Mistakes (3)

Lucas looked up from his files towards the office across the hallway. He watched her type away at her computer in high speed. Someone bumped him on the shoulder and he looked up.

"Mate, did you complete the data entry given to you today morning?" 

Lucas smiled and bent down to pull the USB out of the computer and gave it to the man, "Done."

The other one's eyes widened in surprise, "You did it all? There were like 500 pages of code to recheck and retype. And you did it in less than a day? And…and weren't you the one who fixed up all the jammed printers today?"

"Oh I completed the entry before the blackout."

"What?!" he screamed, almost dropping the USB in his hand. Lucas glanced at the ID hanging around his neck. Castell Rogers. 

"I've been typing since I was 2, so I've gotten pretty fast at it," Lucas smirked, "Now. Anymore work to do? Or can I take a coffee break?" he asked, glancing towards the HR office. 

Castell cleared his throat and nodded, "Yeah, yeah sure…uh, if it's that way then go to the Locked Room after your break. There's a file inside the main computer. Copy it into this USB and complete data entry for that too."

Castell gave the USB back to him and walked away. Lucas sighed and pocketed it before making his way over. Before he could open the door to the office Rose was in, a tall bald man, the head HR, called her to his office. She stood up and went in, not noticing Lucas at all.

He sighed again and turned around to go to the Locked Room, skipping on the coffee. Once he was in and made sure that the Room was empty, he dug into his pocket to take the card out. 

"Huh?" he breathed in surprise as he checked both his pockets again, "It's gone?" He looked down at the floor around him to see if it had fallen somehow, but there was no sign of a golden card anywhere. 

"How could I lose something like that?" he asked himself in frustration. Gritting his teeth he sat at the main monitor and opened the file Castell had told him to retype. Opening it, Lucas gritted his teeth against each other even harder, his jaw setting in anger, "You punk."

He had just seen the page count at the bottom of the black background screen. 

40,000 pages! 

He groaned and fell back into his chair and turned around when he heard a knock from the blurred glass door. The person standing outside was almost unrecognisable, but Lucas had only just seen him so he knew.

It was Castell. He raised his thumbs in the air and mouthed, "All the best!" before trotting away in happiness that his work was done. 

...…

It was around evening when Tasha woke up again and this time, she was feeling more relaxed than that morning. She slipped her legs into slippers and went to make some tea for herself. Her hair was messed up as she stared off the walls and used only her muscle memory to prepare her drink, because her head was still thinking about other darker thoughts. 

"Will I have to stay inside this house forever?" she wondered. If she stepped out, there was a higher chance of that secret group who called themselves Spiders to attack her. She wasn't afraid of dying. She was afraid of who would be there for her sister if Tasha were to disappear. 

Who would pay her college tuition? And when she would get kicked out, what would happen to her? Tasha had to live for her, how much ever ungrateful she was. 

She was stirring a little sugar into her Tinkerbell mug when the doorbell rang. 

"One too many things are ringing in this flat these days," she told herself as she abandoned her tea mid stir and made her way towards the door.

Before she could turn the knob, she stopped, "What if it is a Spider?"

She stood on her heels and looked through the eyehole. No one. Neither did she hear any footsteps even after waiting five minutes deciding whether to open the door or not.

Taking a deep breath, she finally turned the knob and swung the door open.

There was no one at all. 

And that scared her even more. Then who rang the doorbell? She was about to close the door when she saw something white popping out from under the welcome mat. 

She bent down and picked it up. It was an envelope with a black seal on it. She gasped as she saw the logo on the seal.

"Sp…spider…" she mumbled before looking left and right of the empty hallway and shut the door close. She tore the envelope open and took the piece of paper inside it and unfolded it as quickly as she could. 

There wasn't much written in it. Just two short sentences. 

{Don't come looking for us or speak about us and we'll spare you. Remember, we are always watching. 

-A friendly Spider} 

Tasha crumbled up the paper in her hands and threw it away to the side. She screamed in frustration, "I'm trapped!" She went to the kitchen and grabbed her mug and gulped down her tea. "There must be something I can do," she told herself, raging with anger. 

Who were these Spiders who were too scared to appear in front of her? Only cowards left letters. But she knew that they weren't cowards. They had killed a man on a busy street and made it look like an accident. 

She set the mug on the table in force. Some of the tea spilled out on the counter, "You can't control me like you controlled Haffar," she said to particularly no one and sighed, "I'm sorry sister. I've got to do this."

She dressed up quickly and pulled her jacket on before wiring the last of her savings to her sister's bank account and only leaving a few hundred bucks for herself. After that was done, she grabbed a USB from her cardboard box from the office and stepped out of the house. Something she imagined she would never do after last night. 

"I will find out who that traitor is, no turning back now," she told herself, "You're not alone, Darren. I'm here. I always will be." 

She reached the mezzanine floor where the building's security room was and opened the door to the room.

A man in light green uniform lay on the chair, his security cap over his face. A chips packet fell from the control panel in front of him. Tasha shook her head at the security's laziness. 'Couldn't they sleep at night instead of dozing during work?' she thought. 

Tasha got inside and closed the door as quietly as she could and tip toed to the control panel. "Let's find out who you are, friendly Spider."

Her fingers flew around the panel and pulled up different floors until she reached the CCTV footage of the hallways of her floor. She kept on shifting cameras until she reached the one in front of her room and she rewound it to the exact time when the doorbell must have rang. 

She stood and watched the screen, expecting a black cloaked man to appear on the screen, just like the man Haffar had described the previous night. But there was nobody. After close observation, she sighed in frustration.

"Dammit, they tampered with the footage!" she finally realised and pulled up the original footage screen and made her way out. But then she stopped. If the Spider came in here to tamper with the tapes to cover his paths, what had this security been doing at that time? 

She walked back and hesitantly, lifted his cap. She immediately put the cap back on his face, reeling in shock. She covered his mouth and her body went cold. 

The image she saw was stuck in her head as she walked out of the security room and informed the manager at the front of the building. She felt like everything around her was going in slow motion.

People screaming when they got inside the security room. The loud sirens of the ambulance reverberating in her ears as she walked out of the building, into a world full of danger.

The security's face had been blank white, the only colour on his face being the deep circle on his forehead, burning wine red with a bullet lodged inside it. 

Nobody was safe. 

Still, she tried to walk out into the streets confidently to her next destination: The street CCTV office. She can't stop now. 

...

Elma, Darren's assistant advisor stepped into the office to see him sleeping. She walked into the office and banged the table to wake him up. 

"Huh?" he mumbled groggily, rubbing his face. Seeing Elma, he smiled, "Afternoon. How are the profits coming along?" He was in a happy mood, now that he had brought Breakfire back into the gaming markets. 

"Profits my damn foot!" Elma snapped and reached over to the side table for the remote and switched on the TV. She was a woman of 40 and had been here since the company had started. So it was reasonable that she spoke to Darren like he was her rogue son. 

"Elma, calm down," Darren smiled but he stopped smiling when he saw the latest news flash on the screen. 

A 17 year old boy shot? After being the first one to buy Breakfire Online 2? He saw the suddenly empty stores now playing across the screen. The crowds he had seen before had now diminished to nothing. 

Yellow tapes surrounded their California Branch and a blurred dead boy was shown on the screen. The only thing Darren could see clearly was the yellow string of the boy's hoodie now tinted in red.

"Who is doing all this? This is the second sabotage this month!"

Elma shook her head, "You're the CEO, so you tell me. And we didn't find the traitor yet, so that's a reason. The only thing I know is that they found plenty spiders around the dead body at the time of crime."

Darren looked up at Elma, "Just like with Haffar?" 

She nodded and switched off the TV when she saw the boy at the verge of breaking down. 

"Who is doing this to us…we failed…again. The movies was to waste. Now this is also going to waste. Nobody is going to play the game anymore, fearing they'd die."

"Yes Darren, even if the kids wanted to, their parents won't let them. I sure won't let my 14 year old Jax if I was in their place."

Darren wanted to bang his head on his work table, but now he just stared at the blank TV screen. "I've tried my best. Now all hopes are on you, Ashe," he whispered to himself in defeat. 

And here I was standing at the Lordes Mansion door, wondering what to say to this enticing boy in front of me.