Chapter 14: The beginning.
The walk back to the Hoover Building was a slow absorption into the machine. The sun was high, but the canyon of buildings stole its warmth. Jones elbowed him gently as they pushed through the heavy rotating doors. “So, what thrilling tales from the front lines of justice are you processing today?”
Jesse adjusted the strap of his backpack. “Same shit. Just Karen’s complaining. Form 394s. ‘The agent looked at me funny.’ ‘The search was too loud.’ Bureaucratic white noise.”
“Just Karen’s complaining,” Jones echoed, nodding sagely. “The backbone of the Republic.”
“I know,” Jesse said, his voice flat. They bumped fists in the lobby, a silent gesture of solidarity in the absurd, and Jesse veered off towards his cubicle.
He logged back in. The screen blinked to life, a portal to a thousand petty grievances. He opened the next file in the queue. It was, as predicted, a complaint from a lawyer in Chicago alleging an agent had been dismissive during a witness interview. Karen’s complaining. He began to type, translating indignation into sterile, acceptable prose. The clock in the corner of his screen ticked from 1:30 to 1:45 to 2:00 with a ruthless, digital consistency.
At two o’clock, his bladder announced itself. He stood, his knees popping softly, and made his way to the men’s room. It was empty. He stood at a urinal, staring at the white porcelain, the sound of his own piss hitting the water the only noise. He zipped up, washed his hands without looking in the mirror, and dried them on his trousers.
When he returned to his cubicle, Nolan was there, a looming, anxious presence amidst the fabric walls. The older man was actually wringing his hands.
“There you are,” Nolan said, his voice a stage whisper. “You’re supposed to report to the conference room. The, uh, higher-up is here.”
Jesse looked at him, then at his blank computer screen. “Okay.”
He stepped around Nolan and headed down the main aisle towards the corridor that housed the executive suites. Jones craned his neck out of his cube. “Where you headed, man?”
“To talk to the big dog,” Jesse said, not breaking stride.
Jones gave a theatrical thumbs-up. “Don’t fuck it up.” He laughed, a short, sharp burst.
Jesse flipped him off over his shoulder and turned into the hallway. The carpet was thicker here, the walls adorned with bland photographs of past directors. The door to Conference Room 4 was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.
The room was dominated by a long, polished table the color of dried blood. Rolling leather chairs, black and padded, were aligned with military precision along its sides. The air was colder, smelling of lemon disinfectant and filtered air.
A woman sat at the head of the table.
She had a mass of blonde curly hair, tamed into a semblance of order but threatening to break free. She was white, with sharp, intelligent features, and looked maybe thirty, or a little older. She wore a navy-blue pantsuit that wasn’t expensive but was impeccably fitted. Her eyes were fixed on the screen of a sleek, silver laptop, her fingers tapping silently on the keys.
She didn’t look up as he entered. “Sit.”
Jesse moved into the room, letting the door sigh shut behind him. He chose the chair closest to her, at the corner of the table, and sat. The leather sighed under his weight. He waited.
She finished typing a line, her gaze finally lifting from the screen to settle on him. Her eyes were a pale, crystalline gray. They held no warmth, only a focused, analytical intensity. She looked back at her laptop, as if confirming something. “You are?”
“Jesse.”
She nodded once, a curt dip of her chin. She extended her hand across the corner of the table. Her grip was firm, dry, and brief. “My name is Madison. I’m with Strategic Preparedness and Evaluation.”
Jesse said nothing. He’d never heard of it. It sounded like a department created to sound important.
Madison leaned back, lacing her fingers together on the tabletop. She studied him. The scrutiny was physical, a slow scan from his short-cropped hair to the knot of his tie to his hands resting on the arms of the chair. “Nolan speaks highly of your efficiency. Your error rate is point-zero-two percent. You process thirty percent more work than the floor average. You don’t socialize. You don’t participate in office pools. You show up, you work, you leave.”
“It’s a job,” Jesse said.
“It is,” she agreed. “But most people treat it like a social club with paperwork. You don’t.” She tilted her head. “You saw the news this morning. The report from Delhi.”
The shift was so abrupt it was almost violent. Jesse felt the room contract. The hum of the overhead lights seemed to grow louder. “The virus.”
“Yes. The unnamed virus.” Madison’s gray eyes didn’t waver. “What was your takeaway?”
Jesse considered lying. He considered giving the bland, acceptable answer. He heard Jones’s voice in his head: Truth ain’t always welcome. He looked at Madison, at the cool calculation in her face that mirrored something in his own, and decided to test the water. “They said no human-to-human transmission. That’s the first thing they always say. Even when it’s a lie. It prevents panic. The fact they said it at all means they’re not sure. The fact they’re reporting it means it’s already breached containment. They have no name for it, which means they have no idea what it is. Which means they have no way to stop it.”
A silence stretched between them. Madison’s expression didn’t change, but something in her posture tightened, a coil being wound. “A cynical assessment.”
“A factual one,” Jesse replied. “It’s pattern recognition. You work here long enough, you see how information is shaped before it gets to the public. The shape of this one is wrong.”
“Do you often think about things like this? Pandemics. Systemic collapse.”
“I think about systems,” Jesse said. “How they work. How they fail. This job is just watching one specific system digest chaos and shit out order. It’s a good classroom.”
A ghost of a smile touched Madison’s lips. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Nolan said you were smart. He undersold you.” She unlocked her phone, tapped the screen a few times, and slid it across the table to him. “Look at this.”
On the screen was a scanned document, a field report from a CDC liaison attached to the State Department. The location was Delhi. The language was dry, clinical. Cluster of twenty-seven cases, all presenting with rapid-onset hemorrhagic pneumonia. Mortality rate: one hundred percent so far. Incubation period unknown. Transmission vectors unknown. All attempts at isolation of pathogen have failed. Local authorities are withholding patient zero. Recommend immediate Class 4 quarantine protocol.
The date on the report was four days old.
Jesse looked up from the phone. “This hasn’t been filed.”
“No,” Madison said, retrieving the device. “It won’t be. Not through normal channels. My group intercepts certain reports. We evaluate them for… strategic implications.”
“And this has implications.”
“If it jumps continents, it has everything,” she said, her voice low now, confidential. The sterile room felt suddenly claustrophobic. “We are a connected world, Jesse. A fire in Delhi can be a wildfire in D.C. in seventy-two hours. Most people see a news clip and forget it. You saw a shape. I need people who see shapes.”
“For what?”
“For understanding what’s coming. For making decisions when the systems,” she paused, echoing his word, “shit out.”
He held her gaze. “What do you want from me?”
“Right now? Your perspective. Your profile is interesting. High analytical capacity, low empathy, a preternatural talent for logistical order. You see resources, not people. In a crisis, that’s a virtue.” She stood up smoothly. The meeting seemed to be over. “We’ll talk again.”
Jesse stood as well. “That’s it?”
“For today.” She closed her laptop, tucking it under her arm. She walked around the table, stopping closer to him than was professionally necessary. He could smell her perfume now, something clean and sharp like gin and ice. “Your routine is commendable. The gym. The pragmatic… entanglements.” She let the word hang, and he knew she meant Michelle. How much had they pulled on him? “But it lacks vision. You’re organizing the deck chairs. I’m looking at the iceberg.”
She was inches away. The authority in her voice was now undercut by something else, a charged, predatory curiosity. He could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the determined set of her jaw. This wasn’t just an evaluation. It was a hunt.
“And you want me to look at it with you,” he said.
“I want to see what you’d do with it,” she corrected. Her hand came up, not to touch him, but to adjust the knot of his tie, a strangely intimate gesture in the cold room. Her fingers brushed against his throat. “Most men, when faced with existential threat, either panic or become heroic. I don’t think you’re capable of either. I think you’d just start calculating. That’s what I need.”
Her gray eyes held his, and the unspoken thing in the room thickened. It wasn’t attraction, not in any normal sense. It was a recognition of a similar coldness, a mutual appraisal of utility. The professional mask slipped for a second, and what was beneath was just as streamlined, just as ruthless.
“Goodbye, Jesse,” she said, her hand dropping. She walked past him, opening the door and disappearing into the hallway without a backward glance.
He stood alone in the conference room. The air still vibrated with the echo of her words. Strategic Preparedness and Evaluation. The report from Delhi. A one hundred percent mortality rate. She’d showed him a crack in the world, then walked away.
He finally moved, leaving the room and heading back to the cubicle farm. The mindless typing that awaited him felt different now. It wasn’t just paperwork. It was the oblivious hum of a machine seconds before the seizure. He sat down. Jones popped his head over the partition.
“So? How’d it go? She eat you alive?”
Jesse looked at his friend’s grinning, oblivious face. He thought of the grainy hospital footage, the scanned report, Madison’s ice-gray eyes. “No,” Jesse said, turning back to his screen. “She just showed me the menu.”
Jones laughed, not catching the weight. “Shit, man, as long as she’s not serving layoffs.” He disappeared back behind the gray fabric wall.
Jesse stared at the complaint on his screen. The words blurred into meaningless shapes. A hundred percent mortality rate. Transmission vectors unknown. He finished the report, his fingers moving on autopilot. He processed three more. The clock hit 5:00 PM. The digital chime of the logging-off protocol sounded through the floor.
He shut down his computer, the screen dying to a black mirror reflecting the sterile office light. He shrugged on his jacket. Jones was already waiting by the aisle, car keys jingling in his hand. “You wanna go to the bar? Unwind?”
Jesse thought of his empty apartment, the silent TV, the memory of Madison’s perfume. “Sure,” he said. “But not that fancy one with the fifteen-dollar cocktails.”
“Hell no,” Jones said with a laugh, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m a simple man. Beer and a shot territory.”
They walked. The evening air was cool, smelling of bus exhaust and fried food from a corner cart. It was only a few blocks down to a place lazily named Senator’s Nice Bar. Jesse loved the bar itself—the unpretentious vibe, the reliable pour—but he’d always thought the naming was lazy. It was an average bar, not high-end and not a dive. It was pretty packed with other government adjacents, suits loosened, laughter loud and relieved.
The interior was government-themed in a sarcastic, bootleg way. Big, poorly printed posters of presidents dressed as gangsters lined the walls. George Washington held two Glocks, wearing sunglasses. Benjamin Franklin, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, cradled an AR-15. Under it was a quote in bold, block letters: "TAXATION IS THEFT BITCH." Jesse took it in, the forced irreverence. It felt like a child’s idea of rebellion.
They squeezed through the crowd, finding two recently vacated stools at the long, sticky walnut bar. The bartender, a woman with tired eyes and a sleeve of tattoos, nodded at them. Jones flagged her down. “Two Guinness, and two Jameson, neat. Keep ’em coming.”
She moved away. Jones spun on his stool to face him. “So what’s up with you? You’ve been quiet since that meeting.”
“Tired,” Jesse lied, the word coming out easily. He watched the bartender pour the dark beer, the cascade settling slowly.
“Bullshit. You’re always tired. That ain’t it.” Jones accepted his drinks, slid the whiskey to Jesse. “That woman get in your head? She was probably just some efficiency consultant. They love making us feel small.”
“Probably,” Jesse said. He knocked back the whiskey. It burned a clean, familiar path down his throat. “Nothing special. Just talked about workflow. Metrics.” He lied again, the truth about Delhi and mortality rates feeling like a physical object lodged behind his tongue.
“Workflow,” Jones snorted, sipping his beer. “Yeah, that’ll get the heart racing.” He seemed to accept it, shifting gears. “You doing anything this weekend? I might go down to Richmond. See that girl.”
“Michelle texted,” Jesse said, not as a boast, just a statement of fact. “Might see her tonight.”
“You’re a machine, man,” Jones laughed, shaking his head. “A cold, efficient fucking machine.”
They talked about nothing for an hour. Sports. A new video game. The rising price of gas. It was all noise, a pleasant buffer against the silent, screaming report in his mind. He paid his tab, slapped Jones on the back. I'm out. Jones laughs and says don't do anything I wouldn't do.
Jesse gave a half-wave over his shoulder, the bar’s humid noise swallowing him as he pushed out into the evening. The city air felt thin, sharp with impending rain. He walked the few blocks back to the Hoover Building’s parking garage, his footsteps echoing in the concrete cavern.
The BMW’s engine turned over with a subdued growl. He drove through the maze of one-way streets, the capital’s monuments briefly glowing in his periphery before vanishing. His apartment complex loomed, a bland slab of glass and steel.He pulled into his numbered space and cut the engine.The silence was immediate and total. Inside the car, he could hear his own breathing. The meeting with Madison unfolded behind his eyes again—the gray eyes, the scanned report, the phrase ‘one hundred percent mortality rate.’ A low, vibrating anxiety had taken root deep in his sternum. It was a foreign sensation, a system error his usual pragmatism couldn’t resolve.He needed a hard reset. A distraction wired directly into his nervous system.He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket. The screen was a cold rectangle of light in the dark car.He found Michelle’s name and tapped the call icon. It rang twice.“Hey, you,” she answered, her voice a practiced mix of sleep and suggestion. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
The script was so familiar it was almost meaningless. “Can I come over?” he asked, his own voice flat.
“Of course, baby,” she purred, no hesitation.“Door’s unlocked.”
He hung up without another word. He stared at the dark windshield, at the reflection of his own impassive face. He really didn’t want to go. The thought of her performative noises, her needy hands, felt like a burden. But the anxiety was a live wire under his skin, humming with images of hemorrhagic lungs and Madison’s assessing stare.He needed the chemical blunt force trauma of an orgasm. He needed to obliterate the noise.He got out of the car, the heavy door thudding shut. The elevator ride to his floor was silent. He went to his own apartment first, a space so sterile it felt unlived-in. He dropped his backpack by the door, shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over a chair.He didn’t bother changing.
Two floors down, her door was indeed unlocked.He pushed it open and stepped inside, closing it softly behind him. The apartment was dim, lit only by the ambient glow of the city through the windows. She was standing in the center of the living room, just as she’d promised.Naked.
Her blonde hair was down, framing her shoulders.The curves of her body were pale in the low light. She smiled, a slow, knowing thing.“I was hoping you’d call.”
He didn’t speak. He crossed the room in a few strides, his dress shoes silent on the plush rug. He didn’t kiss her.His hands went to her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh there. He turned her roughly, spinning her to face away from him. She gasped, a short, sharp sound of surprise that melted into a moan as he bent her forward, pressing her torso down over the back of the sofa.
“Yeah,” she whispered into the cushion, arching her back to present herself.“Like that. Use me.”
He unfastened his trousers, the zipper loud in the quiet room.He pushed his boxers down. He was already hard, a purely physiological response to the available orifice.He didn’t touch her to test her wetness. He just positioned the head of his cock at her entrance and shoved forward.
She was tight, and slick, and she cried out as he filled her in one brutal stroke.“Fuck! God, yes…”
He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each thrust a deliberate act of violence against his own unease. His hands gripped her hips hard, holding her in place as he pistoned into her. The sofa squeaked against the floor with their combined weight. The sound of skin slapping against skin was wet, animalistic.“Harder,” she begged, her voice muffled.“Don’t hold back. Give me that fucking dick.”
He complied, driving into her with a force that pushed her further into the cushions.He stared at the base of her spine, at the sweat beginning to gleam there. He thought of Delhi.Of isolation protocols.Of clusters. His thrusts became faster, more frantic, as if he could physically fuck the images out of his mind.
“Touch my clit,” she demanded, reaching a hand back. “Make me come with you.”
He ignored her, slapping her hand away.This wasn’t for her.This was a release valve. He focused on the friction, the heat, the blunt physicality of it. Her pleas became more fragmented, turning into gasped obscenities that meant nothing to him.
His climax built, a pressure detaching from thought, from virus reports, from gray-eyed women.It was a pure, raging biological imperative. With a final, guttural groan, he buried himself to the hilt and pulsed into her. His body shuddered, muscles locked, as he emptied himself.
He stayed there for a moment, draped over her, breathing hard. The anxiety was still there, but it was muffled now, blunted by endorphins and exhaustion.He pulled out slowly. She collapsed onto the sofa, a boneless, sighing heap.“Wow,” she breathed, a sated smile on her face. “You were a animal tonight.I loved it.”
He said nothing. He straightened his clothes, tucking himself away, zipping up.He ran a hand through his hair.
“Stay for a bit?” she asked, rolling onto her side to look at him.Her eyes were soft, hopeful.
“Can’t,” he said.His voice was hoarse. “Early day.”
The hope faded from her face, replaced by a faint, familiar disappointment.She didn’t argue. “Okay.Maybe this weekend?”
“Maybe.” He was already walking toward the door. He opened it, the hallway light cutting a bright line across the dark room.He didn’t look back. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The door clicked shut behind him, severing the connection. He stood in the silent, carpeted hallway.The only sound was the hum of the elevator shaft. In his apartment, he stripped and stood under a scalding shower, scrubbing the smell of her perfume and sex from his skin.He toweled off and went to bed in the dark.
The silence returned, but the sharp edge of the anxiety had been temporarily filed down. As he lay staring at the ceiling, the last conscious thought before sleep took him was not of Michelle, or of his own release, but of a single line from a report he was never meant to see: All attempts at isolation of the pathogen have failed.