Mike Stone stared out of the office window and onto the bright lights of the city down below. Behind him the party was in full flow. Demi was drunk and dancing on a table. She was dressed in a sexy black leather catwoman costume. The other traders, mainly balding middle-aged men, ogled her appreciatively. Mike watched their reflections in the glass.
He should be happy. He should be enjoying himself. Instead he felt strangely subdued. There was no reason to be. Here he was, fresh out of university and working for PJ Korgan, one of the most prestigious investment banks in the city. He was made. The world was his playground and soon he'd be able to fill it with all the expensive toys.
And yet...
It was Kirk. It was always fucking Kirk.
Kirk, his elder brother. Kirk, the golden boy, apple of his parent's eyes. Kirk, with his straight A's and a first from Cambridge. Kirk, with his high ideals and grandiose plans. Kirk, who'd gone to Africa, determined to save the world.
"You look in mighty deep thought for such a frivolous occasion," Gordon Douglas said to him.
Gordon was one of the senior traders tasked with taking the young recruits under his wing.
"Just thinking," Mike said.
Gordon joined him at the window.
"My first year here I used to stare out of these windows down on the people scurrying below and wonder what I'd done to be blessed with such good fortune."
"It is a privilege to be working here," Mike said.
"But you have doubts," Gordon turned to him, his eyes twinkling. "Oh don't worry about it. We all have them. This is a big change."
"My parents were not exactly happy when they found out I was going to work here," Mike said.
Not exactly happy was a bit of an understatement.
"They're greedy fat pigs sucking the life out of the country," his father had spluttered in rage. "And you're going to become one of them."
"No?" Gordon said.
"They're proper card-carrying socialists," Mike said. "They wanted me to devote my life to some noble cause or other."
"At university it's easy to dream of how the world should be," Gordon said. "Out in the real world you have to accept how it actually is."
"My brother learnt that lesson out in Africa," Mike said. "He went out to dig wells in Sudan and a twelve year old boy soldier blew his head off with a Kalashnikov."
"Oh my," Gordon said. "I am sorry to hear that."
"I'm not making that mistake," Mike said.
Gordon looked down on the dots of headlights as they wound through the veins of the city like little glowing ants.
"Soon you'll realise, as I did, that you're not here through good fortune. You're here because you're better than them. You deserve to be up here and they down there. It's the natural order of things."
Gordon patted him on the shoulder and then moved off to rejoin the party.
"You misunderstand my intentions, Mr. Douglas," Mike murmured to himself.
He wasn't about to throw his life away in some grandiose but ultimately pointless endeavour like his brother, but neither was he aiming to get filthy rich just so he could blow it on hookers, fast cars and cocaine. Mike had a better plan.
He turned away from the window. The party was getting lively. A fat balding trader was cavorting with Demi, egged on by a cheering crowd and copious amounts of champagne. Mike waved his encouragement before heading past in the direction of the toilets.
To hear his parents talk you'd think this place was the province of the devil. It was just an office where people made large sums of money watching numbers on a computer screen. Those same screens were currently festooned in fake cobwebs and cut out pictures of pumpkins.
Money wasn't evil. It was just money.
Mike left the office and walked down the corridor. He opened the door and walked into the men's room.
This wasn't the bathroom.
Mike didn't know what it was. The room was the same size as the bathroom, but the cubicles and sinks were gone. There wasn't anything. Instead of tiles the walls, floor and ceiling were covered in some kind of burnished red-black padding. Concealed bulbs in the ceiling illuminated the room with a soft red glow.
What was this place? Mike thought. He could have sworn he'd walked into the toilet. Maybe he'd gone through the wrong---.
Where was the door?
Mike turned and saw another padded wall, same as the other three around him. There was no sign of anything that indicated a doorway.
That wasn't possible. There had to be a door of some kind. He'd walked through it to get here after all.
He felt along the walls for some kind of seam. The material covering the panels was warm and smooth to the touch. It looked and felt like some kind of rubber.
Mike couldn't find the edge of any kind of doorway. There were gaps between the panels, but nothing he could hook his fingers into and pull open. Perplexed, Mike backed into the centre of the room and put a hand on his head. What had happened?
Mike loosened his tie. It was uncomfortably hot in the small padded room and the temperature seemed to be rising. Beads of sweat were already forming on his forehead. There was an unpleasant tang in the air, like a mixture of sulphur and overheated rubber.
This was nonsensical.
Mike went back to the wall and tried to find the door.
"Hello," he called out. "I appear to have got locked in."
He heard the far off hum of some kind of machinery. There was an atonal, arrhythmic quality to the sound, discordant like metal blades scraping together.
"Anyone?" he shouted.
He banged his fists against the padded walls. They absorbed the impact without giving out the barest whisper of sound.
