Another update for you, my lovelies (I am very grateful to the few of you who read this), this time promising some terrible occurences all round, but also Jen's caring side, Richmond's talent for interior decorating, pissed-off Moss, mateyness and even some cuddling.
Hope you like :-)
Jen was just about to say hi to Moss when her mobile rang. She briefly considered ignoring it. However odd and incomprehensible Moss might be, she'd rather talk to him than Tom any day. She had broken up with him for a reason, after all.
But if he was going to call her again after such a heated argument, it must be for something important. And considering the said argument had become so heated that Jen suspected she might have given Tom a black eye, she doubted it would be to suggest they get back together.
"Hello."
"Hi Jen." Even down the phone, with however much physical distance between them, Tom sounded slightly nervous. Jen felt quite proud. "I was just wondering; is your office goth around?"
"Richmond?" she asked. True, it was better than begging for another chance, but an ex calling her mobile and asking for Richmond was possibly the oddest thing that had happened to her that wasn't totally restricted to the confines of her office. And considering some of the sleazebags Jen went out with, she hoped Richmond was just running a protection racket or something. "I'll just check."
She wandered over to the red door and knocked. There was no response. "Richmond," she called, knocking again. "Richmond?"
She pushed the door open and looked in. it was empty.
"Moss," she called across the office, "have you seen Richmond?"
"No," he replied, looking up briefly from the notes Jen had transcribed the previous day from vague phone calls.
"He's not here," Jen told Tom. "What did you want him for?"
"Oh, it's just…" Tom laughed. "It's just I- I almost hit a goth on the way to work this morning. He skulked off into an alley and didn't come out. I've been watching him for a while, he looks like he's thrown up a bit. Thought I'd better do something to help, but I didn't want to get too close. I thought he might be yours."
"Where is he?" Jen asked. Richmond was almost always out of sight in the mornings, but it wasn't like him to not be there at all. He wasn't used to city life any more, and it was more than likely he'd get into some kind of trouble if he went out on his own.
Tom gave her a street, and se scribbled it down on the back of a takeaway menu. "Thanks," she said, and hung up.
Moss looked up from the notes again. "What's up?"
"Apparently Richmond might be in an alley about a mile away," Jen answered. "I'd better go and find him. God knows what could happen to him out on his own."
"Do you want me to?" Moss offered, reaching for his anorak.
"No, you'd better start on those before we start getting complaints again," Jen replied, grabbing her own coat and Richmond's trenchcoat and running out of the office. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Moss messing with her answering machine, but she dismissed it. She had more important things to worry about.
"There you go, that should be the last of those files recovered," said Moss, smiling out of habit and moving aside so that Rachel could get back to her computer.
"Thank God!" Rachel all but screamed, putting a hand on each side of the monitor in some kind of bizarre half-embrace.
No need to go so far as to thank God, Moss thought to himself. But it might be nice to spare a thought for the man who got the files back for you.
Now what was his next problem? Oh yes, repeated overheating from the man next to her.
"Hang on," said Rachel as he went to examine the tower. "These aren't the files."
"Are they not?" Moss asked. "I've recovered the ones matching the exact details you gave me. And that was basically all the recoverable files."
"But these aren't the ones I lost," argued Rachel. "It's the same document, but the net profits I was working with were four and a half billion pounds higher."
Moss floundered. He was used to people shouting at him when he had come up to their offices and spent his time doing his best to help them in any and every way he could, goddamnit, but that didn't make the situation any easier to deal with each time it happened.
"Those were all the files I could find," he said calmly. "I've recovered everything."
"Well recover them again!" Rachel barked.
"There's nothing left to recover," Moss tried to explain over Rachel's berating and the persistent questioning of the man with the overheating problem as to when Moss was finally going to assist him with his problems.
"I work with numbers all day; I can remember what I was working with-"
"Look, I haven't been able to use my computer since lunchtime yesterday-"
"-these are not my files, these must be old ones or something-"
"-are you done yet, I need to get something finished-"
"- mine must be there somewhere, if you could just do this again-"
"-and this is very important, it's a very big opportunity for me, and I don't want you ruining it for me-"
"-I was waiting all day for you yesterday and now you come and get this wrong-"
"For God's sake, shut up!"
The entire accounting department looked up from their collective work or computer problems to stare at Moss, who was flushed and breathing heavily, and had a very hot ear. He took a deep breath and collected himself.
"Right, Rachel, I have done all I can for you. If the numbers are a problem, all I can suggest is you check up with the banks to confirm them. Now, if that's not a problem, I can sort out this gentleman."
Practically burning under the eyes of all those sniggering accountants, Moss dropped to the floor and crawled under the man's desk to check out his cooling system. Rachel got up and stormed out.
Jen didn't have too much trouble finding the alley Tom had told her about, as she knew the area fairly well. It was on a street largely occupied by clubs and restaurants, and she recognised a few from nights out with the girls or bad dates. She noticed a black heap across the road near some bins, and she crossed over to it. It was indeed Richmond, keeling on the ground with dark rings around his eyes and black makeup streaked down his cheeks. His face had a wan, greenish tinge to it, which looked far more disturbing than his usual sun-deprived pallor. The bins behind him stank of sick.
"What happened to you?" Jen asked gently as she draped the heavy trenchcoat over his shoulders.
Richmond didn't answer. He just pulled the trenchcoat tighter around him and slipped his arms in, looking grateful for once to see the leather monstrosity. He tried to get up, and Jen could see him trembling, and offered her hand.
"Are you okay?" she asked as he shakily got to his feet.
"Yeah," he replied, nodding weakly. His voice was low and hoarse, and he stumbled as he tried to walk. Jen slipped an arm around him to steady him, and he reached his own around her shoulders.
In silence she helped him back to the office. All the way there she could feel him wanting to lean on her, but stopping himself, because he was bigger than her. He kept his head down, obscuring his face from view, and his trenchcoat dwarfed him, making him look about fifteen.
It was almost half an hour before they reached the office. Richmond entered nervously, glancing quickly over at the desks, and Jen swore she had felt his arm tighten around her as they came in. Jen pushed him down onto the sofa and went to make him a cup of tea, thinking he was probably sick of coffee by now.
"What happened?" she asked as he drank it.
He looked over at her, without saying anything, and just shook his head. She could tell that it would take a lot of effort to get him to answer. Was it fear? Or shame?
She decided not to press it.
The phone rang, but Jen was too tired to answer it. As it shrilly persisted, she pulled herself up from the sofa and sloped into her office. She didn't quite get there in time though, and the answering machine kicked in.
Hang on, she thought. This wasn't the message she recorded. Moss had recorded a new one.
"Hello, you've reached IT. If you're hearing this message, then all of our terminally understaffed department are busy with your problems, so leave a message and we'll get back to you, unless you're from accounts, in which case I'm in your bl-umming office, you blind pillock."
Jen winced. And then Sod's Law came to bite her once again, as the voice she least wanted to hear a ranting answer message came through the speaker.
"Shit, I didn't realise it was that bad," said Roy, sounding just as in pain as the last time Jen had seen him. "I'll be in later today, promise."
She tried to call him back to tell him she didn't want him in if he was still suffering, but she couldn't get an answer. She tried his mobile, but each time he left it until she got his answerphone.
But as Jen spent the morning trying to organise calls in order of importance, the time they would take to fix and the time the call came in, so that Moss was free to concentrate on solving the problems themselves, Roy still did not appear.
Moss came down for a late lunch break at three. "Jen," he said, wearily yet with an unmistakeable sense of being very pissed off. "Do you have any cigarettes?"
"No, I don't keep them on me," she replied. "Too much temptation. You could try Richmond's pockets though. I doubt he'd notice." She indicated the sofa, where Richmond was now dead to the world.
And she was faintly shocked when Moss actually did start rooting through Richmond's pockets until he found a half-smoked packet of Marlboros, and then smoked at least half of the contents right there in the office. Judging by this and the rather un-Mosslike language on the answering machine message, he needed his mind taken off everything. "Guitar Hero?" she suggested.
"Nah."
The situation was worse than she thought.
"I'd better get back to the accountants."
"No!" she cried, trying to stop him from leaving. "You haven't finished your break. Don't let them pressure you into cutting it short. Just think how they'd complain if they had to."
"No, I've got to," said Moss. "They've got the company accounts disappearing left, right and centre, they're all going on about values changing, money going missing, all kinds of things." He carried on up the stairs, before turning back and adding, with a hint of pride buried under his frustration; "They need me."
He was out the door before Jen realised he had taken Richmond's cigarettes with him, and she ran after him to get them back. She told herself it was because Richmond deserved to get at least some of his cigarettes back, but in truth she knew that the general stress of the situation and Moss' recent decision to start chain-smoking had given her the urge to have one herself. And making sure she only took one, she slipped the rest back into Richmond's pocket.
She lit it and took a drag, feeling a slight twinge of guilt for stealing cancer-sticks from a sleeping man who'd been lost and bewildered and quite badly ill in an alley just a few hours before. But she was stressed; that counted as an excuse.
Bloody accountants. Always complaining about their computers and their programs and their missing files and…
Changing values?
How did that happen?
Finishing the cigarette, she decided she needed to get out of the office.
Physically exhausted, mentally more exhausted and nursing a few bruises from a very hacked off man who didn't understand that full system scans were not instantaneous, Moss returned to the basement. Hoping to slip in and out unnoticed, he was thwarted when Jen immediately pounced on him.
"What's going on up in accounts?" she asked. "I've been asking around all day and all I've heard is a vague rumour that somebody called Rachel might be fired."
"The company's bank account's four billion pounds down on what it should be," Moss explained. "It's not a huge loss considering the profits we've been bringing in lately, but it's a heck of a lot to just go missing. So everyone thinks Rachel's doctored the accounting files."
"God, has she?"
"How should I know?"
Jen looked startled and walked away. He really needed to keep his temper in check. Yes, he was stressed and frustrated, but so was she and it wasn't her fault, so he shouldn't be taking it out on her. And he shouldn't be thinking of stealing more or Richmond's cigarettes. He shouldn't have stolen any in the first place. He shouldn't have smoked at all, let alone in a public place of work with the smoking ban being enforced.
He needed to get out of there.
He leant back on the sofa and gazed over at Richmond, who was hanging around the kitchen, not really doing anything, but trying to make it look like he was.
"What's up with you?" he asked.
Richmond looked over and gave him an emotionless smile. "Another night shift," he answered.
"But you always do the night shift," said Moss. "You never don't do the night shift. As far as I know you've only ever left the building twice."
Richmond shrugged, then, after a moment of hesitation, came over to join Moss. "It came after me," he whispered.
"What?" asked Moss.
Richmond indicated the Praemus unit on Roy's computer.
Hang on, Roy's computer…?
"Last night. It came alive and tried to get into my room. Then it went away, and hundreds of them chased me out of the building."
"Stuff the night shift," advised Moss. "Go home."
Shame seemed to make Richmond shrink next to Moss' taller frame, and Moss thought he could see a hint of some foreign colour creeping into the pasty goth's face. "I can't," he said. "I haven't got anywhere else to go."
Moss now observed the face that he was facing a moral crisis. On the one hand, he couldn't leave Richmond alone with a murderous Praemus unit, especially when he was so vulnerable. On the other hand, he also couldn't take Richmond home to meet his mother, especially when he was so vulnerable. The last time his mother had met a goth, it hadn't been a pretty sight. And this was really saying a lot, considering the young lady in question had been modelling for Dark Star at the time.
That left only one choice.
"I'll stay with you."
He watched Richmond's face contort, not without some degree of amusement, with disbelief, then gratitude, then awkwardness, which eventually led to Richmond turning to him and giving him a kind of odd, one-armed hug, which Moss just as awkwardly tried to return.
"Tender moment?" asked Jen, whose face was pink from holding off the giggles. "I'll see you tomorrow."
She left.
Moss and Richmond ordered Indian, and the appearance of a slightly skittish delivery man led Moss to wonder what kind of effect a goth in full makeup hanging around the crappy basement of a closed building in an evening must have on someone living closer to the real world. Oddly, Richmond seemed completely oblivious to his disconcerting aura.
They moved into Richmond's room, both wanting to put a barrier between themselves and the Praemus. It seemed odd now, thinking about it, but it had never occurred to Moss that Richmond might actually be living in that room. It had never even occurred to him that the room was fit to be lived in, but Richmond seemed to live quite comfortably in there. Somehow he had managed to get a bed in there without anyone noticing, and he had covered it in what looked like black satin. He had a small TV at the foot of the bed, resting on a DVD player, which was surrounded by the cases of old movies on DVD, most of which featured Christopher Lee in a starring role. There was a bookshelf next to the bed, filled with classic literature like 'Dracula', 'Frankenstein' and 'The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy', and CDs from bands, the majority of which Moss had never heard of and the rest of which he didn't particularly like. The top of it was populated by candleholders and figurines and other ornaments, most of them depicting dragons or wizards or a gothic-looking fairy, as well as one of those miniature mannequins for keeping jewellery on, wearing a little black ball gown and covered in spare bangles and rings. Hung next to it was a mirror framed by intertwined snakes and surrounded by a string of purple fairy lights. But what really got Moss' attention was the six-foot-tall purple Lego dragon next to the TV. It looked sort of serene but sort of ferocious, but all the time like a lot of carefully arranged bricks that wasn't really alive but looked it if you were far enough away. Moss hadn't been very good with Lego as a child.
"I made that when I was bored one time," said Richmond.
"Call her Hermione," Moss requested.
Richmond shrugged. "Okay."
After scoffing the takeaway, Moss spotted Richmond's alcohol, and realised he hadn't gotten drunk for quite along time. He confessed this to Richmond, and half an hour later he was giggling madly through a head full of distorted logic and leaning on Richmond, who despite the fact he had been drinking absinthe as opposed to Moss' preferred vodka, seemed completely unaffected.
"You're drunk," Richmond stated.
"So are you," Moss insisted. "You're acting."
"I'm good at that," said Richmond.
"You been in any films?"
"Yeah," answered Richmond, reaching over and showing Moss the first DVD his hand landed on. "I'm in this one."
Moss peered at it suspiciously. "That was made in 1956."
"I went back in time," explained Richmond.
Moss snorted. "So you're a time-travelling film star, but you're single and you live in a basement with an obsolete telephone exchange unit and a dragon."
"I was wondering what that was," said Richmond, looking at the machine. "Anyway, you're single too, and you're down here with me, so you're no better."
"Ah," grinned Moss, leaning closer and leering. "But Hermione fancies me."
"Does she?"
"Yeah," sneered Moss. "She's giving me the eye, look at her."
Richmond looked up at Hermione, then turned back to Moss. "She's not real," he pointed out.
There was a crash from somewhere near the vicinity of the wall.
"She is," argued Moss. "That was her, banging her tail around to get me to pay more attention."
"That wasn't Hermione," said Richmond. "That was the Praemus coming back."
Moss' back went rigid. "You alright?"
"Yeah, actually," Richmond laughed. "I must have just been freaked out last night. I don't think it can get in."
SLAM!
No sooner had he spoken, the door hit the floor, its hinges torn apart completely. Three Praemus units were already in the room, waiting, ominously still, between the bed and the broken door.
"Shit."
The units did nothing. They sat and waited. Moss gazed around. There was no chance of escaping through the tiny window, but Moss wasn't entirely sure they would need to. To his knowledge, Praemus systems weren't equipped with weapons or defence mechanisms or anything like that. And they weren't moving; just sitting there and waiting.
A familiar buzz registered in his head. Finally placing it, he looked down just in time to see two more units with exposed wires at the legs of the bed.
"Move!" he shouted, grabbing Richmond's arm and pulling him off the bed, as an electric current coursed through the metal frame and into the mattress, setting the satin covers alight. In a blind panic, they bolted for the door, leaping over the amassed units and stopping dead in the doorway to the rest of the office.
The office was full of Praemus units, immovable black slabs covering every surface, every floor. A thousand red eyes glaring up at them.
As one, every single machine advanced a foot. Moss turned back, but the five units that had first accosted them had now gathered in the doorway, barring escape back into the room.
"There!" Richmond cried, seizing Moss by the arm and dragging him at lightening speed to one of the large bookcases that he and Roy used to store their collectable crap. In his haste, Richmond slammed face-first into it, but a moment later, before Moss really had a chance to see what had happened, he was on top of it.
"Come on!" Richmond shouted down. Moss looked back. The machines were closer now, and Moss had no idea how Richmond had managed to climb the bookcase. He felt something knock him on the side of the head, and looked up to see Richmond's hands held down to him. He grabbed on and felt gravity try to force him down as Richmond pulled. He stepped up and felt a shelf break beneath him, covering the advancing units in piles of his own miscellany, and he quickly lifted his leg to find the next shelf, almost like running up the bookcase, until he found himself hauled up to the top, and hopefully to safety.
He shifted position next to Richmond and looked down. The units were still. Those tiny, blazing red eyes stared up, constant and watchful, never moving. He knew the units were waiting, but there was nothing he could do. He'd just have to wait too. Wait for morning, or wait for trouble.
"Sorry, Jen, you know, I really did mean to come in yesterday-"
"You didn't have to. I tried to call you and tell you not to."
"I meant to, but I tried to get up and I felt sick, so I threw up, and next thing I knew I was on the bathroom floor and it was four hours later."
"You blacked out and now you've come back to work?"
Roy and Jen entered the office, Roy looking a little sheepish and Jen looking at Roy like he was the weirdest thing she had ever seen. To be fair, he did come close, but Moss had shown her Nanoweb once and she had never thought about things in the same way since.
Suddenly, Jen stopped, looking upwards. She nudged Roy. "I don't think you're the only one who's going to be giving me that look today."
She pointed up to the top of a bookcase, to where Moss and Richmond were perched, fast asleep, leaning on each other and with their arms around each other, looking as close to anything like they had spent the night snuggling.
Jen started to convulse with held-in laughter, but when she looked over and saw Roy doing the same, she couldn't help but let herself go, and the two of them exploded in a fit of wild giggles. Almost falling backwards as she guffawed, she saw the sound of her laughter wake up the sleeping men on the bookcase, both of whom practically jumped out of each others' arms, Moss going very red and Richmond trying to strategically arrange his hair around his face so that no one could see he was anything but his usual ashen white.
"I'd better get to work," Moss asserted, hopping down from the bookcase.
Richmond made a noise of agreement and did the same.
Both moved like shy teenagers who had been caught behind the bike sheds as Richmond retreated through the red door and Moss went to check which jobs were the day's priorities.
When Roy went for his lunch, he could feel a dull ache that was quite a relief from the pneumatic-drill searing that had been going through his head the day before. As he took his lunch, a foot-long he had picked up from Subway on the way in after having foreseen that he would not want to have to go outside on his break, Jen came out from her office, smiling wearily, but with almost no trace of tension on her face.
"You alright?" she asked.
"Yeah," he replied. "Managed to sort out that static problem on twenty-second. Takes the mind off the…" He tapped his forehead.
"Have you still got it?" asked Jen, her eyes widening slightly.
"Yeah, but it's not too bad today," answered Roy. "I think it went away earlier, but then I thought about it having gone away and it came back."
"You were probably just ignoring it."
"Yeah, I think so."
They sighed, both at the same time.
"Roy, could you possibly do me a favour?" Jen asked.
"Sure, what?"
Jen smiled gratefully. "I know you're on your break, but would you mind just manning the phones for me if they ring?" she requested. "There haven't been as many calls lately, and I've just finished sorting all the jobs into some kind of priority order, so I was just going to have a little sleep."
Roy nodded. "That's fine."
"It's just if they ring; I mean, I've got a feeling they won't-"
"Jen, it's fine."
He smiled at her, and she smiled back. "Thanks," she said, as she went back into her office.
Roy finished his sandwich, disappointed when it didn't really fill the hole in his appetite. He briefly considered going out for a KFC or something anyway, but he reasoned that by the time he had got there, paid for it and brought it back, his break would be over and he would have to wait until work finished, and then he'd be eating more cold food.
With a little more time to go, he idly flicked through one of Jen's old 'Love and Rockets', enjoying it more than he remembered, and feeling somewhat triumphant that he had introduced Jen to the comic in the first place.
He checked his watch and found that it was two o' clock already, and Moss would be waiting to be relieved. He crossed the room to Jen's office and knocked. When he got no response, he knocked a little louder, and then went in anyway.
"Oh shit!" he cried.
Hearing his outburst, Jen opened her eyes, and then gasped in horror as she saw the two nodes attached to her own head. "Oh my god!"
"Okay, okay," Roy waffled as he looked around the room. The nodes were attached to the Praemus system, which had somehow manoeuvred itself onto the office wall near the door. What the hell?
But Jen; he needed to help Jen. "Right, I'm going to cut them," he announced, deciding that this would probably be safer than trying to pull the nodes out. His eyes skimmed the desk. "Do you have any scissors?"
"Top drawer," answered Jen, her voice higher than normal.
He ran to the other side of the desk, opened the drawer and found what he was looking for. He leant over Jen and snipped through one wire, then the other. The wires fell to the ground, and a moment later the nodes in Jen's head followed them. The Praemus system just stayed motionless, stuck onto the wall.
"What was it doing?" Roy gasped.
"Life insurance," was all Jen could say. "I need some life insurance."
"I've seen all of this before," Moss told them after work, when he and Roy returned to the basement together and Jen, who had spent most of the afternoon holed up with Richmond in his room, had managed to coax the now extremely heavily made-up goth out into the open.
"And you didn't think to tell us?" complained Roy.
"I did at first," Moss reminded him, that quirky, assured "Mossitude" shining through. "My old friend, John Ward," he went on, "he had problems with his computer shutting down, screen freeze, static electricity, money disappearing from the bank, the unit moving around when no one was looking, attaching itself to his head to advertise services… His life even started gong wrong; his wife left him and everything. It's all the same."
"What caused it?" asked Jen.
Moss' gaze fell to the floor. Jen was sure she could see tears forming in his eyes.
"I don't know," he admitted, his voice quiet. "I didn't look at it. I didn't even go near it. I was scared of it."
A few tears started to roll down his cheeks, and the group as a whole seemed to move closer.
"It's okay," said Jen soothingly, putting a hand on his. "There's reason to be scared of that thing."
"It didn't even do anything to me," Moss sobbed, catching Jen's fingers between his own and grinding them without realising it. "I just saw it and I couldn't get any closer."
"So what happened next?" Jen asked, trying not to let her pain show. "How did it end?"
Moss sniffed. "John had a heart attack."
There was a collective gasp, then a moment of silence.
"Should we… destroy it then?" Roy asked eventually.
They looked around at each other. Richmond nodded.
"Did he do anything to trigger the heart attack?" Jen asked.
"I don't know," Moss answered, still crying softly.
The other three exchanged glances. After a moment, Jen got up, retrieved Moss' cricket bat, held it out to her side and swung. It made a satisfying smash, and she smiled as she raised the bat again.
At least until Richmond's frantic cry of "Oh god!" jerked her back to reality. She spun round and saw that Roy had fallen to the floor and blood was gushing from his nose. Richmond was kneeling next to him, obviously at a loss as to what to do, and Moss had gone pale and rigid, his eyes wide open and his hands covering his mouth.
She joined Richmond on the other side of Roy's body. She looked him over and tried to think, but it was no use; she was just as clueless as Richmond was. "Call an ambulance," she shouted up to Moss, before seeing sense. "No, wait, wait," she stammered. "I'll call the ambulance."
She left Richmond with Roy and ran for the nearest phone. Moss didn't move an inch.
The ambulance came quickly and took Roy away. Jen, as the most stable, was allowed to stay with him until he reached hospital, but then he was whisked away to intensive care. Moss and Richmond arrived in a taxi a little while later, but the three of them were ushered into a waiting room, to wait to hear whether Roy lived or died.