3 Chapter 3: This was not in the Contract
Amy, Kiya's assistant had been standing beside Kiya waiting for the meeting to start as she hoped that Kiya would give plenty of breaks.
She had personally prepared all the documents that were to be reviewed in the meeting so she had a rough estimate of how many hours the meeting was going to take.
She heard Kiya's voice as she began reviewing the first document when Amy's side vision noticed that the sky was starting to darken.
At first, she thought it might be rain but she no longer believed that now that everyone was thrown into complete darkness.
"Why aren't the backup generators kicking in," she wondered as she watched people start to switch on their phone flashlights to be able to see other people around them.
Amy quickly switched on hers too.
Complete darkness filled the outside world of the Houston building and tiny streams of light could be seen inside.
"Amy," she heard Kiya say beside her, as she turned to find out what her boss needed.
"Let's go downstairs to find out what's going on and why the generators aren't working," she said already standing up from her seat.
"Okay," said Amy following after Kiya as she watched her boss also switch on her flashlight.
"Everyone should remain seated, I'll go downstairs to find out why the electricity is out," she said to all the major stakeholders of the company still seated on their seats. It even looked like they had not moved an inch since the blackout happened.
She immediately saw most of their silhouettes nodding in affirmation.
"Just because they were mostly old men was not an excuse for them not to want to help her," she silently grumbled.
She and Amy were out of the board room in seconds and they immediately headed for the stairs since the elevators weren't working.
The horror of having to climb down the flight of stairs with her heels on suddenly dawned on her.
As they got closer to the stairs, she almost decided to take them off but decided not to.
There was no way to explain the absence of shoes on her feet if power was suddenly restored. Every employee would immediately assume that she had lost her wits.
They were descending the first set of stairs and heading to the ninth floor when they suddenly heard a loud noise coming from the air outside like the swooping down of a large projectile.
Instinctively, they both ran down the stairs at a greater pace. They had just arrived on the eighth floor when they felt something huge crash into the topmost floor above them.
It was loud and Kiya felt the whole building shake as she watched the windows on the other side of where they stood start to crumble. Large splinters of glass flew everywhere but they were too far away from it to be affected.
Kiya knew that the left part of the building had been largely affected especially In the floors above them.
As she looked at the destruction of the walls opposite where she stood and imagined how much worse it would be on the topmost floors, Kiya couldn't help but wonder if the stakeholders of the company were still alive.
She and Amy had waited for the building to stop shaking before they continued to head for the second floor where the maintenance department was.
As they passed the seventh and sixth floors on their way down, they discovered that most of the floors were empty and it seemed like the employees had left their cubicles in a hurry.
Regardless, they continued to run down the stairs, and in no time they got to the second floor. But what they saw made them stop as they gasped in alarm.
The moment the loud crash had happened upstairs, Amy immediately knew that most of the people upstairs including most of the assistants she was familiar with wouldn't survive it. She felt a little guilty that only she and Kiya had.
Even though they were headed for the second floor to try and switch the backup generator on and find out why it didn't come on, she silently just wanted to leave the building.
Amy was worried and afraid that the building might decide to collapse on them since all kinds of bad luck had been following her since she woke up this morning. Her toothbrush had broken the moment she tried to brush her teeth with it.
She had spilled coffee on the first blouse she had chosen to wear and to top it all off, her car had refused to start.
A more superstitious version of her would have taken all these events seriously and chosen to stay at home instead of coming to work.
All these thoughts kept going through her mind as she descended the stairs after Kiya. In no time they had arrived on the second floor.
It was eerie and quiet and the first thing Amy thought to do was shine the torchlight of her phone around to check her surroundings. The moment she did that, she felt the urge to scream and almost thought she did until she discovered that the sound came from Kiya and not her.
Kiya screamed but immediately felt a hand cover her mouth to stop her. Panicking, she removed the hand before she remembered and saw Amy beside her.
Both of them had seen bodies of company workers littered on the floor in various stages of dismemberment.
Blood was strewn on papers as most of them looked fresh as if they had only just died a few minutes ago.
"We have to leave here, We have no idea who did this, how many they are, or if they are still close by," Amy whispered to Kiya as she felt her hands shake. The sight she saw still remained fresh in her mind.
Kiya nodded finding it hard to say anything.
"What the hell happened to them and who could do such a thing to them," she kept on asking herself.
A fellow competitor would never go to such an extent just to attack her company under the cover of darkness.
She felt herself start to gradually lose the sense of calm she had tried so much to hold on to.
"All I know is how to calculate figures, deal with clients and run a company. Death was never part of the fucking contract I signed to become a CEO," screamed Kiya silently in her mind as she followed after Amy since she seemed to know what she was doing.
