Chapter 4

Day three was Sunday.

Zoe trudged darkly into Charles' office slightly after 9 am. Her groundwork for being his assistant finally laid, she hoped he wouldn't ask her any questions too soon about what she had read- before he'd wandered in at 4 am, a tad tipsy, she'd made copies of what she deemed "forgettable" material. Then, ignoring her bosses' inebriated state, she quietly laid her study materials on his desk, and practically dragged herself to her room, thanking whatever ran the universe that there was nobody else sharing her chamber yet. She barely made it to the cot before she was passed out cold.

Needless to say, five hours of sleep after forty-eight hours of grueling brain torture did nothing to help her mental fog, so she nearly fell flat on her face when tripping over the extension cord that ran from a cleverly concealed wall outlet to a vacuum cleaner, which was loudly slurping up the dirt on the floor.

It took Zoe's muddled mind a moment to process that the only two people in the room were herself and the cleaning Klokateer. Mr. Ofdensen was completely missing from the scene.

Briefly Zoe wondered if this meant she had the day off, but then kicked herself. It was highly unlikely, after all Charles had told her, that he would ever give her a day off, let alone without telling her. So, using her abnormally short fused temper as fuel, she summoned the nerve to tap the Klokateer on the shoulder. It was another female, anyway.

The Klokateer turned around quickly, her body language reading as startled, even though she wore the customary hood. She shut off the vacuum cleaner at once, and Zoe cleared her throat.

"Uhm…good morning….do you know where Mr. Ofdensen is today?" She said, nerves jumpy in the base of her skull. The Klokateer shook her head.

"Sorry, I don't have a clue."

"Well…do you know if he left any notes or anything?" Zoe was not looking forward to wandering Mordhaus until she found someone who could tell her what she was supposed to do.

The Klokateer shrugged her broad shoulders.

"Look, I just clean up around here. Good luck finding him, though."

Sighing, Zoe muttered a "thanks" and scanned her boss's desk for any signs of a job to do, but finding nothing, her shoulders slumped. She sat down in his chair, swinging her feet and twiddling her thumbs nervously. The cleaning crew member just looked at her, as if to say, "anyone who sits there unauthorized is usually killed." There she stayed for a good twenty minutes, and would've stayed longer, but when the vacuum cleaner malfunctioned and the maid was shocked to death, she used the well-hidden intercom to nervously call for a member or two of the casualty clean-up crew to come fix the problem. Any other time, this would've scared her out of her wits, but she was just too tired to care. It had been an accident, anyway. There was nothing she could do about it. Before the other Klokateers could arrive, however, she hauled herself up and out of Charles' chair, and was out the door, just looking for something to occupy herself with. Zoe dragged her feet as she lazily wandered down the hall.

And then another hall.

And then another.

She didn't know what time it was, and didn't care. All she knew was she still had the mental willpower to soak up how to get from one place to another in Mordhaus on her own, and did so without putting much thought into it. Looking down at the floor as she mindlessly flitted about the monstrous house, the thought of returning to Charles' office crossed her mind, but was suddenly knocked out of her, along with the wind, as she ran headfirst into what felt like a brick wall.

Dazed, Zoe landed on the floor on her rump before it registered that walls didn't usually say "ouch" in response to a human collision.

Nathan Explosion looked down at her, his green eyes flickering between the pages of his book and the spectacle before him. Shoving a finger between the pages of his latest read, he grunted, holding out a hand.

Zoe grabbed the frontman's massive mitt, and hauled herself to her feet. She dusted herself off, and Nathan eyed her curiously.

"I'm so sorry, Nathan. I should have been looking where I was going." Heat flushed her cheeks. He shrugged.

"S'okay, I guess. Hey, aren't you, uh, supposed to be studying or something?" He asked, only half of him caring about the answer. The other half wanted to go back to being a bookworm.

"I finished early this morning." She answered, feeling some of the tension break. Nathan's brows rose in amazement.

"Wow, all of that stuff? That's, uh, that's a lot. You're pretty fast." Part of him marveled at how fast of a reader she was- the other half was just noticing how utterly tiny she looked from his perspective. It fascinated him. She reminded him of a blade of grass next to a full grown oak tree.

And just like that, she had someone to talk to. Without Charles' iron fist hanging over her head, she suddenly felt a little more like her old self, and smiled at the bespectacled man broadly.

"Could've done it faster but I had to make sure I memorized it all. So…whatcha reading?"

Nathan held the book out for her to see, and she smiled again.

"Nice. Hemmingway was always a favorite of mine."

Nathan nodded, a shred of enthusiasm hanging about him.

"Yeah. He's uh…he's pretty brutal." He mused, wondering what the hell Ofdensen thought she could do to actually assist him, when she seemed so…normal.

A thought crossed the back of his mind that made him shiver like whenever he considered the idea of consciously trying to make a baby. Refusing to confront such a hideous image, he shook his head and blinked a couple times. Zoe ignored his strange behavior, relatively terrified of his sheer size and muscle mass.

"So, Nathan, do you happen to know where Mr. Ofdensen is right now?" She experienced a mixture of hope that he would cure her boredom, and depression at knowing he would be her employer for a long time coming, provided she didn't die waiting to take over her own contracts. She was growing less fond of him with every second she had to spend in his presence. Sure, he was an amazing CFO and general manager, but he was far too stale for her taste in company.

To her discouragement, Nathan shook his head again.

"No, I don't know. Usually he's uh, in his office. If he's not there, then he's…he's…somewhere, I guess."

Zoe sagged in her tracks and pocketed her hands.

"Alright. Thanks anyway, Nathan. Nice talking to you."

"Yeah, you too."

They began to part ways. Nathan reopened his book when she had walked past him, but noticed the black paint on his thumbnail was chipped, and not for the first time that day. He turned abruptly, trying to remember the new assistant manager's name.

"Uh…uh…Zoe!" He barked, proud of himself for recalling it before she rounded the corner. She looked over her shoulder.

"Yes, Nathan?" A tickle of excitement grew in her chest- would someone finally ask her to do something useful? After all, she hadn't studied in college to become someone else's student or secretary.

He held out his hand awkwardly, trying not to look un-metal.

"Uh…Are you any good at like, painting nails?" He wouldn't look at her, cringing at how odd the question sounded. She approached him, however, and wasn't laughing. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Zoe's disappointment in being asked to do something so mundane was quickly transformed into a different feeling. Someone needed her to do something halfway familiar. And it pleased her in a sort of quirky little way that Nathan, so big and fearsome, would ask someone like her for help.

She took his hand in hers gently and examined the nails.

"They're all about ready to chip and peel. Who painted these?"

He shrugged.

"Charles usually gets someone to do it." He muttered.

Girlish determination settled in, and Zoe grinned.

"Well, Charles isn't here, and I've got nothing better to do… I think… so why don't I help you out? If you've got the polish and some remover, I can fix those up for you." Nathan nodded.

"Yeah, I've got some. C'mon."

Minutes later, the odd-looking duo was seated on the giant couch in the main room, Zoe sitting crosslegged due to her choice of a pantsuit that day, holding the most metal frontman's hand delicately in her own as she rubbed away the black polish from his nails with a young woman's level of expertise.

The whole process took about half an hour, and during that time, they found enough to talk about to keep them both thoroughly entertained, from music to childhood, and a long debate over Shakespeare. In fact, when a limping Charles Ofdensen slipped past the door unseen, he found Nathan to be laughing and smiling openly with his assistant, both using goofy voices to declaim Othello by heart. He was surprised, to say the least. He'd half expected her to stay in her room all day or park herself firmly in his office, but she had done what she was actually supposed to do, which was to do what was needed of her and within her range of capabilities in his absence. Part of him was beginning to wonder if she might work out as his assistant after all. She seemed to at least keep one of his boys well-entertained and out of trouble- a practical Godsend to him.

And then the next wave of searing pain hit him, and he continued his off-kilter ascent higher into his own realm in Mordhaus. As soon as he reached his office, he shut the door, panting and forcing himself to get just far enough to sink into his chair. He was exhausted and dizzy, and fought to keep himself conscious as the pain crashed into him harder.

But he had won, in the end, which made it all worthwhile.

Hissing through clenched teeth, Charles procured a small first-aid kit from the lower left hand drawer in his desk. He picked up his bum leg and rested it on the desktop, and placed the bit in his mouth that he kept handy for just such occasions. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he closed his eyes and expertly popped his knee back into joint.

Tears welled up in his eyes and he fought back a sharp scream, but the throb receded to a dull ache shortly thereafter, and he relaxed as best he could. He sighed- he would have thought he'd be used to this by now, but it never got any easier or less sickening to have to do it. He hated having an Achilles heel that was actually his knee. But at least he had the rest of his health. Mostly.

Mechanically and numbly Charles splinted his own leg, and then lowered it to the ground as gently as possible. He stretched, feeling all his other, less damaged joints pop and crack. He needed an aspirin and he needed it quickly. Dry swallowing two from the first-aid kit, he waited until they went down, and then tipped his head back, closing his eyes to the world for just a moment. Images of flashing steel and black canvas danced under his eyelids, but he could not give into sleep. It was barely even one in the afternoon.

He was asleep before he could stop himself.

Meanwhile, more members of Dethklok had personally weaseled their way into Zoe's day plans, and she was now trying to convince a pouting Swede that she had no talent for Guitar Hero whatsoever. He was persistent, though, and eventually, the thought of playing sounded, at the very least, tempting. Nathan was nursing his novel once again, and had all but left the conversation, so she gave in, preparing for certain defeat.

The day waned as night waxed, and she had a sickening feeling of a lack of accomplishment that bit through her fun. When at last Zoe excused herself from Dethklok's now-complete company (desperately wanting to escape Murderface's lengthy speech on the mechanics of playing bass with his cock), she decided to make one last trip to Charles' office to see if he had ever returned.

When she found him, sprawled out in his chair and sound asleep, she was torn between embarrassment and a feeling akin to relief. If she had been in trouble, the day was over now, and he had never called for her presence, so she figured she was in the clear. Still, it felt very strange to see her boss of a total of three days, and the man who had earned himself the title of "robot" worldwide, so very vulnerable.

Nonetheless, her maternal instinct chose that moment to kick in, when she saw the dark circles under his eyes, the suspicious first aid kit out on the desk (of what he used it for, there was no trace), and watched him try to achieve a comfortable position from deep within the world of slumber. It was familiar. It was how her older brother used to look after martial arts lessons, when he sank into the living room chair as a teenager and promptly fell asleep. This reckoning hit her hard, but she pushed it away as quickly as it had come. Ryan was all but dead to her, now.

She sighed- she'd always chided herself for her sudden urges to mother people; it was unhealthy and unprofessional- and quietly moved over to Charles, carefully loosening his tie and removing his glasses. She folded and placed them gently on the desk where he could easily reach them, should he even wake before dawn. Then she went over to his cabinet, pulled out his overcoat, and draped it over his loose figure.

She turned out the lights and shut his door quietly, returning now to her room for some much needed rest. She was sure Charles would make her work extra hard in the morning to make up for a day lost, so she forced herself to fall into as deep and dreamless a sleep as possible.

Only, she did dream, and in her dreams, she was the mother hen once again.