4
JESSICA
"How can I help you Jessica?"
I felt like I was intruding on something private, which made no sense since Ethan was alone in his office. Still, annoyance flashed across Ethan's green eyes as if I'd interrupted something precious.
His handsome, insanely green eyes.
"I was hoping you could explain the proper database schema to me," I said, taking a tentative step toward his desk. "I know it's too late to undo everything I've done, but if you show me the methodology you've been using I can start doing it the right way on the new reports I run."
"You're still here?" he asked. "I thought you were just a temp."
"My contract's through the end of next week. Plenty of work to do until then, and I'm not the kind of person who just phones it in."
The annoyance softened, and he jerked his head in a nod. "Come here."
I rounded his desk, and almost laughed to see that he was still wearing his khaki shorts and the tight-fitting T-shirt. But his face was even more devoid of color now--seriously, he had to be sick--so I didn't poke fun of him for his dress.
He alt-tabbed over to the System Center management console, and pulled up the hierarchy schema.
"We can't rely on the AD imports because of the issue I already mentioned," I explained slowly. "So we do it by individual IP subnets."
I whistled between my teeth. "Seriously?"
"Mmm hmm. Every single subnet across every single branch in our company. It's not ideal, and we miss some in the cracks, but it's the best we've got. At least, it was the best we had, before it was all messed up."
I took the mouse from him--brushing his hand for a moment--and scrolled down the list of boundaries. All of them were grey now, overwritten by the other work I'd done. "It would have been nice to see this earlier."
"Your account probably doesn't have full admin rights to see the existing schema," he muttered.
I turned to him in anger. "No, I mean it would have been nice for this to be included in the environment documentation. Then I wouldn't have had to guess."
He seemed surprised for a moment, then the fire returned to his eyes. "And it would have been nice for you to run a database backup before making changes in production. Then we could just restore the whole damn thing instead of redoing the boundaries from scratch."
"I ran a backup!"
Ethan crossed his arms over his muscled chest while I switched over to the database storage drive. I immediately flinched.
"Well?" he gestured at the screen patronizingly. "Where's the backup?"
I must have blushed a dozen shades of crimson, because my cheeks felt on fire.
"That's what I thought." He looked in another direction. Somewhere not at me. "I've got a lot of work to do, so unless there's anything else...?"
I strode from his office, furious and embarrassed and miserable all at the same time.
*
Okay, so I'd fucked up.
I stirred Easy-Mac into a pot in my tiny Dallas apartment while twirling my hair clip in my other hand, replaying the events of the day in my head. Because that's what I did; I made mistakes, and then I wallowed in them like a keyboard-tapping pig.
I'd fucked up, sure. But that fuck-up wouldn't have happened if not for Ethan's piss-poor documentation. The sheet I'd reviewed when I started two weeks ago was the standard text copy-and-pasted from Microsoft's website. If Ethan had properly documented his environment, the boundaries created for each individual branch subnet, I would have immediately known what was going on.
It was his fault, not mine.
And it didn't help that he was so good looking. I could still feel his emerald gaze, the surprise he'd shown when I walked into his office. Nevermind the argument that had ensued, and the fact that he'd closed his door as soon as I left and hadn't opened it the rest of the day. All I could think about were his eyes, and the way his shirt fit tightly over his chest.
This was why we had office dress codes.
Not that it mattered. I had a week left as a temp, and now I'd pissed off the two people who had power over whether or not I was hired at the end of the contract. Fat chance, now.
I drained the pasta, poured the processed cheese powder into the pot with some milk, and wished I had a glass of wine.
I was halfway done with my meager supper when I had an idea.
The office felt eerily quiet with the lights off, the glows of periodic computer monitors like strange square lanterns in the night. Ethan's door was still ominously closed, but the light was off underneath the door. I made a fresh pot of coffee in the break room, carried the whole damn thing over to my desk, and got to work.
Rebuilding the schema from scratch was an arduous task, but thankfully it was fresh in my mind since I'd done it (wrongly) a few days ago. The really tedious work was creating new boundaries based on the branch subnets. We had 2,000 locations across the country, so each one of those had to be created, matched with their IP subnet, and then saved. It wasn't hard: create the boundary name, copy-and-paste the subnet from the network scan, check a few boxes, and bam, it was done. But there was a 5 second pause between each step, and about 10 seconds of cursor-spinning while it saved at the very end.
And, you know, the fact that I had to do it 2,000 times.
Well, technically 1,958. It looked like Ethan had recreated 42 of them before leaving the office.
But I wanted this fucking job. And the first step was fixing my mistake, even if the mistake wasn't my fault to begin with.
I guzzled coffee like it was cheap beer at a frat party and my goal was to get blackout drunk. My eyes ached as I stared at the screen, strained beyond what any sane person would do in a single day. I'd pulled all-nighters in college, but they were few and far between. And I was usually stimulated intellectually during them. This, on the other hand, was mind-numbingly boring.
But I clicked the mouse, and typed on my keyboard, and slowly the console filled with new boundaries.
My cell phone vibrated on the desk, jolting me out of my groove. Clenching my teeth, I hit the power button to send it to voicemail without looking at the caller. At this time of night, I knew exactly who it was. It'd been this way for the past two weeks.
But it rang again, and then a third time, and I was too annoyed to focus on my work.
"What do you want, Mark?"
Static crackled on the other end, the sound of wind and coughing. He seemed surprised that I'd answered, and when he finally spoke his voice was slurred.
"Jess? You there?"
"I'm here. What do you want, Mark?"
He paused, and I could feel the weight of our four months together in the silence.
"I miss you."
I sighed and snapped, "I don't have time for this."
"Let me come over," he insisted. "I'm on my way now, two blocks away. I took the light DART rail."
"No, Mark."
"Just for a minute! Just to talk."
"I'm not there, Mark."
This time the silence held a different tone.
"Oh," he said. "You're out with someone."
"I'm at work."
His laugh held no mirth. "Not at this time of night. You're fucking someone..."
"Mark..."
"...and you're keeping it from me."
"What I do is my own damn business," I said, the same thing I'd told him the last time he got drunk and dialed me late at night. "But I'm honestly at work right now."
"You're a fucken liar," he spat, then hung up.
I put the phone down on the desk and stared at it for a long while. Thankfully he didn't call back. I imagined him outside my apartment, banging on the door and screaming for me while my neighbors called the cops. Aly next door had been close to doing that last time.
It's not my problem. Not now, not tonight. I had too much other shit to deal with.
I poured another cup of coffee, switched my phone to Do Not Disturb, and dove back into the work with renewed energy.
It took all night, all damn night, but I finished the final branch as the glow of the sun began to illuminate the morning sky out the windows of the office. I leaned back in my chair and surveyed my work, a neat collection of pixels on the screen.
It didn't feel very satisfying, but I knew it would when I told Ethan and Mrs. Arnold.
But I wasn't done yet. The boundaries were created, but I still needed to apply them to the environment. And this time I wanted to make sure I ran that damn database backup first.
I switched over to my SQL console, right-clicked on the database, and selected the BACKUP option.
The cursor spun like it was doing work, but the storage drive itself didn't populate with the backup file. I gave it a good minute or two (sweet Jesus did it feel good to let me arms rest) before pulling up the log files on the server.
It was immediately obvious what had happened: a big fat permissions error showed in the log file, highlighted in red. My account didn't have permissions.
At least that explained why the other backup hadn't run, either. I knew I'd kicked it off.
If my account couldn't run a backup, then I'd need to wait for Ethan. I shook my head in annoyance; I didn't want to wait for him! I wanted to run the backup and apply the boundaries now, to feel the sweet satisfaction of a job done well. And more than that, I realized, I wanted to surprise Ethan himself. A big show of I.T. blood and sweat to convince him to hire me after my contract.
And if he grinned like an excited kid, well, that would be a bonus.
In my sleep-deprived brain, I decided that maybe--just maybe--Ethan had written down the root database account and password on a piece of paper somewhere. I rose from my chair like a zombie and marched across the room to his office, found it unlocked, and strode inside.
I stopped.
Ethan was sprawled out on his couch like a dead body, one arm hanging off the side limply and the other resting against his bare chest. He still wore the same khaki shorts from when I'd picked him up at the airport, and a blanket was bunched up by his feet.
His chest rose, I saw with relief. It was stupid, but for a moment I'd thought he was dead!
But as I approached him, it didn't seem so stupid an assumption. His face was deathly pale, and he was trembling so subtly I didn't notice until I got up close. I put the back of my hand to his head, and recoiled from the heat.
"Just a hangover," I muttered. "You're just another dumb boy."
His eyes flickered, just on the edge of waking. I could leave him in here, but somehow I doubted Mrs. Arnold would be as sympathetic. I'd heard her berating him yesterday. If I left him here for her to find I didn't know what would happen.
Maybe she'll fire him and hire me instead.
I immediately pushed the thought from my head. One, it was stupid: I was fairly certain Mrs. Arnold wouldn't hire me even if all the other Systems Administrators in the world suddenly keeled over. Two, him getting in trouble would diminish all the work I'd done. I wanted him happy and excited and eager to hire me.
And three, most important of all: it wasn't who I was. I couldn't leave him here for his boss to find, regardless of any other factors. If it were me, I'd want someone to have my back.
"Get up," I said, shaking him gently. "Hey. Ethan. Wake up."
I shoved him progressively harder until his eyes opened all the way.
"Ethan? It's me, Jessica. The ditsy temp. Did you seriously sleep here all night?"
He stared without really seeing. "Huh?"
"Do... do you know you slept here all night?" I asked instead. He made a groaning noise and pointed to his desk, where an empty bottle of NyQuil lay on its side.
Well that explained his grogginess. I sighed and checked my watch. I had enough time to get him home and return for my normal work hours. It was going to be a long day.
With some coaxing and mean words, I helped him to his feet and tried to avoid staring at the muscles of his chest and core. I wasn't used to seeing I.T. nerds with bodies like this. He was able to stand on his own--which was good, since I never would have been able to keep him up by myself--and I helped pull his T-shirt over his chest.
Like a nurse carrying a wounded man from the battlefield, I helped him out of the office, down the elevator, and into my car.
"I knew I should have taken you home yesterday," I muttered. "Too damn sick to be in the office. Where do you live, anyways?"
He pulled out his phone, but held it in front of him like a zombie.
Thankfully, he had his home address saved in Google Maps. 10 minutes away. I typed the address into my own phone and started the car.
"Do you have anyone who can take care of you while you're sick?" I asked as we drove down the highway. "A roommate? Or girlfriend?"
"No... girlfriend," he mumbled.
"No, you have a girlfriend?" I clarified. "Or no, you don't have a girlfriend?"
He shook his head, and I decided that meant the latter.
"I really ought to just drop you off at an urgent care," I muttered. "You promised you weren't gunna give me the Spanish flu. The longer I'm breathing the same air as you, the more likely that becomes."
The drive to his apartment in Uptown Dallas was quick, the roads not yet congested from rush hour. I parked in front of his place and helped him out the passenger side, then up the elevator to his floor. If I hurried, I could beat the rush hour back into the city and still be on time. It wasn't likely, but I still had hope.
"Keys?" I asked at the door. He didn't respond.
Any other time, I would have stopped right there. But in my sleep deprivation I didn't care that I was violating all the workplace harassment codes, so I shoved my hand in his pocket and tried to avoid brushing against anything sensitive.
There was something huge in his pocket--and no, not that. Something smooth like an egg, but cool to the touch. Then my fingers touched metal, and I came out with the ring of keys.
"In we go," I said, leading him inside.
It was a studio apartment, with a kitchen on the left and a bedroom-slash-living area on the right. The king-sized bed took up most of the space, and I guided him that way and dumped him on the bed.
He didn't move. He just lay there, arms splayed out on either side. I glanced at the door, thoughts of getting back to work on time still pulsing in my head.
But then I sighed again, because that wasn't who I was.
"Can't just leave you here," I said out loud, because saying it felt like asking permission. "Let's get you under the covers."
Pushing didn't work, so I had to crawl over his body onto the bed and pull his legs up onto it. I tried to work methodically, but I couldn't help but tingle as I straddled him for a brief moment. I removed his sandals, then yanked the sheets down under his feet and pulled them back up to his chin.
And if my hands lingered on his chest while I did it, then hey, so be it.
I crawled back over him--acutely aware of how his legs felt under mine--and stood beside the bed. I put my hand against his forehead again; it was as hot as it felt back at the office.
Goddamnit.
"We need to get that fever down," I muttered, going to the kitchen. "And I can't give you an aspirin on an empty stomach, or else you'll throw it all up."
I found a can of tomato soup in the pantry, emptied it into a pot, and turned the stove on. While that heated up I stared at my cell phone, then finally dialed the number I'd been dreading.
It went to voice mail, and part of me was relieved.
"Morning Mrs. Arnold, it's Jessica. I'm gunna be late for work--Ethan came into the office with a terrible fever, so I insisted on taking him home. Once I get some soup and medicine in him I'll be back, but I wanted to let you know. Call me if you need anything."
I found extra blankets in the closet, thicker and warmer than the thin sheet on his bed. He shivered as I pulled it away from his body.
"It's only for a second," I said, unfolding the blankets and draping them across his chest and legs. "Quit being a baby."
As I swaddled him like a goddamn toddler, my hand brushed against his pocket again. The object there bulged out; it couldn't be comfortable.
"Please don't report me for workplace harassment," I whispered as I reached back inside, pulling out the object before anything else could happen.
I stared at the thing in my hand.
It was a stone carving of a mythical animal with the body of a lion and the wings and head of an eagle. A gryphon, I thought, pulling the name from some corner of my memory. It fit in the palm of my hand but felt immensely heavy, like it were made of lead instead of stone.
I turned it over, and the gem caught my eye.
It was a gorgeous emerald, finely cut and with brilliant color. It almost seemed to glow with its own light, but I knew that had to be a trick of the cut. Moreover, it was huge. At least eight carats. If it was real, it was insanely valuable.
"Why the hell was this in your pocket?" I muttered.
The gem was so beautiful, I couldn't help but run my finger over it. Feeling its weight, the smoothness matching the smooth surface of the rest of the figurine. It seemed it like it would just pop out; there were no prongs that I could see, and as I--
CLICK.
Several things happened all at once.
The emerald depressed under my thumb, sinking into the figurine like a button. The air around me seemed to move, the way the air rushed out of an oven that had just been opened, but without the heat. I flinched in surprise.
But most importantly, Ethan lost his mind.
He let out a shocking wail, throwing aside his blankets and leaping from bed with renewed energy. He knelt on the ground for a moment, head in his hands and not seeing me. I called out to him, but the way he covered his ears made it seem like there was some deafening noise only he could hear.
And then... he changed.
The muscles of his back rippled through his shirt unnaturally. His arms bulged like he were flexing them, but then grew in size before my eyes. His shirt pressed tighter against his skin, then tore along the sleeve and collar. Ethan moaned, a low sound that began deep in his throat and escaped his lips like a siren. Finally he looked up at me, and his eyes were as bright and green as the emerald I'd touched.
He did something I didn't expect.
He leaped to his feet with incredible strength, sprinted across the small room, and jumped through the eleventh story window.
"No!" I screamed, finally finding my voice. The glass of the window didn't shatter, but the force of his jump broke the latch and threw it open. I watched helplessly as his body moved through the air, stayed still for an instant, and then plummeted.
I ran to the window, fearing what I would see.
It wasn't at all what I expected.
I stared, and tried to process it, and failing that, I fainted.