"Lena, honey, are you alright?" Missy asked, almost rhetorically. She could tell by the smudged eyeliner on her face, her mussed hair and the dark circles under her eyes that the brunette had pulled an all nighter and never left the office; hunched over her computer, secretively typing away the hundreds lines of code she could bring into existence whenever she over focused. There was genius in her work, Missy thought, and it was also the trait of a genius to forget about the basic principles of personal hygiene when their heads are so wrapped around something.
"Yeap." Lena answered without taking her eyes off the monitor. The drumming of her fingers against the keyboard was loud and relentless.
"You don't look alright to me." Missy pursued, moving her chair closer to Lena's.
"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?" Lena said, eyeing Missy, a slight hint of annoyance in her voice.
"I don't know, maybe because you have been working for 36 hours straight, and I haven't seen you leave your desk other than for getting more coffee… and going to the bathroom I hope."
"Well… no rest for the wicked, right? Kelly has been breathing down our necks. Gotta get this baby up and running by noon." Lena said, running her hands through her messy hair.
"Since when do you care about what Kelly says?" Missy asked.
"Never did. Never will." Lena said with a half smile. " But truth is I wasted a lot of time the other day and I need to get this to work."
"No one can blame you for getting the runs, you know?" Said Missy, much to Lena's dismay. "Besides, it's just a demo. No one expects the demo to be free of bugs. As long as it runs like it usually does we will be fine. What worries me is that in your sleep deprived state you mess something up."
"I didn't have the run- Jeez, never mind. I have been flaming the night before our last three or four demos, right? I can handle a tiny all nighter this time, dontcha think?"
"I hope so." Missy said, moving her chair back to her station. Lena sighed. She wasn't sure she could actually handle it. The application was barely running and for every bug Lena fixed there were three or more waiting around the corner, all of them keen on making the engine crash and burn. She wasn't thinking straight. Her brain was begging for unconsciousness, but she couldn't have it. She was afraid of falling asleep. Afraid was not a term she was particularly fond of, especially when she didn't know what she was afraid of. A ghost? Her own overstressed mind? Mental disease? A very resourceful stalker? She didn't know. But she could give it a name. Bill Cipher. She couldn't forget that name even if she tried. The dream felt oddly real and made her wonder if that was what people called 'Lucid Dreaming'. 'He' felt very real. His menacing aura, his annoying echoey voice, the urge to punch him in the face. But dreams are not real. And audio files don't talk back to you. And your phone doesn't send itself the same message over and over again.
She would try to rationalize it, to make sense of the things that had happened. The more anxious she became, the more she intellectualized. Looking at the problem from every single point of view she could think of, satisfying the need to dissect every aspect of the situation and clinically examine it and feeling good about herself for a second. As if every problem could be solved by sheer brilliance of thought. She could come up with a thousand theories of how and why but then none of them could explain why her phone was getting the same text message every fifteen minutes and why it came from her own number, and she would sank back into her computer feeling defeated and work on her code. That, she could make sense of. At least for the day.
"Always watching"
Someone was very persistent in ensuring she got the message. So Lena did the only logical thing and crashed her phone against her desk.
She tried to remain fixed on her work until the stench of cheap cologne signaled Kelly's arrival. Lena caught him leering at her out of the corner of her eye as he greeted everybody else in the office. Lena lowered her head and dived in her work, trying to avoid further eye contact. But Kelly was like a shark, circling his prey, able to detect the faintest smell of fear instead of blood.
"Nice to see you working for once." Lena felt his breath behind her neck and turned quickly, rattled by his presence. Kelly was wearing a navy suit with a white shirt and blue tie, the kind he would always wear when he was to meet the client, and even though all of Kelly's suits looked fancy they never fitted him right. The jacket was always too big and roomy and made Lena wonder if it wasn't an unconscious attempt on his part to look manly and imposing.
"Too bad I can't say the same thing about you." Lena answered.
"I hope you got that thing up and running, because your ass is on the line here." kelly said, fixing the knot on his tie.
"How encouraging. Yes, it will be up and running. I have fixed most bugs and now it's barely crashing."
"Barely?" Kelly said, a small vein on his forehead popping up. He ran his hand through his blond hair and clenched his fist, his knuckles turning white.
"It will be fixed by noon, don't worry." Lena said.
"Noon? Kavanagh are you freaking kidding me, lad?" Said Kelly. Lena perceived the suppressed rage in his voice. "The client is waiting in my office."
"Come again?" Lena said and went as pale as Kelly's knuckles on his clenched fists.
"I told you the meeting was pushed forward." Kelly said through gritted teeth. The fact that he didn't reply with a sexual innuendo meant he was very serious about the whole thing. He reached for his phone in his pocket and scrolled through his screen searching for something. A contempt smile appeared in his face when he found what he was looking for.
"I sent you a text yesterday. You said you were ok with it. Look." He said, holding the phone screen inches away from her face.
Kelly wasn't lying. 'Roger that, boss 3' the message said. Lena stared in disbelief for a moment and verified with horror that the message did came from her number.
"Oh for fuck's sakes, don't tell me you were wasted. Again. You-"
"Watch your language, mate. Of course it's ready, I'm messing with you. Jeez, Kelly, you are so gullible. Bet you also bought that lil heart-y I added at the end, right?" Lena lied, trying to brush off her inner turmoil with her more than usual facade of confidence. There was a sly chance the application would work and she was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing here prematurely defeated.
"Pick up your laptop and let's go, the guy is waiting for us." Said Kelly, and she obeyed.
Lena followed him to the conference room, and even though she wasn't going to give up just yet she wondered for a brief second if those were her last moments as a tax paying citizen with a false yet stable sense of financial security.
"They sent someone pretty important this time, so try to behave and be professional, and don't fuck it up." Said kelly, without turning around, making her feel more and more like a dead man walking.
"Someone important?" Lena asked.
"Yeah. A board member or something. He's surely dressed like one, black suited and all. Looks foreigner to me, that's for sure. Don't know why they would send someone like that for a demo of a cheap mobile app." Kelly replied. "But it's not our job to figure out why they do what they do, only to keep them happy."
An unsettling feeling creeped up Lena's spine as Kelly reached for the knob on the conference room door. A foreigner wearing an expensive suit is a broad description of a large majority of the business world population, and yet something felt oddly familiar and creepy at the same time, a combination Lena did not enjoy.
"Mr. Cipher, so sorry to keep you waiting." Lena heard Kelly said as he opened the door. She peeked inside anxiously. Her knees trembled when her eyes met the man sitting at the end of the table, making her hair stand on end. The same man that had intruded her dream a couple of days before. Bill. He looked at Kelly with a face of utter nonchalance, his chin resting on his right hand, clearly bored by the wait. He was just like she remembered him. His black suit embroidered with a golden pattern that, unlike Kelly's, was perfectly tailored. His blond hair with black streaks. His angular face line and tanned complexion. His left eye was also covered, but with a medical pad instead of an eye patch.
"I just hope this is worth my time." He said, stretching his arms.
"Of course, it will be! I would like to introduce you to the technical lead of this project, Mr. Cipher. This is Lena Kavanagh, one of our senior developers, she will be running the demo for you today." Kelly said taking the sit next to Bill's.
Bill's golden eye traveled from Kelly to the woman standing frozen at the edge of the door.
"Miss Kavanagh, so nice to finally meet you." Bill said, a sardonic smile on his face. "Come, please, take a sit. I want to hear ALL from you." He continued, pointing the other chair next to him.
For all that Lena tried, she couldn't, once again, make sense of what was going on. But there were two things she knew by then. First, and most importantly, whatever was going on, whatever crazy and unlikely abnormality was happening, it was not just in her head. She knew that man, the man that was sitting there, talking to Kelly. She already knew how he was going to look like the second she heard Kelly say his name.
And the second thing she knew was that whoever, or whatever, that man Bill was, he was certainly enjoying the situation. His amused expression gave it away.
Her brain fired up, a myriad of possibilities crossing her sleep deprived mind in a second. Her thought process was at full speed. Was he dangerous? Certainly, but he was not an imminent danger. At least to her physical health.
She stared back at Bill, defiantly, and smiled back.
"Indeed, Mr. Cipher." Lena said, and sat at the other end of the table, trying to keep as much distance as possible between them. "Let me start by telling you how honored we are to have someone of your caliber for this demo."
"How kind of you to notice." Bill said.
"Specially after a recent eye surgery I presume! he he" Kelly added nervously, making everyone in the room slightly uncomfortable for a brief second. Bill proceeded to ignore Kelly's small talk and kept his stare fixed on Lena.
"Makes me wonder why our client would send someone so overqualified for a simple demo" Lena asked, opening her laptop.
"Well, Miss Kavanagh, no one 'sent me'. No one can make me do anything, actually. I came here by my own choice." Bill said, mockingly.
"We have that in common." Lena replied as she typed away, getting the application running them to test it. "Unfortunately, that's where I think the similarities between us end."
"Well, yes, I have way more money than you. And power. So yes, that's where they end." Bill replied, leaning back on his chair.
The room felt silent. Kelly looked at Bill, then at Lena, then back at Bill, feeling oddly misplaced.
"Mr… Kelly was it? Said that you are a senior developer. For how long have you been working here, Lena, can I call you Lena?" Bill asked.
"Not really that long, Bill, can I call you Bill? Lena replied.
"Well you can, but you must be a psychic! I never gave you or Kelly my first name." Bill said, cheerfully.
"Came to me in a dream." Said Lena, arms crossed with a tired look on her face.
"Well, Kavanagh, let's start the demo. I'm sure Mr. Cipher has better things to do right now." Kelly said.
Lena swallowed. She connected her laptop to the room's projector and ran the application. She knew that if this was the guy behind all the weird things that had happened to her in the last few days, then the whole project, and the demo by association, was most likely going to crash and burn. She didn't mind, she could get another job. But Missy and the other guys on her team really depended on this. They had families, there were people that depended on them. And even though she couldn't give a rat's ass about the project, she knew that they had worked hard on it. Harder than her. And now not only her ass but everyone else's was on the line because this psycho wanted to play mind games with her.
Her computer's desktop was now on display in the projected image on the wall. Bill was again leaning against his chair with his hands behind his neck. Lena thought he looked almost excited for whatever was going to come next.
"What's going on Kavanagh?" Kelly asked, trying to stay composed as a black screen appeared where the program they had been working for the last couple months was supposed to be running.
"I don't know, it's supposed to be working, the code is running just fine to me." Lena said. "Take a look at the code if you don't believe me."
"That's your job, not mine! YOU are supposed to know about this things Kavanagh" -Kelly said, his tone rising as he spoke.
"I KNOW what my job is. I DID my job. I'm a developer. I write code. The code is fine. It's running JUST fine." Lena answered, both hands on the table.
"Well, it's clearly not. The screen is black. It's doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out, so I thought at least a college dropout could. My bad." Kelly said, pointing to the black screen projected on the wall. Lena hid her face in her hands, too tired to fight back, as Kelly lashed out at her when an image appeared making them both end their quarreling.
A video started playing, a video of a dead rabbit lying on the ground and a time lapse of its decomposition.
"Is this a joke to you, Kavanagh?" Kelly mumbled, eyes gleaming with fury.
"Kelly I swear to God I have no idea what this is." Lena started, trying to stop the video as she spoke "I have no idea how this got her-" the deafening noise of a rising shepard's tone caught her mid sentence. It was loud enough to make Kelly cover his ears, and loud enough to drown out the curses he was yelling at Lena, who caught a glimpse of Bill's face as she reached for the projector's cable, trying to unplug it. He was delighted by the whole situation.
Kelly was still lashing out at Lena and most of her ancestors on her mother's side of the family when she managed to turned off her computer, making both the video and the noise stop.
"Mr. Cipher I'm terribly sorry for this, I can't believe this happened, I can assure you that none of the people on this project will be working for us at the end of the day. This is in no way a reflection of this company's business character" Kelly begged with watery eyes, running his hands through his hair.
" ..." Bill said.
"Uhm, it's actually Kelly, sir."
"You are in no position to correct me now, are you? As I was saying, I trust that this incident will by no means deteriorate our excellent business relationship in days to come. I will tell you what we are going to do. Keep your team, do not fire them. You'll need them to get this thing running by the end of the day. I can't come myself but I will send another team of executives to test the demo this afternoon, the actual demo… not this… joke. I will not mention this… 'incident' to any of them, so there will be no repercussions. If anyone knew what happened my hand would be forced into breaking our contract and, of course, suing you, with would certainly end in bankruptcy" Bill said.
"Force your hand? I thought you said no one could make you do anything." Lena added.
Bill glanced at her coldly and rose from his chair. He was not bulky like Kelly, but Lena couldn't help to notice how commanding his figure was when standing up, even though she didn't feel like admiring the man that was, by unknown means, tearing apart her work. "However," Bill continued "I can't overlook the fact that your team leader not only disrespected me but also jeopardized my company's money and time with this little sick game of hers. So in order for me to overlook this, I do demand that you fire this woman immediately."
"You don't need to do that. Because I fucking quit." Lena said as tough as she could and stormed out of the room unwilling to let either Bill or Kelly get the last word. She reached for the emergency staircase after a brief stop in her desktop to pick up her belongings. She couldn't answer Missy's questions, she felt her voice choking up as she tried to hold back her tears. She left before anyone could see her cry.
She got out of the building through the back door, and collapsed against the alley wall.
"What the fuck is going on" She said, as she finally let out her tears of anger. Lena pulled out a cigarette and lit it up with trembling hands. "What the fuck am I going to do?"
"For starters, you can stop cursing. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, Blackstar?" She heard a voice next to her said. It was as loud as it was confident, and made her flinch like a scared cat to the opposite side and fall on her back. Bill Cipher was leaning against the wall, wearing a matching overcoat on top of his black suit, with a black eye patch again covering his left eye.
"YOU SICK PIECE OF SHIT WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?" Lena yelled, trying to get back on her feet.
"Wow, easy breezy. You already know what I want, haven't I told you already?" Said Bill with a smile, offering his hand to Lena.
"You are trying to destroy my life, that's what you are trying to do. Stay away from me you sick bastard." Lena snapped, hitting his hand in refusal.
"Destroy your life? Blackstar I'm going to REBUILD your life! Do you think I just go around offering THIS kind of deal to every mortal I run across? How often do you think I go to this length to make a human unemployed?" Bill said as blue fire engulfed his hands. Lena stared at the flames in in disbelief.
"Who are you? What do you want with me?" Lena asked again, a tint of fear in her voice.
"I see you are not as cocky in the physical realm as in the mindscape. Good. It will make negotiations easier." Bill said, the blue flames extinguished and he offered again his hand to Lena.
"Negotiations?" Lena asked, confused. She reluctantly took his hand and stood up, cautious of what might happen if he rejected him again.
"Of course, business negotiations! I'm talking about our contract, but let's not discuss that here. Let's go get you a pint. That's what you people do when you lose your jobs right?" Bill said with a smirk.
Lena examined Bill as she dusted her clothes off with her hands, she didn't know if was the lack of sleep or the sudden need for alcohol but she found herself nodding at Bill's proposal and followed him out of the alley.
