Rain dashed upon the glass and steel canyon-streets of London, drumming against the concrete walls that rose from the riverbank, high above the ancient tarmac and pavements of Old Westminster.
The beige banners of the One Party hung limply from the lampposts as the triumphal broadcast rang out across the capital, the government steaming service reaching out to every holoprojector and screen in the land.
“And finally,” the new Prime Minister announced, drawing his arm back and punching through the air towards the unblinking camera. “We will slash bureaucracy, streamline government processes and reduce Civil Service headcount by ten percent!”
Artificial cheering rose through the tinny speakers, filling the darkened room with a piercing noise. Side by side, burning before the glow of the antique CRT monitor, the two colleagues watched on.
“Well, that’s it then,” Daniel said, shifting unhappily in his seat. As he sighed, his short-sleeved, pit-stained shirt rose to reveal an equator of considerable belly. “Another year, another round. Was only a matter of time.”
He pushed back with his battered and brogued feet, propelling the mass of chair and flesh across the room towards the heavy brown door. The wheels squeaked painfully as he sailed past the rows of empty desks and dead workstations.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” said Terry, the chains on his wrist clattering as he brushed an errant hair from his eyes. They had been ceremonially bound with loose shackles at the arm and ankle in 2194, when the new Neo-Conservative government installed a Full Time Desk policy. “You know what politicians are like: all mouth, no trousers… They can’t keep poking holes in us.”
As Daniel pushed the door shut and strained to reach the locking arm, chair groaning beneath him, he glared, bald head shining with the effort. The condensation dripped down the cracked walls of the Civil Service Containment Bunker as the aircon buzzed overhead, just loudly enough to force them to raise their voices but never moving quite enough air to halt the flow of gently ebbing sticky sweat.
The whole service had been moved down here years ago in 2189, on the orders of the Fiscal Union of Careful Kindness Party, to make room for the sale of all non-essential government buildings.
Terry rolled his eyes and went on.
“There’s only nine of us left, Dan! What are they going to reduce? Cut everything but your arse on the seat?”
“Wouldn’t put it past them…” Daniel grumbled as he worked his chair back to the desk. “I know it’s your first time, but trust me, it’s just the way it is.”
The monitor died as the broadcast ended, letting the darkness cascade back over the room. Silence stretched between them until the weight of it all dragged Terry’s jaw open and he simply had to speak.
“It’s just political bluster,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “They come out with this stuff every election.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Terry?” said Daniel, folding his hands over his belly. “It’s them against us – all of them. All of us!”
Before he could reply, a great knocking came from behind the bolted steel, the vibrations stinging Terry’s feet through the floor.
“Alright, you two, come on out.” A muffled voice echoed around the room. “Let’s get this over with.”
“You’re not supposed to tell them!” another voice hissed, the anger elevating the would-be-whisper to a shout. A cough followed and then: “Don’t worry about him, guys, we just want to chat…”
“Oh, leave it out, Mark, they know what’s what.” The banging came again. “Come on, lads.”
Terry turned to Daniel.
“W-What are they doing?”
“Mark and Jez.” Daniel glared back, his lips thin, but unsurprised. “Eager, ain’t they…”
“No, no this is ridiculous.” Terry gasped. “I’ll… I’ll resign or something, there’s no need for anyone to get hurt.”
Daniel looked him up and down as the hammering continued and their old monitors rattled across the battered desks.
“You’d better not let anyone from the Daily Mail hear you say that! You’re in for life, one way or the other.”
It had been 2166 when the ban on voluntary redundancy had been enforced: the unions had signed it away with the agreement that staff would still get bank holidays off.
Terry ignored him and rose, padding over towards the door, flinching with every step as the blows rang out. He came as close as he dared, before clearing his throat and touching his grubby fingers to the metal.
“Mark? Jeremy? It’s Terry here, can I get a quick comms check?”
There was a pause.
“Hi, Terry, coming through loud and clear,” Jez said after a moment. “You… ah, gonna open the door?”
“Not yet,” he said, ignoring the vocal sighs on the other side. “I just wanted to run a few things by you first. I’ve got Dan here with me and he thinks – you’ll laugh when you hear this – that you’re here to kill one of us, just ‘cos of this new government announcement.” He forced a chuckle and glanced back towards his colleague who sat, head in hands.
There was another pause. The old aircon overhead coughed freely in the silence.
“Well…” Mark began. “I think there’s been a bit of confusion, mate-”
“Listen, Terry,” Jez interrupted, “I know you’re new, but ten percent is ten percent.” He paused. “Rounding up. I mean what are you going to do, ask to be put on a job share?”
Terry gawped.
“He’s not wrong, mate,” Mark admitted. “It’s full time for life, and then it’s full time in the ground. We all know the rules.”
“Well, I don’t!” Terry protested. “And I didn’t join the Civil Service just to start killing my colleagues!” He couldn’t have imagined Granny doing this in her day. She’d never seemed like the sort – at least, from the stories mum and dad used to tell. “What does Senior Leadership have to say about this?”
“They know what needs to be done,” Mark said, sadly. “Can’t be helped, mate!” “Alright then, what if we don’t do it?” Terry said, changing tack. “What if we all go tools-down? They can’t make us do it!”
“Are you thick, Terry?” Jez snapped. “Striking is gross misconduct, it’s about the one thing they can still get you for!”
“Don’t make this anymore difficult than it needs to be, mate,” Mark added. “Just come out, we’ll get this over with and then… well, the rest of us can get on with the job, anyway.”
“So we’ve got to beat each other to death in the dark, is that it?” Terry said, anger suddenly flaring as his voice broke an octave.
“We can put the lights on if that helps,” Jez replied. “Won’t make a difference.”
“Tell you what, why don’t you just open the door and we’ll do Dan in?” Jeremy agreed, lowering his voice, letting the words slip under the door, teasing his ear and his ear alone. Terry glanced back towards his colleague, watching unhappily from his chair. “He’s been here the longest, he’s had a good run.”
“He has only got ‘Met’ on the last thirty-eight end-of-year reviews,” Mark added. “You can’t trust that, mate…”
“No one’s doing anyone in!” Terry shouted.
“Oh, come on, Terry!” Jeremy cried, thumping the door once more. “It’s either you or him, and if I were you, I’d get on the right side of this particular strategic review!”
“Jez, please,” Mark said, trying to calm him.
“No, I’ve had enough!” Jez protested. “He’s being so unreasonable! I say we do them both in – they can always open up recruitment again afterwards.”
“Good luck!” Terry snapped back. “You can just sit out there and rot, then, ‘cos we ain’t gonna let you in.”
“Fine by me, Terry, you sit in there and starve.” Jez chuckled. “We can do it nice and quick or the long and slow, but just know it’s happening, either way.”
Stepping back from the door, Terry looked about the little room. No food, or water for that matter. It was barren but for the two men and their workstations.
Tea and coffee had been banned by the Nordflame government in 2063, and water coolers had been removed a decade later in 2075 by the first Eco-Capitalist Confederation. That single tap in the canteen was all they had: a trickle of hard lukewarm liquid every hour to both drink and wash.
Trotting back over towards his desk, Terry leant down and whispered to his colleague.
“What are we going to do?”
“We could draw straws?” Daniel shrugged.
“No one’s dying!” Terry hissed.
“You tell them that.”
“We… need to escalate this, it’s completely unacceptable behaviour.” He snatched up his headset and quickly found the Cabinet Secretary. A couple of clicks later and the line was ringing.
“Come on, Steve…”
There was another knock at the door. “Come on, Terry!”
The call rang on.
Trying to ignore the look on Daniel’s face, Terry took off the headset and laid it gently on the desk.
“Alright, alright, so he’s not at his desk,” he said, mostly to himself. “But Steve’ll sort this all out, we just need to catch him in office.”
“What? Through them out there?” Daniel chuckled. “Going for Steve seems like the quickest way to get yourself killed!”
Terry turned on him, his jumper creaking ominously as he raised an accusing finger.
“So you just want to stay here and die, do you?”
“Obviously not,” Daniel said, folding his arms defiantly. “But you’re just gonna die if you go out there, anyway! You’re not getting past them.”
“No…” Terry said. “But we might be able to get behind them.”
“What?”
“Just follow me.”
Terry returned to the door. Halfway across the room, he reached over a pair of untouched, dusty desks and wrestled the short divider from between them. It was worn metal, rough and touched with rust from the moisture in the air, but it was enough.
At the door, Terry laid the metal across the floor, wedging it between the legs of the nearby desk. He gave it a push with his battered shoe, seeing how well it held.
Satisfied, he turned to see Daniel had followed and was stretching across the desk to retrieve a heavy keyboard, yellowed with age. He held it tight in both hands but didn’t look any happier for it.
“Ready?” Terry said.
“You haven’t told me what for!” Daniel complained, the groan of the chair adding to his protests.
“Just be ready to run, alright?”
Leaving Daniel to his grumbling, he knocked on the door.
“Hi, Jez, Mark, are you still there?”
“Nowhere else to be, Terry,” Jeremy replied. “How can we help?”
“We’ve decided it’s worth having a proper face to face chat about this, so we’re going to open the door.” Trying to keep his voice from cracking, Terry cleared his throat. “But we want you to promise there won’t be any funny business.”
Jeremy didn’t hesitate. “Of course not. We promise we won’t do anything until everyone’s had the chance to express their opinions in a safe and supportive environment.”
“Are you really- Ow!” Mark spluttered. “Oh, right, yes, that’s right, mate, we promise.”
Terry looked over his shoulder and gave a nod to Daniel. The man was still grumbling, but with his lips firmly closed it was, at least, now silent.
Together, they shuffled closer to the wall, until Terry’s back was flat against it and Daniel’s chair was bumping into the rivets.
“Alight.” Terry announced. “I’m opening up now.”
He reached over and grabbed hold of the locking mechanism, silently thankful no one had got around to removing it. It was always on the cards, but every quote had exceeded the annual budget.
The room rocked as the pins retracted and the door started to swing under its own weight, but Terry barely had time to pull his arm back before the whole thing was booted open and the pair outside charged in.
Jeremy came first, taller than any of them. His filthy trousers didn’t quite reach his shoes, and the sleeves of his grubby shirt were rolled up, ready for action. In either hand was the weighty mass of black plastic stapler.
As he charged through, the growl halfway up his throat, his foot caught the metal, catapulting him to the floor, turning the guttural sound into a panicked yelp.
Mark was so close behind, he caught a heel to the chin as the first man tumbled.
He was shorter than Jeremy, and more round, more filled in. His hair had been cut straight with a paper guillotine to sit just above the top of his cracked glasses, and he held a colossal orange holepunch in his hands, the enamel chipped from the metal and mechanism long failed.
As Jeremy was gathering his senses, Mark stumbled and fell, crashing down on top of him and sending dust into the air.
Terry leapt through the door, putting a few meters between them before turning to see Daniel bring his keyboard down upon the back of Mark’s head as the man started to rise, using the chair’s spring recliner to really drive the point home.
Mark collapsed again with a groan and Daniel spun the chair, his back to Terry as his feet propelled him out the door and down the corridor with surprising speed.
Daniel stuck to that chair like it owed him money. Still on the old contract from 2199, a padded swiveler – with wheels – was one of the few benefits he could still proudly claim.
“Where to now, then?” he gasped, facing Terry, still moving backwards.
“Steve – SLT – they’ll know what to do!” Terry gasped between breaths, emaciated legs already aching from the sprint.
“The only thing they know is how to stab you in the back!” Daniel said, eyes falling past Terry towards the dark office and mess of esteemed colleagues they’d just left behind. “And they’re not the only ones…”
Terry kept his eyes forward as he ran, chest burning, not daring to look back.
“Left!” he barked, almost in a blind panic, his thoughts barely a half-step ahead of his feet as they tore through the pokey bunk room.
It had been in 2222 when a review into the previous centuries’ Work From Home policy concluded that Civil Servants had collectively stolen over two million hours from the taxpayer. The next government had quickly installed beds in the bunker to ensure the debt could be repaid.
But there wasn’t time to dwell on that now and they madly careened through to the main office. More desks spread out before them, empty but for the dust, which kicked up as they stormed past, eyes only for the flat plate of frosted glass, lit from within by a warm glow.
All that stood between them and the Senior Leadership Team offices.
They’d retreated through the door for the final time in 2190, only to emerge for the yearly review season and the occasional disciplinary parade.
Without waiting for Daniel, Terry thumbed the intercom.
“Hello?” he said, wishing he’d paused to breath, struggling to keep the ragged edge from his voice. “Hi, it’s Terry, please could someone come and sort all this out?”
Daniel wheeled closer, lips pressed together at an odd angle, halfway between a wince and a cringe. He glanced back as distant curses echoed off the metal.
“Please,” Terry said, again. “Mark and Jeremy have gone funny – we really need to escalate this please!”
“They’re coming…” Daniel whispered and pulled at his sleeve.
Terry glanced away, just for a moment, but when he looked back, he was sure he saw a dark shape moving through the glass, just a flash – a hint – of life.
Daniel tugged again, harder this time. “Get down!”
Dragged down by his colleague, Terry just about managed to get himself out of sight behind a desk as Mark and Jeremy leapt into the room.
“Enough games, you bastards!” Jeremy roared, red in the face, staplers spinning in his hands, a nasty bruise already forming on his cheek. “Time to clock out!”
“Bet you think that was real funny, don’t you?” Mark joined him, stumbling slightly from Daniel’s heavy blow to the back of his skull, as he brandished his holepunch wildly. “You’ll be begging me to reduce your headcount before I’m done, mate!”
Daniel poked Terry with his foot and he looked over, only to see the man had laid the seatback of his chair flat whilst keeping his legs against the floor.
It would have been comical – if they weren’t about to die.
“What now?” Daniel growled, as loud as he dared.
“Run!” Terry hissed. What else was there?
As he took off, he spared a glance back, and was shocked to see Daniel had followed, pressing close enough for the discomfort on his face to block out all else, until suddenly the cry cut through all else in his mind.
“Oy!”
Terry led them out, down the next corridor, into the darkness. The lights had long since given up here, and as the compound had failed, they’d pulled back and back into fewer and fewer rooms, leaving the worn and worried sections to the rats and rust.
But they were still better than whatever Mark and Jez –
He didn’t get to finish the thought. One moment he was running and the next the metal underfoot vanished. Then he was falling, along with what seemed like half the bunker. Blackness swallowed him as an almighty crack shot through the place, blotting out all else, even the sound of Daniel’s rumbling chair.
It took him a few moments to realise he’d stopped moving, and then a few more to start breathing again. The dust was thick in his nose, and he could taste stale moisture in the air, but as he stood and gingerly stretched, he realised he was mostly unharmed. A couple of bruises when he woke up tomorrow, perhaps.
If he woke up tomorrow.
Daniel advertised his own survival with a groan and Terry turned to watch him flip his chair upright and slide back into it like he’d come home after a long day at the office.
“Terry! Dan!” The cry cut through the moment. Jez. “Can you hear me?”
The pair eyed each other up in silence, barely daring to breathe.
“You boys alright down there?” Mark added. Then a moment later, more quietly. “Well, that takes care of that, don’t it, mate?”
Terry listened as they retreated, arguing amongst themselves. Then his eyes fell to Daniel.
“What now?” Daniel whined.
Terry shook his head. “Same plan, we’ve got to get to Steve!”
“Forget, Steve!” he hissed. “He won’t protect you!”
Ignoring him, Terry looked about, eyes adjusting to what little light remained. Vague shapes were emerging all around, all draped in cloth. Terry focused on the closest he realised quickly they were chairs. Padded, wide and probably a damn sight more comfortable than anything left in the office – besides Daniel’s, perhaps.
Daniel caught up and together, they froze at the sight, as if the furniture itself might raise an accusing finger and start screaming. Then something else caught Terry’s eye and he pressed on, between the stacks into a little clearing.
One wall was flat and grey, as expected, but from the other protruded a great slab of black stone. On top of that, were a few twisted metal pipes and handles, as well as what looked like an old computer, with a tiny screen facing outwards towards him.
Fear forgotten, he stalked over to it and peered into the shadows. There was a sink and a couple of glass-fronted fridges, long empty now, but…
Terry glanced at the metalwork suspiciously. A bar? What kind of place was this?
Feeling his teeth working at his bottom lip, he stood up and turned to survey the room, properly now. His parents had been so proud of the fact his grandmother had been a Civil Servant – it was the whole reason he’d put his submission in.
To be like her, to make a difference! To be part of a professional body that had standards.
Was this really all it had been, some kind of underground drinking den?
“This is out of bounds, Terry! Forbidden! We should get out whilst we still can,” Daniel said, squeaking as he wheeled closer. “And my chair’s taken a beating after all that, no thanks to you! Can we just find a way out?”
Terry ignored him, running a filthy hand through his greasy hair, feeling his shoulders heave. It wasn’t right.
Turning away from his colleague, he spotted the empty wall beside the bar. The stacks of chairs didn’t make it that far, with smaller, thinner stacks of square things rising in their place.
Captivated with the horrors he’d already seen, Terry felt his feet dragging him over. Wincing, but unable to stop himself, his fingers picked at the cloth, eagerly uncovering the certain debauchery that lay beneath.
As it fell away, Terry paused, paralysed by the hundreds of tiny faces staring back.
It was a photo. An old one at that, printed with real ink, with a few hundred little white, brown and black faces grinning back from sun-bleached paper.
He quickly pushed it to the side, only for another cutting of some distant past to appear beneath him. This one had two men shaking hands, grinning, an unreadable certificate between them, indistinct black text clearly proud of something. The next one was more modern, but whatever the holoprojector had once displayed was lost to a dead battery.
He set it aside and leafed through another couple, only to pause as he was about to put a worn coloured photo aside. A face stood out to him, there, in the front row. It looked just like his mum, but for the snow-white hair and yellow cardigan.
Granny.
There she was beaming, full of pride, and though he had never met her, Terry felt like he knew all he needed to from the grainy picture.
What would she say if she saw the state of all this now? Rolling wherever she was buried, no doubt – and with the subsidence issues, Terry could only hope it was nowhere nearby.
He sadly smiled down at the crowded photo. Hundreds. How long ago had that been? Eyeing up the other piles, he reluctantly placed the picture down and went to the next.
Certificates. Achievements of years long gone. Excellence, successes, all shared, all left to rot. Fumbling through, he read each as he found it, trawling forward through time until he found the newest one he could.
- An award for Strategic Developments in Logistics and Plans.
Terry didn’t know what any of those words meant, but he recognised a long dormant feeling he hadn’t had a hand on in… in a long time. Recognition.
He thought about all the people in that photograph, the rows and rows behind Granny. How many other people’s grannies had filled those seats? And Grandads, for that matter.
Generations stretching backwards, all the way back to when this was a proper place, a respectable place. All those smiles, buried in a vault, underneath petty politics and a good headline.
He fumbled through a few more as the feeling welled, until he finally turned back to the bar, a grave desecrated by the step of his foot and the wheel of Daniel’s chair.
Terry had to look away from the mass grave of the Civil Service and closed his eyes, feeling his head spin. This place had used to be something, it used to mean something – more than just a job.
Those smiles weren’t like the ones he stared into every day on his monitor, they were real.
When he opened his eyes again, he whispered one last goodbye and set Granny aside, picking restlessly through another few staff photos. Hundreds, down to dozens, down to tens, down to… Down to not a lot. A complete record of an organisation in decline, until it was small enough to segregate and lock up in here, under pain of dismissal.
Not so much institutional memory as it was institutional dementia. And if Terry had known before he’d joined… well, he wouldn’t be here, of that much, he was sure.
Daniel was saying something, and it took Terry a few moments to focus on the words.
“What?”
“This definitely ain’t right, Terry,” he was saying. “I’m gonna find a way back up, I don’t like this one bit.”
“Fine,” Terry replied. “Best of luck with Mark and Jez.”
With that, he turned and crossed the room, through the stacks of chairs as he headed for where he hoped the far door might be.
He would have been lying to himself if the sounds of Daniel’s squeaky wheel meekly following hadn’t been some kind of relief – no matter how reluctant it may have been.
They were all in this together, after all.
Terry found the mechanical arm, not doubting for a moment that it would work. The door rumbled as the bolts retracted and he pulled it open.
More dust fell, like a smothering wave, cascading down over him and Daniel, only this time he remembered to keep his mouth shut.
Ahead, a narrow stairway spiralled upwards.
“Hello?” He leaned forward and looked up as Daniel hesitantly wheeled closer.
“Well, that’s it, then,” Daniel whispered from his hip. “No one’s there, we can turn around, now.”
“I’m going up,” Terry said, more for himself than for Daniel. Then he paused. “We have got to go up.”
Daniel’s lips twisted with a spasm as his instincts fought his common sense.
“Gonna need a hand with the chair,” he said, eventually.
Slowly exhaling through his nose, Terry turned.
“Fine.”
It was a struggle, but together they managed it, Terry up ahead pulling the chair up over each step, feeling the impact in his elbows. Daniel tried his best to push from below, but he had enough trouble getting himself up, let alone the weight of the padded seat.
At the top, Terry just about managed to get the door open and stumble though into another darkened room. Panting, he stood a few steps away, trying to get a lungful of clear air and failing miserably.
“Terry, come back!” Daniel cried.
Before he could reply there was a distant thunk of something fleshy hitting metal and someone swore.
“Shhhh!” a voice hissed.
“Hello?” Terry called.
He peered around the room, seeing the wall a meter away and staring until his vision managed to focus on the cable that ran down to a clunky old light switch.
A few steps took him close enough and he flicked it without hesitation.
Light flooded the room, burning away the shadows and revealing the hidden enclave that lay beyond. Or, at least, the space where it should have been.
The Senior Leadership Offices.
Terry hadn’t known what to expect, not really. Marble, perhaps, or wood, or maybe just some plush wallpaper. Anything but more stained, pitted metal and rows and rows of bunkbeds, stretching off in an unhappy echo of the dormitory somewhere on the other side of the glass door.
Together, Terry and Daniel stared, barely even recognising the few figures that crouched between the bunks, shining away from the light.
Through an open arch, he could see a series of desks, two abreast, facing a grubby whiteboard stained with endless years of red, blue and green streaks that had somehow faded into the most base of greys.
Looking the other way, he saw a canteen, no different from his own. Metal benches, dented tables and a tap dribbling lukewarm water.
“Is this it?” Terry breathed. Mostly to himself.
The mass of bodies whispered, then groaned, as an elbow was dug into some ribs.
Terry managed to pull his gaze back to the pile as a figure unfolded itself reluctantly and stepped out into the walkway.
As Terry recognised the man before them, he felt his throat turn as dry as the long-disabled kettle outside. Behind him, Daniel whined softly, sliding into his shadow, hiding his bulk as best he could.
“Now, Terry, I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” the Cabinet Secretary began. “But I strongly advise you to go back the way you came, this instant.”
An hour ago, Terry would have listened. He would have obeyed without question. But all he could see now was his trembling fingers and the adrenaline working through the man’s jaw.
“We need help!” Terry said, so loudly the others in the pile yelped. “The others went mad. They tried to kill us!” He looked back. “Isn’t that right, Dan?”
“Mmm…”
Terry pressed on. “You’ve got to help us, Steve! Tell them to stop!”
The Cabinet Secretary nodded and tried to make it look sad.
“Of course, the news was a shock, and we’re here to support you through it.”
“So you’ll help?” Terry said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Of course!” Steve said, on surer ground now. “I know this isn’t what anyone wants to hear, but this is a great opportunity to give the civil service a dynamic, versatile edge to deliver efficiently and effectively against our goals and objectives, in line with expected behaviours.”
There was a pause as Terry tried to keep up.
“We’re all in this together,” Steve continued. “As a team, on the frontlines, and I don’t want anyone to think we’re not listening.”
Terry glanced back to Daniel, a touch of triumph infecting his smile.
“Of course,” Steve went on carefully. “We need to do this properly. Essential functions can’t be compromised.” He turned to the quivering mass on the floor. “Can they, team?”
They slowly untangled themselves, and one managed to make it upright before the rest. Terry recognised her – Karen, the head of finance.
“Of course!” she squawked. “Finance has got to be exempt. We still have a responsibility to the public purse, and with our newly approved annual budget coming in at well over £100, it’s essential we have the resources to manage this properly.”
The others leapt up after that, desperate not to be the last, all crying out one after the other.
“Of course, this change regrettably won’t affect the essential audit and advisory function of the strategy team…”
“It’s essential we make sure this change won’t negatively impact our Data Protection and Security requirements, so we won’t be seeing much change for my area…”
“And due to the vital nature of my work, ensuring everyone is supported and that our duty of care is upheld, I’ll naturally be exempt from this, too…”
Steve, the Cabinet Secretary, nodded along as he turned back to Terry, smile restored, control asserted.
“There we go, unfortunately someone is going to have to go. But that’s something we’ll have to workshop here.” There was a pause. “So you can leave now…”
Terry felt his mouth fall open. “Didn’t you hear me? They’re going to kill us!”
“And we want that process to be fair and properly considered,” Steve replied, carefully. “We’ll put a steering group meeting together and you’ll get an answer in… oh, let’s set a priority deadline of… Two or three months?”
“No! We need help!” Terry cried, and the room at large flinched, ready to dive under the beds and the slightest hint of danger. “Why won’t you do anything! This whole place is a complete state, and I’ve had enough.” They jumped back as he swept an arm across the room. “We don’t have to stand for this – none of us do!” His voice bounded off the walls until his ears hurt. “All you’ve done is let them run us into the ground, and for what! All you needed to do was-”
The words coiled around his tongue and a wet noise rushed down his throat, only to come back up a moment later.
Then Terry keeled over, a dented and worn metal pen lodged in his back, his newly vacated corpse smashing into the floor plate like a malnourished sack.
Daniel stood behind him, his atrophied legs shaking violently with the unfamiliar effort.
The Senior Leadership Team exchanged a glance, then all eyes fell on Steve, who coughed politely.
“Thank you, Dan,” he said. “I know that was a difficult decision, but it was the right one.” They all nodded. Daniel followed sheepishly a moment later. “He just wasn’t exhibiting the behaviours we’d expect to see from a crown servant.”
A murmur of agreement followed.
“… appreciate your candour…”
“…effective decision making…”
“… a real team player….”
“… seeing the bigger picture, really…”
Daniel slowly sat back down, beaming uncertainty.
“Just doing my job,” he said, turning red. “Sir.”
The smiling and nodding continued for a moment.
“Well,” Steve said, spreading his hands. “Make sure you inform the others. And don’t forget, we’re still on for our Townhall at two.”
“Will do!” Daniel grinned.
More smiling passed between them all. Back and forth.
“You can leave now.”
“Oh, right,” Daniel muttered. “Yeah, ‘course…”
Wheeling himself backwards, Daniel turned and made his way back towards the door. As soon as he was through, left at the top of the stairs, the hatch started to close behind him.
“Wait, what about the-”
The metal boomed as it slammed shut, bathing Daniel in the silent abyss of the unlit room.
“Hello?” He peered around, chair squeaking as he lurched, panic growing. “Can anyone help me get back down?”
