What was it about the 1st of the month that made Saffron so grouchy? Knowing her it would probably be something obvious that she would regret forgetting when the time came to it. It must be something big, she thought, taping a piece of micro pore onto the bloody slash across the back of her hand carefully. The entire maintenance staff seemed pretty anxious about something and most had been avoiding her all day. It was terribly difficult to repair program entries with someone without actually looking him or her in the eye.
A single droplet of blood fell onto the first aid kit as she rolled up a long line of crepe to dress the wound with. It was only small but the lightest prods upon an artery with a screwdriver can cause quite a constant flow of blood. Hurriedly, she unravelled the crepe around her palm, restricting its movements ever so irritatingly but, as far as she was concerned, it was worth confining her hand to dressing rather than staining the shockingly white floor with a sickly red colour. It'd just be yet another job on your long list of 'things to do', she thought with a jaded sigh.
"We've got another malfunction on 427," an equally weary voice crooned further down the hall. A waving hand caught Saffron's eye and she climbed to her feet and walked over to the aforementioned number '427' where a man crouched, examining the green door sceptically. He was barely visible in his white jumpsuit but, thankfully, his tanned flesh and bleached hair were enough to mark the outline of a human being amidst the jungle of pallor. He took a screwdriver from one of the many pockets of his jumpsuit and absently tightened on the door handle.
"A broken door handle? Hardly cause for alarm, wouldn't you say?" Saffron scoffed, crouching down beside the startled man and placing a hand upon the door. It was the same as any other door in the hallway, except, of course, for the extremely large dents at its foot. It was also warm, a sure sign of problems, just like a rise in temperature for those suffering flu, which Saffron thought was actually quite endearing for a door. Her superiors had rejected Saffron's requests for sneezing doors however. She frowned at the evident scuffing marks imprinted in the centre of the dents and imagined the shiny black shoes that had been used to vandalize the door. She was seriously considering installing surveillance cameras in the hallway, catching the culprit a great interest to her and the majority of the maintenance crew, when the sound of the aforementioned black shoes could be suddenly be heard resounding down the hallway. The footsteps stopped somewhere behind her, chorused by the distinct sound of silence that could signal only one thing. 'Routine inspection'….