk.
He picks up the receiver and listens for a moment before placing it back down. “Nothing. Not even a dial tone.”
The silence in the room stretches, thick with unspoken horror. The professional rivalry, the billion dollar deals, they all feel like a game from another lifetime. The only thing that’s real is the glass, the steel, and the two of us.
“So,” he says, his voice taking on a different tone, one I haven’t heard in ten years. Softer. More uncertain. “This office isn’t your home, is it?”
I shake my head, my throat suddenly tight. “The penthouse is through there.” I nod towards a discreet door in the wall, one that blends in with the dark wood paneling.
He follows me as I push it open. We step out of the cold, corporate atmosphere of my office and into the living space of my home.
If you can call it a home. It’s more like a gallery. Minimalist to the point of being sterile. White walls, a sprawling grey sectional sofa, a single abstract painting that is mostly black. A wall of glass looks out over the northern stretch of the city.
Blake stands in the middle of the room, turning in a slow circle. “I see you’ve decorated in a style I like to call ‘soulless corporate automaton’.”
“It’s efficient,” I retort, my voice tight. “I don’t have time for clutter.”
“Or guests, apparently. Is there another one of these rooms somewhere? A guest wing, perhaps?”
“I don’t have guests, Harland.”
“I’m starting to understand why.”
His words sting more than they should. I ignore them and continue the tour, not for his benefit, but for my own, a desperate inventory of my prison.
“The kitchen is over there.” I gesture to an expanse of stainless steel and white marble. “I assume you know how one of those works.”
“I’m full of surprises.” He opens the refrigerator. It’s mostly empty. A bottle of champagne, a few containers of takeout, a carton of eggs. He closes it without comment. The silence is somehow more damning than any sarcastic remark.
“What about… facilities?” he asks, looking around.
“The bathroom is down the hall,” I say, pointing. “There’s one.”
He looks down the hall, then back at me. “One bathroom?”
“I only need one.” The words sound defensive, even to my own ears.
“With one shower, I presume.” His gaze is steady, analytical. He’s not mocking me now. He’s calculating. Assessing the situation just like he would a hostile takeover.
“Yes, Blake. One shower.” My patience is a fraying thread.
We stand there, in the vast, empty living room. Two apex predators suddenly forced to share a territory that is shrinking by the second. The air is thick with a decade of animosity and the new, terrifying reality of our confinement.
“And the bedroom?” he asks, his voice very quiet.
I don’t answer. I just turn and walk down the short hallway. He follows. I can hear his footsteps on the polished concrete floors behind me, a steady, unavoidable presence.
I push open the last door. The bedroom is as sparse as the rest of the penthouse. The same grey and white color scheme. The same floor to ceiling windows showing a dead city. And in the center of the room, a single, king sized bed.
One bed.
We both stare at it. It’s no longer a piece of furniture. It’s an island. A battlefield. A symbol of just how impossible this situation is.
Blake lets out a long, slow breath. It’s the first genuine sound of surrender I’ve ever heard him make.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he murmurs, not to me, but to the universe.
I turn my back on the room, on the bed, on him, and walk to the massive window in the living area. I press my palm against the cool glass. Fifty stories below, a single police car crawls through the empty streets, its blue and red lights flashing, painting the concrete canyons in silent, strobing colors.
We are alone up here. Together.
The city has never felt so big, and my world has never felt so small.
