Lucy took a quick trip to the bathroom before leaving the office for the day. As she freshened up afterwards she looked in the mirror and critically examined her reflection. She had grown used to the way she looked over the years -- she had resigned herself to the fact in high school that she would never be classically beautiful, nor pneumatic-bodied the way some of the girls who were picked for the cheerleading squad back then. But she had kept reasonably fit during her college years -- fighting a constant battle against her body's seeming desire to pile on pounds.
Just this morning, Skyla, her boss, had told her what a nice smile she had. She considered herself lucky in having a boss like Skyla, other P.As in the company were often seen hurrying along halls juggling coffee with a perpetually worried expression, knowing that the slightest error in instruction would see them subjected to a verbal tirade. Not so Skyla. Sure, she still had to do the coffee run, but not once did the woman berate the 22-year-old for forgetting to specify Soya milk, or precisely the right amount of nutmeg sprinkles.
Her curly-brown haired reflection looked back in the mirror at herself, the odd little snub of a nose and her blue eyes completing the image. She smiled, which always made her teeth show, which at least had been straightened in her teens, even if some of them were a little too pointy. It was an odd smile she thought, she seemed to smile with her whole face, maybe that's what Sklyla considered "nice".
Lucy thought Skyla was nice, more than nice actually. Was there a possibility the compliment had been a gentle play for something more? She pulled down on her pale-grey cardigan, doing her best to accentuate her less-than ample bosom.
"Don't be ridiculous" she told herself. "She's your boss, and anyway, even if she is gay as if she would go for someone as ordinary as you".
She took her car keys out of her handbag and passed back through the open-plan area, ducking her head round the door to Skyla's office to say goodnight. She was seated at her desk pouring over a report, her blonde bobbed hair swung over her cheeks.
"Night Skyla!" she called out cheerily.
Her boss looked up and curled some of those blonde locks back over one ear. "Goodnight Lucy, have anything fun planned for the evening?"
Lucy fought the urge to blush, sure she had a few good friends she saw on weekends, but it would be very unusual for her to be doing anything "special" of a weekday evening. "Naw, just a quiet night in, you know me, Little Miss Exciting!" she quipped, raising her eyes to the ceiling self consciously.
"Oh, that's a shame, I thought maybe you'd be on a hot date or something." Skyla said, easing back in her chair, showing off her impressive, freckled cleavage, her silk blouse unbuttoned one button more than might be strictly necessary.
Now Lucy really did blush, she felt her cheeks burning in fact. "No!!" she exclaimed, a little too quickly, "Not that I don't, errr...well, I'll see you in the morning." she finished hurriedly and waved before scuttling out of the office. She made her way quickly out of the building and stopped at the Drug Store for some supplies before heading to the subway.
As the train clacked along the stops to her apartment, she replayed the end of the day in her head, except that in her imagination, Skyla had got up from her desk, and had uttered the words "Well you do now" before they would kiss passionately leading to a night of incredible lovemaking.
So engrossed was she that she nearly missed her stop prompting annoyed murmurs from those she had to squeeze past to reach the carriage doors just as they were closing. Back in her small, one bedroomed flat, she ate an unremarkable meal before settling down in her PJs in front of the TV.
A couple of hours of disinterested viewing and occasional glances at a magazine were disturbed by the ring of her cell phone.
SKYLA
Read the display. She picked up and heard the voice of her manager on the other end, except somehow different, as if there were some distortion on the line, damn network signal Lucy thought and paid it no mind, pressing her finger to her other ear to block out extraneous noise.
"Lucy honey, I'm sorry to call you in the evening, but I realised I need to have the Woolfson file for a meeting in the morning. You couldn't do me a favour and run it over to my place for me could you?"
Inwardly she groaned. That meant going back to the office, then a ride out to wherever Skyla's building was. She would be lucky to make it back much before midnight. She didn't let any of that show however and in as cheerful a voice as she could manage replied "Sure, give me your address!" And she scribbled it down on a sticky note. It was in a neighbourhood she didn't know, but the maps app on her phone would tell her where to go, no worries.
An hour or so later, she was deposited on the platform of a station where the buildings were mostly comprised of warehouses and workshops. Some small house plots lined the road, all of different types of construction, many with overgrown gardens or high fences. Surely Skyla didn't live here? She thought, though perhaps it was a warehouse conversion project she lived in. All the same, even on Lucy's wages, she could at least afford to live downtown.
She made her way through the darkened streets, ever aware of her surroundings, the file tucked under her arm and her other hand clutched around her bag, which contained her personal attack alarm. The blue dot on the map inched ever closer to the pin which marked her destination, but when she got there, she was even more daunted by what she saw. Stairs down to a basement level of an old, brick warehouse, with a hardened steel, windowless door. An intercom with a fish-eye lens was the only other adornment.
Making sure no-one was likely to corner her down there, she descended the steps, and pressed the button on the intercom.
No sound came out of the speaker in return to her summons. She peered into the camera, and jumped a little when a buzzer sounded and the door clicked to allow her entry. She stepped into a bare-brick corridor, with a concrete floor. Industrial lamps lit the passageway in pools of light. Turning a right-angle she emerged into a wide yet shallow hall, two tall braziers stood at each end of a raised concrete section.
"Skyla?" she called out, "Skyla are you there?"
