Daddy, Grandpa’s associate hit the desk with a baseball bat and took the red binder!
I burst back out of the service stairwell, my pulse pounding. The hallway was still empty, but something had changed. The air felt heavy, charged. A low growl of thunder rumbled in the distance, shaking the very walls of the skyscraper.
Outside the panoramic windows, the Chicago skyline was rapidly disappearing behind a curtain of swirling, bruised clouds. A summer storm, sudden and violent, was rolling in.
I glanced at my phone. Weather alerts flashed across the screen: “Severe Thunderstorm Warning. High Winds. Potential for Isolated Tornadoes.”
No time to waste. I had to reach Arthur, warn him about Kenneth. I pushed open the heavy glass doors of the executive suite.
The main office was strangely quiet. Clara was nowhere in sight. Leo, I hoped, was with her. Kenneth was at his desk, hunched over his computer, his face illuminated by the flickering screen. Arthur was in his private study, the door slightly ajar.
“Arthur!” I called out, my voice cutting through the sudden oppressive silence. “It’s Kenneth! He’s scamming you! He’s stealing the money!”
Kenneth’s head snapped up, his eyes wide with surprise, then instantly hardening into a furious glare. He pushed back from his desk, a snarl forming on his lips.
Before he could speak, a blinding flash of white light erupted outside the window. It was so intense it bleached out the entire room. A deafening CRACK immediately followed, a sound that tore through the air, vibrating through the floor, through my very bones.
The building shuddered violently.
And then, absolute darkness.
The fluorescent lights died with a pop, plunging the forty-second floor into a suffocating, inky blackness. The computer screens went blank. The emergency exit signs on the far walls, usually a steady green, flickered once, then went out. Even the emergency wall flashes, meant to illuminate pathways, stayed dark.
The thunder outside boomed again, closer this time, a primal roar that swallowed all other sounds. The high winds lashed against the building, making the entire structure groan.
A muffled clunk echoed from somewhere nearby. The automatic electronic doors, reliant on the main power grid, had instantly locked down on emergency protocols. We were trapped.
A strangled cry came from Kenneth’s direction. “No! The systems! They’re down!”
I heard a thud from Arthur’s study. “Arthur?” I called out, my voice laced with immediate concern.
The only answer was the relentless hammering of rain against the skyscraper, and the terrifying, omnipresent darkness. The power was out. We were isolated, suspended in the black, forty-two stories above the city. And Kenneth was in here with us.
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