The Company

Greg Myers woke up in a cold sweat. He was trying hard to catch his breath as his body was shivering. When he looked at the clock it was 2:57 am. 'Same time every night' he thought. He has been haunted by the same dream for the past three weeks. However he remembers nothing about the dream when he wakes up.

After he calmed himself down, Greg moved to the other side of the bed that was dry. The rest of Greg's night was peaceful. He woke up to his normal daily routine, coffee, shower and check the email. When he logged on to his email he only had one, it was from The Company. This was an address he didn't recognize. He opened it anyway and the email read simply "Tonight it will be real." This made Greg a little uneasy. What was real? He logged off but thought about the email for the rest of the morning.

After work Greg had to attend his weekly AA meeting. He was a recovering alcoholic for the past 6 months. He started drinking about three years ago when his wife and seven year old daughter were killed in a car accident. He attended the normal AA meeting at his local church, until he saw an that a professor at Ohio State University was starting up an experimental AA program.

Dr. Anderson White was widly known in the psychology field. He was doing work on alcoholism and the effects it had on the brain. He concluded that alcoholism was the product of chemicals released in the brain. He worked with a pharmicutical company to develop a drug to counter act the chemicals. Dr. White got a special grant from the Government to start a AA program at Ohio State. He found twenty people willing to take part in his class. Greg was one of the twenty hand selected by Dr. White. He had been attending Dr. White's class for the past 3 months. Greg didn't tell Dr. White about the dreams he was having, thinking that maybe it was a side effect of the drug he was taking. Ever since Greg attended Dr. White's class he didn't even have the urge to take a drink.

When Greg got home from his AA meeting he sat down to watch a little T.V. He started thinking again about the email he received this morning. Who is The Company and what was real? Greg eventually fell asleep.

Greg saw himself walking into the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Columbus, OH. He didn't know why he was here. He saw the desk clerk, but the desk clerk didn't see Greg. Greg had a wierd feeling of what to do, not knowing where it was coming from. He felt like Neo in the Matrix when Morpheus was directing him out of the building. The big difference was that he wasn't on a cell phone with anybody. Greg didn't hear a voice in his head telling him what to do, just the instinct of knowing what to do.

Greg quickly went to the stairs, not wanting the sound of the elevator to alert the desk clerk someone had come in. He went up to the second floor and used the elevators from there. He took the elevator to the 15th floor. He didn't get off the elevator, he knew this was not the floor he needed to be on. What he was doing was byding his time. He waited exactly 93 seconds before he released the doors and went to the 21st floor. He got off the elevator here. Slowly, Greg made his way down the hallway. He heard the faint sound of voices coming from around the corner. Waiting in the hallway he looked straight ahead of him and saw a door that read 'employees only.' Greg knew that was door he needed to go through. He walked past the hallway and looked to the right as he was walking. He saw two men with their backs turned, knowing that was where the voices were coming from. The 'employees door' was unlocked, he was not shocked by that. He carefully opened and closed the door. He looked at his watch, it read 2:54. The 'employees room' was the storage area for maids. He picked up a hand towel and wiped his face off. He waited exactly 100 seconds and left the room he was in. The two men that were in the hall were now gone. Greg walked up to the door they were standing in front of. Greg reached into his pants pocket and found a card key. Greg again knew that the card would be in his pocket. Greg entered the suite and put the card key back in his pocket. Greg knew right away that this was one of the top suites the Hyatt had. Victorian furniture mixed with a colonial touch filled the room. There were two bay doors that were closed to Greg's right. He opened the doors and saw it was the bedroom. Lying on the bed was a woman. Greg looked at his watch again and it read 2:56. He walked over to the side of the bed and saw the woman's chest moving up and down. She was in a deep sleep breathing lightly. This time Greg reached into his right jacket pocket. He pulled out a knife. In the span of about 10 seconds Greg had bent down and sliced open the throat of the woman lying down. Greg dropped the knife on the bed, watching the white bedsheets turn red with blood. Greg looked at his watch again, this time it read 2:57. Putting his hand in his left jacket pocket Greg pulled out a gun. He put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Two men rushed into the suite where Greg was. They burst through the bedroom bay doors and saw the woman lying in blood. One of the men spoke into a radio he was carrying.
"Code Red, she is down, I repeat the First Lady is down. Send an ambulance now."

The second man went to examine the body. He saw the knife lying on the bed next to the First Lady.

"I don't see a gun shot wound. We heard a shot, and you better let them know she is dead." The man said.

The ambulance and crime scene unit showed up around the same time. The scene was in chaos. There must have been 30 people show up in a matter of minutes. FBI and secret service shut down the building making sure nobody left. Nobody came up with a gun, shell casing or gun shot anywhere. The two secret service men on the scene were debrieifed by the FBI. The crime scene unit ran the prints they found on the knife and came up a name, Greg Myers. Greg had been arrested for a DUI about 15 months ago. The FBI got on the horn and had agents at Greg's house within 10 minutes. The agents rushed the house to find it silent. They entered the bedroom and saw Greg in bed. When they looked further they saw that he was dead. Greg died from a single gun shot wound to his head. The gun lay on the floor next to the bed. The other disturbing thing they found was above Greg on the wall was written "Tonight it was real" apprently in Greg's blood. How it got there was another mystery.

Sitting in a room were two men. There was one small lamp on showing the face of one man. The other was sitting behind a desk, smoking a cigarette. The man's face that was lit up was Dr. White. He spoke one sentence to the man behind the desk.

"I told you he was perfect for the job."

The man smoking the cigarette nodded his head in agreement. Dr. White got up and left the office, when he closed the door the sign read "The Company."