Let's face it: there must be some reason for long and arduous elevator rides. My company does not hold with inefficiency. Downtime is treated as a conspiracy against the firm, and it's crushed like one would a bug—but damn, if the perks of working here aren't worth this constant threat. If the Senior Partners view you as worthy, you shoot to the top in a matter of months and everyone knows it. Gloating aside—I may need it to intimidate a few choice people—I'm on that fast track this very moment. I barely have time to learn the title of my position before I'm sent upstairs, thus lengthening the elevator ride.
It's usually a respite. I'm convinced senior offices are located on the upper floors just so their occupants can have those dear extra seconds to themselves. However, for today's trip up I'm saddled with a fresh young insurgent, Gavin Park. Evidently not eve seven years in the most prestigious of law schools can weed out the ignorant backstabbing fuckers—although I suppose in that regard, he is the model employee for this corporation. Plus, being Asian, his presence fulfills that feigned tolerance policy the PR guys so forcefully push on the rest of us. I sigh audibly.
"Gavin," I acknowledge, trying to pre-empt any conversation with an impatient tone.
"Lilah," he shoots back, "how was your fieldtrip?"
Inwardly, I sigh dejectedly. My 'fieldtrip', as it were, was nothing short of an utter failure in that I lost both a potential asset to the firm and a certain infant whom my supervisors would very much like to acquire to a great fiery portal leading to some unknown hell dimension. "It went—smoothly," I reply, wishing direly the term 'portal to hell' was just a euphemism.
Gavin grins, and I consider disfiguring his face for a brief moment. "The Senior Partners won't take lightly to tonight's...circumstance, you do realise."
And I do realise. If I weren't such an asset to the firm, I would likely have been beheaded at the door. Then again, if I didn't make the tough decisions, take the profitable risks, and become the ruthless bitch I am today, I wouldn't be taking this elevator to floor thirty-seven. Right now, we're stopped at for twenty-nine, and the doors ease open. "Your stop," I say with a smile, gesturing him out with a grand motion. The kid glowers at me—a woman who could have him quartered—but doesn't make a move. Ever so subtly, I slide my hand into my pocket and toy with the silver-plated pistol that rests inside. I see his eyes tick down, then up. But then both of our gazes shift outside the open elevator upon hearing a crisp and final sound. A body rests next to its decapitated head, a small crowd gathering around the scene. Smirking, I place a hand on Gavin's back and push him gently onto the twenty-ninth floor, his shoes squeaking on this nameless dead man's blood as he stumbles into the landing. I tap the door close briskly, and the metal panels soon obscure the kid's gaping mouth.
Sometimes, I love my company.