Dark Disguises Chapter One

Chapter One


I

The vampires had taken over.

That was the terrifying reality Jenel Asha faced every day. She was not aware of this when she moved to the sleepy hamlet of Athena, Illinois lured by the prospect of a booming job market. It seemed a normal, picturesque college town. Jenel knew not where they came from or whether every town faced what she did, but she knew that vampires were very real. And they controlled everything.

Everything.

At least, that was how it was in Athena, Illinois.

For Jenel, it started with a few tentative steps off an Amtrak train that deposited her and about three hundred college students at a platform on its way south from Chicago.

II

She almost fell, really. Jenel made the mistake of wearing heels on the train that day. The steps leading to the platform were corrugated, rubber-coated steel and the tip of Jenel’s heel got stuck. She tumbled forward and was caught by strong, rough hands.

“Watch your step, ma’am,” the conductor smiled at her.

She smiled and thanked him. Her smart blazer was quickly shed in the unseasonable early summer heat as she turned and walked to the nearest street she could find. It led to an odd cul-de-sac where the police department was located. Jenel had a nascent thought that the police seemed intent on paying attention to new-comers as she consulted her smart phone’s GPS to get her bearings.

Jenel had come dressed to interview. Her usually-long, dark brown hair was trimmed to a respectable shoulder length. She wore a smart Anne Klein suit in a light cream. The skirt was tight but serious, clingy but not sexy. The blazer accented her burgundy blouse. But the shoes had been a mistake. They were a half size too small and squeezed Jenel’s little toes until she felt they were going to pop. But, they matched the blouse, and she needed this job.

The bag she’d packed, the hasty application at the small-giant tech syndicate, the ton of resumes stuffed into a folder that Jenel was sure were now bent or marred in some way, all of it had occurred because she desperately needed to get out of Chicago. Jenel had been surprised how quickly the phone interview had come. Numerous internet searches on what major tech companies were hiring kept bringing Jenel back to Tek-No-Sorce, located in Athena, a haven of growth in an uncertain land of poor prospects and increasingly poorer companies. Even with her relatively impressive IT background, Jenel was finding little to no prospects in Chicago. When the Tek-No-Sorce HR rep called her for a phone interview just hours after her application was sent in, Jenel thought her prayers had been answered.

Tuesday, she had applied. By Thursday, she was on a train to Athena, courtesy of Tek-No-Sorce. They promised a full relocation package if she were successfully hired.

Now all she had to do was get the job.

The train had been delayed and Jenel was in serious danger of being late for the interview. She reversed course away from the police station and back towards the train depot. She was about to look up local taxis when a dashing man in a golf cap approached her.

“Excuse me, are you Jenel Asha?” he asked.

“Who are you?”

“Sorry, I’ve got a taxi waiting. I was given some pretty particular instructions to look for you.”
“Oh. Okay.”

         He picked up her bags. “This way, please.”

         In the car, an orange and black monstrosity of a Crown Vic whose only saving grace was frosty air conditioning, he looked at her in the mirror and smiled. “Must be nice to get a job at Tek-No-Sorce,” he offered.

         “I don’t have the job yet.”

         “You’ll get it. I can tell these things. I’m Harrold.”

         “Nice to meet you, Harrold.”

         The car rumbled on in silence.

         “Lots of young people getting jobs here lately.”

         “I’m not that much younger than-“

         She looked in the mirror and stopped herself. Harrold’s features had shifted somehow. There were crow’s feet around his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before, and his fingers had grown somehow thicker in their grasp on the steering wheel. Where Jenel would have guessed his age at late-twenties to mid-thirties before, she now put him in at least his forties or fifties. Even the golf cap appeared more tattered and ragged than at first glance. This she took in at a moment’s glance. She closed her eyes and shook her head. The next thing Jenel knew, the vehicle slowed and Harrold announced their arrival at Tek-No-Sorce. His features were again youthful.

         “Have a nice nap?” he asked as she started to get out.

         “Can you pop the trunk? I need to get my bag.”

         “No need. I’ll be here after your interview to take you to the hotel,” he grinned at her.

         “Hotel?”

         “Can’t be late!” He slid the partition closed and unlocked the doors. Jenel climbed out and stood staring at the monolithic glass building, easily 12 stories tall. It was the tallest structure for miles around.

III

         Jenel approached a fidgety receptionist who was taking and transferring one call after another.

         “Excuse me?” she said.

         “Yes, how can I help you?” The twitchy woman finally acknowledged Jenel’s presence as she took a pause between calls.

         “I’m Jenel Asha. I have an appointment for an interview?”

         “Ah yes. We’ve been waiting for you, Miss Asha. Here is your visitor’s pass. And your room assignment.” She handed Jenel a piece of paper with some directions and room numbers on it and a blank white plastic card.

         “The card will get you access to where you need to go. Just follow the directions.”

         Jenel took the card and paper and set about navigating her route through the building. She used the card to pass through several different hallways. She felt like she was moving in circles. Eventually she arrived at a seating area where she found eight other applicants. Stark white walls gave way to an area carpeted in dark grey with chairs the color of her blouse.

         “Is this for help desk interviews?” she asked.

         The waiting youths turned to her. One young man smiled.

         “Hey! You’re lucky nineteen.”

         “Lucky nineteen?”

         “I’ve been here since eight A.M. and so far, nineteen people have showed up,” he replied.

         “Is nineteen a lucky number?”

         “Aren’t they all?”

         He moved his satchel and motioned for Jenel to sit next to him. She took the seat and looked around, feeling suddenly overdressed. The other applicants wore jeans or khakis, and various combinations of polos, casual button-downs, and tee shirts. Only her greeter wore something more upscale, but his loosened tie and cocked fedora bespoke an air of aloofness. The other hopefuls did not even glance up from their tablets or smart phones, or make any motion to proffer a modicum of human contact.

         “Matt,” he said, and offered his hand.

         “Jenel.” She smiled and took it.

         “Don’t be nervous. Far as I can tell, everyone who applies gets a job.”

         “How do you--?”

         “They go in but they don’t come out.” He drew her attention to a severe steel door that Jenel had not noticed at first. Now that she saw it, the gunmetal grey portal towered monolithically over the room.

         “Ten have gone in so far,” he said.

         “Wow.” She looked at her key card. “How long did you say you’ve been here?”

         “Since eight this morning.”

         “And they haven’t called you yet?”

         “It’s okay. I’m happy watching the stream of drones. Besides, the cards won’t let you out the way you came in. They have to call me, eventually.”

         Matt rose and walked to the door through which Jenel had entered. He swiped the card and the magnetic reticule buzzed and lit up red, as opposed to the green she had received on the way in. Jenel stared at the door as Matt returned to his seat. A cold pit of fear started to burrow into her stomach.

         The sudden sound of the steel door swinging open caught Jenel by surprise, and she nearly jumped out of her seat. “Michele Roiter?” A cool voice called from the doorway. A twiggy girl of about 20 with brunette hair frosted into multi-colored tips jumped up and grabbed a bag. Fatigue pants a size too large threatened to fall off the girl’s hips as she entered the large doorway into a brightly-lit room. Jenel leaned over, trying to get a glimpse inside, but the door slammed closed before she could see much.

         “What’s your specialty?” Matt asked.

         “Huh?” Jenel queried.

         “Programming? Project development? Product testing?”

         “I do…usually I’m on help desk.”

         “Development.”

         “So I get to help customers when—“

         “When I fuck up. Har-dee-har.”

         “How do you do it?”

         “What? Fuck up?”

         “No.” She rolled her eyes. “How do you sit there and write code all day? I couldn’t even imagine.”

         “It’s like its own language. You have to know how to get the computer to give you what you want, and each computer’s different. You know Final Fantasy, how the digital modeling looks so realistic?”

         She nodded.

         “Then you look at the other games where the modeling is blocky and they’ve modeled an actor’s face over a head-shaped form?”

         “Basically, yeah.”

         “A lot of people call that lazy mapping. It’s not really lazy – those programmers just don’t know how to talk to those computers.”

         “I never thought of it that way.”

         Matt leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Jenel thought he looked immensely tired. She thought about the exit door not opening. She looked at the card clutched in her hand and started to stand. What Matt had shown her, the idea that she could not leave the way she’d come frightened her. Why would they do that? Why would they allow her into a maze of a building like this and then just keep them there?

         She started to question everything about how and why she was here, why such a dream job had dropped into her lap so easily. Jenel walked slowly towards the door she had entered through. She looked back at the slumped form of Matt in his chair, at the reticent youths fresh out of college, disconnected in their electronically-induced narcotic haze. None of them had any interest in anything beyond their palm-sized connections to the binding ether of the internet.

         Jenel suddenly wanted nothing more than to be out of that room, away from that building. She wanted to flee the premises and be gone from Athena. She wanted her apartment in Old Town, with its weekend revelers, the sounds of sirens ringing out late into the night. The sounds of the city beckoned to her to return. Jenel reached out with her card to wave it in front of the magnetic receiver.

         Her hand moved slowly, in a soft dream-time lope. Jenel saw her hand as almost a part removed from the rest of her body. She willed her muscles to move quickly but everything seemed slower, motions that should have been simple became complex. The white access card danced in her vision and reached for the little black box on the wall…

         Across the room from her, the large metal door opened and the voice sounded again.

         “Jenel Asha.”

         Jenel looked up to acknowledge the call. She turned and walked toward the voice and the grey, monolithic door.

IV

         The room beyond the door was brilliantly lit. It was dazzling. The fluorescent glow threatened to blind Jenel and made the previous room, which had been well-lit in its own right, seem almost murky by comparison.
There stood before Jenel a middle-aged black woman in a grey pants-suit. She was offset by subtle blues that surrounded her on the walls and the muted beige of the carpet. The woman stood near a computer bank that was like nothing Jenel had ever seen before.

         “Please have a seat.” The woman spoke with a British accent that carried an air of authority and grace.
Jenel took a seat.

         “I am Miss Worthington,” the woman continued. “I will guide you through the testing and interview process.”

         “Oh no! I don’t have my resume—“

         “That is of no consequence. The computer tests will tell us everything we need to know about you.”

         “That’s good, I guess.”

         The computer screen was clear. It was similar to a tablet in that it was touch screen, but there was no housing. If Jenel picked it up it would be like holding a translucent piece of paper. There were a few thin wires, connecting it to a hard drive the size of her thumb and a keyboard that, in addition to the traditional alpha-numeric interface, also included a series of symbols that appeared to be mostly mathematic and scientific in nature.

         “Just start typing,” Miss Worthington explained. “The computer will do the rest.”

         The test shifted lightning-quick from one question to another at an unimaginable pace. There were math questions Jenel was sure she could never get right, yet somehow she knew answers and the equations necessary to support them. Philosophical and scientific concepts were addressed and discussed at length in what seemed to be the blink of an eye. Political assessments were taken. Jenel found herself revealing truths to the computer program that she had not personally acknowledged in years: The time she and Marcy Ducket had “practiced kissing” in a steamy-hot garage during her fourteenth summer, another time in college when she and some friends thought they had hit a man with her car.

         All these moments and more were laid bare before the machine.

         Jenel looked up after what felt like 15 minutes and was surprised to discover that an hour and a half had passed. Matt was seated next to her, in the midst of his own test.

         “Ah, good,” Miss Worthington said. “We’ve finished. You have the fastest time on record! Impressive.”
Jenel was breathing heavily, as if she’d just run a race. “What…what the hell just happened?”

         “On to the next phase,” the prim accent lilted.

         A door opened across the room, one of three heavy wooden doors that stood ready to receive the guests of Tek-No-Sorce.

         “Through this door you will find your assignments, after a final interview.”

         Jenel took a breath and walked through the door. On the other side of the threshold was an office with wood paneling, plush carpets and a large wooden desk. Behind the desk sat a balding older gentleman. With polished tones he invited her to come in and be seated.

         “Jenel Asha?”

         “Yes, sir.”

         “It says here you attended Springdale in Wisconsin?”

         “Yes.”

         “Why Wisconsin?”

         “Springdale has one of the best tech programs in the U.S.”

         “The very best, from all accounts I’ve heard.”

         “So when I chose to study technology and I heard about Springdale, as a Chicagoan I decided I could brave the Wisconsin winters.”

         “How’s Professor Furlong?”

         “I didn’t get a chance to study under her,” Jenel lamented. “I had to settle for classes with Hugh Johnson.”

         “Johnson was always an ass.”

         “Did you go to Springdale?”

         “I taught most of your instructors. Bill Menlov. I’ll be seeing a lot of you in the future, I hope.”

         “You mean I—“

         “We’ll make a formal offer tomorrow. I’ll get you into development.”

         “Mister Menlov, I appreciate the offer, but I’ve never had any work in practical application. I’m a help desk girl.”

         “Well then, it’s about time we changed that, isn’t it?”

         He stood and walked to a door behind him that was disguised by the paneling. He pushed and it swung open.

         “Aren’t you supposed to ask me about my goals or weaknesses or something?”

         “We already know all that.”

         Jenel got up and walked over to the door.

         Menlov put a hand on her shoulder as she stepped through. It should have been reassuring, friendly. It was neither of these. There was something cold and off-putting about the way he caressed her.

         But the gentle pressure was alluring as well. She felt a slight tingle down her arm and the next thing she knew, she found herself stepping out into warm sunlight.

         The orange and black monstrosity of a taxi was waiting. The cabbie smiled at Jenel.

         “Was it everything you thought it’d be?” he asked her.

         “I don’t know,” Jenel intoned breathlessly. The light hurt her eyes. She climbed into the taxi and disappeared into her thoughts as it ferried her to the hotel.

         The hotel room was unnecessarily ornate. Its plush pillow-top bed, Egyptian cotton sheets and HDTV were extraneous attempts to curry her favor. A note on the bed proclaimed that all room service items (including spa treatments!) were gratis. Jenel wanted nothing more than to take a swim in the Olympic-style pool the brochures offered, but she had not a swimsuit to wear. Taking a chance on Tek-No-Sorce’s hospitality, she called the hotel’s gift shop, warily eyeing the service card that lay on her bed.

         Of course they had swimsuits in stock!

         Of course they had them in her size!

         Of course room service could deliver them!

         Jenel didn’t know why, but the syrupy service annoyed her. Still, when a bellhop delivered the suit and complimentary towels (along with a gift basket of shampoos and shower gels) she took the swimwear and even tipped the hop generously – to her thinking at least – with her last several dollars.

         The pool was not by any means crowded. It was empty save for a family with a frenetic but not overly rambunctious twelve-year-old. The sky was darkening when Jenel entered the gate that surrounded the indoor pool.
The atrium that arched over the swimming area showed Jenel a darkened sky beyond darker clouds as she let herself float freely in the blue chlorinated water. A young couple made out on one of the beach chairs and three lonely gentlemen loitered at the poolside bar, garbed in Hawaiian shirts and garishly-colored swim trunks. Ignoring leers from the men, whom Jenel decided were business personnel visiting some kind of conference, she realized suddenly just how alone she was.

         Usually, she did not mind being alone. But things here had an eeriness that Jenel found hard to describe. Even for a Thursday and the hour of the night, the hotel pool’s emptiness was off somehow. It was the middle of summer. Where were the teenage vacationers? Where were the old people enjoying their pensions?

         After her time in the pool, Jenel put in forty five minutes at the adjacent gym, flanked by two anorexic-looking twins whose time on the bikes should have left them gasping on the floor and writing in pain. She became jealous of their youth, mutely aware of the ache in her back and calves that kept her from pushing harder. Dammit, she was only twenty five! She had to bow out before the skinny twins did, and they kept on riding, looking forward with empty eyes.

         When she got back to her room Jenel was too tired to even shower and so, turning down the blanket, she set the air to its second-coolest setting and fell asleep in the dulcet glow of the HD screen.

         On the news, a man in Miami had been shot to death by police after eating another man’s face.

         Jenel wondered absently what another person’s flesh might taste like as she reeled into unconsciousness.