Chapter 59.

Worst Case Scenario.

Draxon Embers.

Time/Area: August 4th, 2013. Queens, NYC.

11:00 AM

I couldn’t believe what was going on in the city. What was going on outside my office.

BANG!

I stood up from my seat, spinning around for the one hundredth time to look outside the window of my office.

Complete chaos.

Guilt didn’t do justice to what was ripping through my mind. There were children down there…and I was just leaving them there.

“No,” I turned away from the bloodshed, “I am doing something…I’m trying to help.”

But everyone knew that was a lie…even my employees. All I was doing was staring at the wood of my desk, wondering how everything went so wrong…so fast.

Melissa and Lorica should’ve been on the same floor as the medical wing, and I had already been down thirteen separate times just to check on them, but none of that stopped my heart from racing.

I began to pace the room, still in my suit because of my decision to stay the night at work. I considered it a miracle that Lorica had decided to keep me company, and that Melissa had come in sometime yesterday, but what were we supposed to do now?

Things…monsters… straight out of a horror movie were tearing Queens, New York, and who knows what else apart, and the only buffer between them and the not nearly strong enough barring gates at the front of this building were people.

Innocent people.

Suddenly, my door was thrown open to reveal my chief organization officer and my personal bodyguard.

Ron had his eyes wide with fear, an expression that I wasn’t used to on him,

“What is it now?” I tried to smile, “Is it aliens this time?”

Ron shook his head, which scared me because I meant it as rhetorical, “No,” he muttered, readjusting the black Kevlar vest strapped over his body, “ but I need you to come with me.”

I was already heading for the door, trying to ditch the humor as a coping mechanism, “Why, what’s going-”

“Leo doesn’t know if we can keep the packaging floor safe, sir.”

I froze as we stepped into the one way hall leading to the elevators, trying my best to ignore the blaring car horns, sirens, and explosions resounding from all sides of the building.

I looked at Ron, “This is the same sub level packaging floor that has…you know…all the explosives?”

Ron nodded slightly, to which I sighed as we kept our accelerated pace towards the elevators.

Many people were confused as to what Ember Defense really was. We were PMC’s, sure, but people still didn’t really get what that meant. As private military contractors, we did our fair share of body guarding, armored car driving, and even providing training for different branches of the U.S military.

But as a first class, president-rewarded, ambitious as heck PMC’s…well…we did a whole lot more than that. Ember was all across the country, and even though I was the figurehead, there were plenty of people behind the scenes organizing stuff I had little to no experience with. One of those things, as it just so happens, was sitting in the hypothetical basement of this building.

“What’s the status as of this moment?” I asked Ron as we stepped inside the elevators, watching as he hit the key S4.

After ringing an electronic beep, the cart began to descend, taking us into the very much restricted sub-levels of the building.

“The actual explosives are still contained, but Leo’s all worried we’re going to have to evacuate and ditch the things.”

I tilted my head, knowing I had the exact same fears.

A while back, we were approached by the government to take brief possession of a…more than large sum of various crates upon crates of foreign explosives. The details on how and why were obscured to us, but it would be another plus for the company, so I said yes.

What I did not account for, however, was a monster apocalypse turning our ‘brief’ possession of explosives into a clearly more long term investment.

Ding!

We stepped out into the titanium plated halls of S4, immediately taking a right towards our containment unit.

Leo was at the front vault door of the room, the sound of his foot nervously tapping the floor echoing through the space as he mumbled incomprehensible strings of speech.

“Leo, tell me something good.” I said, my voice startling the older man as he yelped.

Ron paused, bowing his head slightly as something was transmitted through the communicator strapped to his vest.

He gave me another look of fear.

“What is it?” I raised my eyebrow, holding up a hand to Leo to silence what I already knew was going to be a rant.

“Melissa snuck out-”

“She did what?!” I screamed, now approaching a tipping point, “Send someone-”

“Sir!” Ron held up his hand, “I wasn’t done: She’s back now…with two boys in the medical wing, I-”

“Just…” I cut him off, relief and bitter annoyance flooding my already overclocked mind, “Go…”

Ron nodded, heading back for the elevators as I turned back to Leo.

He wasted no seconds,

“Draxon!” He shouted, despite our relative distance, “Come here!”

He darted for the vault door, keying in some digits that changed every week before the 8 foot metal rectangle was thrown back, the hiss of a Co2 pump filling the corridor as it did.

Leo was a crazy, untrusting, old lunatic- which was why I entrusted him with safekeeping all of our classified files and…well…bombs.

The only thing he had ever failed at was keeping some of those classified bits of information from my daughters- but I couldn’t imagine those girls doing anything too crazy with them.

I followed Leo inside the small, currently crowded interior.

Everything was padded in rubber, and underneath that was plates upon plates of platinum-gold alloy. Sitting upon each pad were boxes of crates we were instructed to not touch aside from moving them in here, and inside of those were the bunches of explosives.

All safe.

But for how long?

“So how far along are we with getting these things out-”

“No no no!” Leo shushed me, despite the present gap of authority,

“We should leave them here.”

I raised my eyebrows, “We should what?”

Suddenly, the overhead lights began to flicker, the biggest explosion I had felt yet rocking all sides of the sub-levels as the deafening sound of metallic groans and industrial system failures hummed within the walls.

Leo gritted his teeth, “It’s a much better idea than trying to transport all of these out of the city!” he continued, frantically pointing upwards towards whatever the heck was transpiring on the surface, “We don’t even know if we can all get out of the city!” Leo explained, “The best shot we have is to lockdown the sub-levels, evacuate the building, and hopefully come back for this stuff later.”

I stared at him for a moment, registering what I knew was a good idea before cursing under my breath,

“Okay okay okay,” I breathed, rubbing my temples as I motioned for Leo to follow me out of the vault.

Once we were back in the hall, I cleared my throat, “How long until we can put the sub-levels on lockdown?”

Leo shrugged, “An hour, at best-”

“An hour?!” I cursed again, stopping before we hit the elevator.

Leo huffed, “Don’t you read your own building’s safety protocols?” he asked.

“I assume that’s rhetorical.” I said, no longer trying to conceal my frustration, “Just get to the point, please.”

“We need to hit every sub level and manually lock them down,” Leo said, “And I need you to be there to authorize each procedure with a blood scan.”

I rolled my eyes, now remembering something along the lines of that from years ago. I never thought I’d actually have to use that stuff.

“Okay Leo,” I resumed walking towards the elevators, “Double check the security on this level, then meet me on S1 in a few minutes.”

Leo nodded slowly, “What are you going to do?”

I dusted off the sleeves of my suit before stepping inside the elevator, turning around to face Leo,

“I’m going to talk to Ron and my kids…tell them to start the evacuation without us.”

I coughed, hitting the button for my office floor, “Best case scenario: We lockdown all the floors, meet up with everyone at a secure Ember location, and I give you a raise.”

Leo scratched his head, “And…worse case scenario?”

I squinted at the old man as the doors began to close,

“There’s a monster apocalypse outside and we have the equivalent of a nuke just sitting in our basement.”

I leaned back on the far wall of the cart, “Take a guess.”