Wipeout: Wipeout Book 1 Read online

  Now it looked like all of that fighting, all of the late nights and things she had missed out on to climb to the top had been for nothing. Claire Manning was thirty-eight years old and she’d never had a relationship that had lasted longer than four months. She’d never travelled outside of the States for pleasure, seeing a great deal of the globe on work trips but rarely leaving the hotel lobbies or business suites. She had sacrificed having a life outside of work so that she could make a name for herself and prove herself worthy to her father. She could picture his face now as he sat in his armchair, a flurry of heart attacks forcing him to step down from Trident but not changing his perception about her. He was disappointed. He always had been. Claire Manning had never been good enough and now everything that she’d done to try and prove that she was, had been a waste of time. Her entire life had been a waste of time.

  Pursing her lips, Claire rose from her seat and walked to the door of her office. Exiting it, she made her way over to the small kitchenette that was located in one corner, housing a couple of pots of coffee, bottled water and an assortment of snacks. Selecting one particular bag of peanuts that was on offer, Claire ripped it open and let the salty, nutty aroma drift upwards and into her nostrils.

  With a quick glance to the stairwell and around the floor, Claire nodded softly to herself and walked back to her office, closing the door quietly behind her. She had lived with a severe nut allergy all her life, always the reason why the treats weren’t allowed on planes or in confined spaces. In reality, they shouldn’t be allowed in the office, but as she was there so infrequently it wasn’t something she’d ever clamped down on. A fact she was now very pleased about.

  Sitting back in her plush, leather desk chair, Claire allowed herself to feel the soft embrace of the fabric against her skin. With her eyes closed, she poured out a handful of nuts into her palm and exhaled. She thought of everything she’d done in her life, everything that had led her to be sitting where she was at that very moment. She had given everything to this company and now there was nothing more left to do but go down with it. Like a captain on a ship, she belonged at the bottom of the ocean with her vessel. On the count of three, she lifted her palm to her mouth and forced the handful of nuts into her mouth, never to surface again.

  Chapter 7

  Doing his best to block out the yelling that was coming from the thugs in the stairwell, Samuel tried to figure out what to do. There were only two ways down to the ground floor, via the stairwell which was now compromised, or the elevators on the other side of the building. Up to this point he had deliberately been avoiding using them, even though he was certain they would still be in operation. There hadn’t been any issues with power running through the building, so it made sense the elevators would still be in use. He just worried about who else was using them; if they were working then surely civilians would be zipping up and down the building to their heart’s content.

  Either way, Samuel headed off in that direction, desperate to get away from the yelling and banging Matt and his friend were inflicting on the stairwell door. At least the Trident security system was failproof. As a bank they were required to have the highest-grade stainless-steel doors, trackpad entry and even retina sensors in some parts of the building. Everything was designed to protect and seal, though there was very little left to safeguard anymore.

  He was halfway down the hallway when Samuel stopped for a second, swearing he could hear something coming from one of the printing rooms. He waited outside and listened, trying to discern what the sound was. It sounded almost animalistic; a whimpering not too dissimilar to the sound a frightened dog might produce. Curious – and convinced whatever was inside couldn’t be a threat to him – Samuel pushed open the door and walked inside.

  “Oh jeez, Cassie! What are you doing here? Are you okay?” Dashing over to the woman who was crouched down behind one of the industrial sized printers, Samuel put his arm around her and allowed her body to lean in against his. Cassie was one of his friends, a younger woman who worked in the marketing department alongside him, specializing in graphic design and print. Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to control her breathing.

  “Sam,” she mumbled, “I’m scared. What’s going on?”

  “Have you been in here the whole time?”

  Cassie nodded, her head rubbing against Samuel’s shoulder and brushing against his chin. “Everything happened so fast,” she started to explain. “I couldn’t get out, I tried but I…” Cassie trailed off, losing her words to another flood of tears.

  “It’s okay,” Samuel soothed her, holding her body closer to his. Cassie suffered from anxiety attacks and he could only imagine the panic she must have endured being in the building when everything happened. “I’m here now. Take it easy, Cass.” Samuel had become somewhat of a father figure to Cassie, one of the youngest employees in the marketing team. She was in her early twenties and this was her first proper job. Trident operated a pretty strong graduate scheme that attracted a lot of New York’s young professionals. It was one of the reasons the bank had continued to thrive and grow over the years, surpassing its main competitors at the top of the market – until now.

  Although Samuel had never married – by choice – he had always wanted children. Growing up he had always been close to his sister, the young sibling relationship they shared one that could never really be rivalled. Like many siblings though they had grown apart as they got older, their relationship still good, but no way near as close as Samuel knew it could be. At times he wondered whether it was his upbringing that had led to him have difficulties making friendships in school and at college, only really being able to engage in relationships properly when he reached his twenties and found people who were more similar to him. But even now, Samuel wasn’t blessed with a large group of friends. He cherished the relationships he had made at work and always did his utmost to maintain them. While he was thankful for many of the lessons his parents had taught him, he struggled to place social status above friendship.

  “Are you all on your own?”

  Cassie nodded again, her heart rate finally slowing as she began to feel comforted by Samuel’s presence. After hiding out in the print room for over an hour, she was happy to have someone else by her side. “I just couldn’t get out, Sam. Everyone was shouting and panicking. It was too much. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “It’s okay, Cassie,” Samuel repeated. “Don’t worry about it. We’re going to get out together now. I’m going to check the elevators. Do you want to come?”

  “Okay,” Cassie agreed, making eye contact with Samuel. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “You’re the first person I’ve seen on this floor,” Samuel replied. “We’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

  Leading the frightened young woman to the door of the print room, Samuel walked outside and gave Cassie a couple of seconds to process that they were, as he had assured her, completely alone. He only hoped that would remain true when they reached the elevators. He really didn’t know what to expect. If the elevators were working then it would be bizarre that no one had visited their floor yet. If they weren’t working then that posed them with the problem of how to get out. The stairwell was likely still occupied by Matt and his friend and the last thing Samuel wanted to do was walk Cassie into that chaos.

  “Huh, that’s weird,” Samuel pressed the elevator button again and looked up, seeing the same error message on the digital screen above. “It says they’re all stuck on the nineteenth floor.”

  “Why would they all be up there?”

  “I don’t know,” Samuel shook his head. “It’s odd. Do you know if there is anyone else still up there?”

  Cassie shook her head and shrugged. The alert had rung out around the company, starting with a few ripples of confusion as certain people checked accounts or saw errors flashing up on their screens. She had been in the print room at the time looking at the negatives for a new advertising campaign they were due to launch in the Fall. By t
he time the details had dripped through to her nearly the entire floor was in mass panic, questioning what was happening and if it was real. Then the message came from the top to evacuate and all of a sudden it was like a fire drill on acid. People ran in all directions, heading to the stairwell in a fit of panic.

  At that moment, Cassie had felt her heart starting to race inside her chest. Her palms became sweaty and her train of thought went off the tracks, leaving her unable to focus on any one thing for more than a couple of seconds. She was having a panic attack. They happened from time to time, stemming from an episode of childhood trauma that no matter how hard she tried, Cassie was unable to forget. The next thing she knew she was underneath a table with her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut, trying to block out the outside world entirely.

  “Come on,” Samuel groaned as he pressed the elevator call button over and over again, glancing upwards at the screen. “What is going on?”

  “Do you think someone is up there?”

  “I don’t know, maybe,” Samuel mused, trying to figure it out. “Come on. I’m going to give them a call.”

  Leading Cassie back to his office, Samuel walked inside and headed over to his desk. He was trying to approach things in a rational manner, aware that for the time being there weren’t many options and that he needed to remain calm in front of Cassie. So, he sat back in his chair and picked up his office phone, pressing a couple of buttons on the keypad to automatically dial the HR line on the nineteenth floor.

  “Ugh, give me a break,” he muttered a few seconds later, putting the phone down and looking up at Cassie. “Busy.” Dialling another number from the contact list that was printed and stuck next to his phone, Samuel waited once more for the dial tone to kick in and the phone to start ringing. Once again, he was met with a busy signal.

  “Either there’s people up there or the phones are down. Which is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Cassie replied. “I think everyone was told to get out of the building. I don’t really remember, sorry.”

  “Ah don’t worry, Cassie. The only thing is how we’re going to get down now.”

  “Can we not use the stairs?”

  Samuel looked at Cassie and smiled, deliberately not wanting to worry her in any way. “Hopefully,” he nodded, “but we need to be prepared to cross paths with a few people if we do. I reckon we’ll be in the minority trying to get out of the building rather than in.”

  He couldn’t help but feel responsible for the young woman in front of him. He had been there during her interview process. He had selected her from a group of four or five willing graduates, each trying to prove themselves. But there was something about Cassie’s work that stood out, she might not have been the biggest personality in the room, but her designs were flawless and meticulously planned, coupled with a rationale that he couldn’t fault. She had been a standout selection from that recruitment day, a decision that Samuel firmly stood by.

  However, that also made Cassie his responsibility. If he hadn’t selected her, then she wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. Sure, she would probably still be suffering somewhere else in the city, no corner unaffected by the madness Trident had caused, but she wouldn’t be directly in his care. And while she was an adult and well-versed in life enough to take care of herself, Samuel couldn’t help the paternal instinct that washed over him when he looked at her. It awakened the desire in him to have children of his own, one day, perhaps when the world was right again.

  “Give me a couple of minutes,” he smiled at Cassie. “I’ll go and check it out and I’ll come back and get you if the coast is clear, okay?”

  “Where are you going?” Cassie immediately questioned, a note of fear present in her tone at the thought of being left alone again.

  “Just to the stairwell,” Samuel reassured her. “Two minutes. I promise.”

  Leaving the young woman in his office, Samuel edged his way back to the stairwell that he had dashed down not that long ago to try and escape a thug with a crowbar. Pressing his ear up against the metal door he listened, trying to figure out if Matt and his friend were still out there. There were definitely people in the stairwell, faint echoes of footsteps and conversation drifting upwards, but it didn’t sound like anyone was directly outside.

  With his foot positioned strategically so that the door would smash into it if pushed open, Samuel’s hand hovered over the door release button. He was scared. There was no other way of putting it. He had never really been in anything close to a fight before and the altercation with the two men upstairs had shocked him to his core. Had his predicament been any different, Samuel wondered how he would’ve reacted to it. Perhaps it was lucky that his fight or flight reflex had been running since lunchtime.

  Now was no time for flight though. He had a duty of care for someone else and he had to get them both out of the building. If they walked with purpose and kept their heads down, no one should suspect that they were anything more than another pair of civilians who had entered the building in a search for answers. They had to do it. They didn’t have a choice. And so, pressing the door release button, Samuel tugged open the large metal object and stuck his head outside, glancing into the stairwell to see if it was empty. With a huge sigh of relief, he saw that Matt and his friend had vanished, hopefully going far away where Samuel would never encounter them again.

  Five minutes later, he was walking through the door properly, Cassie by his side. As Samuel glanced back into the marketing department before he closed the door behind the two of them, he wondered when he would see it again, if ever. He wondered whether he would still have an office, or even a job, when things returned to normal. But more than that, he wondered whether normal would ever be achievable again. He knew that everyone needed money to function and he just hoped that there was more of it waiting behind the scenes that he didn’t yet know about.

  “Where will you go?” Samuel asked Cassie as they walked down the sixteen flights of stairs, occasionally passing people but not once being accosted by them. It seemed like people were slowly giving up hope, like they had come into Trident looking for answers but very quickly accepted the fact that there were none. There was an air of defeatism around them, lowering morale and making Samuel wish to be outside with the sun and the fresh air. “Do you live nearby?”

  “I’m out in the suburbs,” Cassie replied. “But my aunt is just a couple of blocks away. I think I’ll go there.”

  “Good idea,” Samuel smiled, “it’s best to be with family. Stay inside and stay safe until we know more about what’s going on. If there really is anyone on the nineteenth floor, then we’ve got to believe they are doing everything they can to fix this. I’m sure we’ll hear from Trident again soon enough. This can’t be permanent.”

  Cassie nodded and returned her boss’s smile, though she wasn’t sure how much she believed him. He hadn’t been there when everything kicked off inside the building, her memory was hazy at best, but Cassie would never forget how frightened she had felt. “And you? Where are you going to go?”

  “I’m not sure,” Samuel admitted as they finally made their way out of the building and into the street. The lobby of the building was full of people, but not in the same sense it had been when he’d first made his way back in after lunch. Then people had been practically rioting at the front door, now the mood was much more sombre. People still wanted answers, but they were gradually beginning to realize they were unlikely to get them waiting on the ground floor of the Trident building. As a result, many had left the area, meaning the street directly outside was much less crowded too.

  Samuel was just about to answer Cassie’s question, when his eyes landed on a body about fifteen meters from their position. A body that he recognized. Hauser. Mr. R. Hauser. There was a woman hunched over the body sobbing, undoubtedly the same woman who had been screaming from the ground as her husband, partner, son, friend – whatever he was to her – stood in the window of the Trident building threatening to jum
p.

  A lump formed in Samuel’s throat as he stopped and stared at the body, unable to move or formulate words as he remembered the short conversation he had shared with the man. Nothing was talking him down from that ledge. He had been so determined to jump, so convinced that life as he knew it was over with no hope for recovery. Still, Samuel wondered what it was that he had discovered on his computer. He questioned how Hauser had been so convinced that it was the end, how he could have so much steadfast evidence so quickly after the event. There had to be something, but until that moment arrived, Samuel was determined to keep going. He wouldn’t jump, he could never jump.

  “Sam? Samuel? Are you okay? Sam?”

  It took several repetitions of his name for Samuel to realize that Cassie was talking to him, his focus entirely consumed by the body on the ground. Blinking and finally looking at his companion, he saw a worried expression and a look of sympathy in her eyes.

  “Are you okay? It’s awful isn’t it,” she glanced at the body. “He must have been inside the building too.”

  Samuel swallowed and nodded. “Awful,” he repeated. He didn’t know what else to say, the look on Hauser’s face as he stood in the window haunted Samuel. He wanted to go over to the woman and speak to her, say that she was with him in his final moments. But what solace would that bring? The woman deserved to mourn in peace, an interruption from a stranger was not what she needed.

  Finally focusing back on Cassie, Samuel realized he needed to say goodbye to the young woman, but once again faltered. There was no way of saying whether he would ever see her again, or whether he would even know if she made it to her aunt’s house safely. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” He asked, placing a hand on Cassie’s arm in a friendly yet concerned manner. “You know where you’re going?”