The Book of Masks (Abridged)

The New Job

FRIDAY COMES, and you take the blank mind band to school so you'll have it with you for your first day at Salopek. You've not forgotten that you need those chemicals for the next spell.

You spend your first hour at Salopek filling out lots of paperwork and receiving a lot more; you don't think you've made a friend of the secretary when you ask if you'll get paid for the hour. (You will.) She then leads you from the front office through wide alleys to an open, hanger-like building at the rear of the complex, where she introduces you to your supervisor, a tall, rangy man with a tanned and crinkly face. "Andy Keyes," he says, giving you a firm handshake. "Nice to meet you, Will."

"Likewise, sir." The man's smile is tight but friendly, and though he seems very businesslike you think you will like him.

He leads you over to a table and has you pick up a hardhat. "Not much of an orientation for this job," he says. "Just do what you're told. I'll put you with one of the boys and you can spend today getting a feel for the place. I'm not around much--they give me a lot of ground to cover--so stick to him and you'll be okay. Sean!" he calls, and a head bobs up from behind some machinery.

Keyes introduces him as Sean Mitchell, another senior at Westside. He's blonde and broad-shouldered, with meaty pecs showing under his tight t-shirt. Instantly you peg him as a football player. But you pay as little attention to the sports teams as you can get away with, so you're not sure.

And that means you're extra surprised when he talks as though he knows you. "Hey Prescott," he says as he crushes your hand in a muscular paw of his own. "Heard you were getting a job out here. Cool." You nod as cheerfully as you can, and mumble something about being glad to have him to hang out with at work.

Keyes doesn't waste much time after introductions, and instructs Sean briefly about what to do with you. Sean nods along enthusiastically, and after he's gone, he slaps you in the stomach. "So, your dad works here too?"

"Yeah. He's put me onto the job. Made me take it. Does your dad work here too?"

Sean's face tightens. "Mm, no."

"You made it sound like he did."

"No. Oh." He nods with sudden understanding. "I just meant, you're working here, and your dad works here too. You're lucky you got an old man who can give you an in."

You shrug. "Well, if you say so. I guess. Though it's not like I really want to be here or anything. I mean—" You stop, for it suddenly strikes you how surly and ungrateful you're sounding. "It is great, but I wasn't asking any favors to come out here, it was more his idea, and I was like, Yeah, sure, that'd be good -- "

Luckily, Sean interrupts this embarrassing babble with a laugh. "No, I get you. Dads can be that way, right? 'Here's something to keep you out of trouble, you lazy sack of shit!' Huh?" He laughs again, and gestures you to follow him into the back of the building.

You relax. Maybe things will be alright.

At the moment, Sean shows you and explains to you, he's been fussing with a big piece of equipment that resembles the unlikely offspring of a hippopotamus and a steam shovel. "They're moving this to another building," he tells you, "but it's bolted to the floor. I'm having a hell of a time finding all the places where it's attached, so I'm really glad you showed up. Crawl under this thing with me and let's find those bolts."

* * * * *

It's dirty, grimy business that takes the better part of forty-five minutes to finish, and before it's done Sean has to fetch something that looks like a small jackhammer in order to remove most of them. But large parts of the table still have to be disassembled before the rest can be removed. "Shit," he says, wiping a streaming forehead with his shirt tail. (You use your hand to wipe your own forehead; Sean has abs that can withstand being glimpsed, but you only have shallow plank that jiggles with a layer of baby fat.) "No way we're getting this done today, and I'll have to talk to Andy about it." He trots over to a phone on the far wall, leaving you alone to take in the hanger.

The ceiling is very high, and the concrete floor is mostly open. But there is lots of machinery and tables and heavy cabinets stacked high by the walls. There are also a couple of open bays in the floor where, you guess, vehicles can be parked and worked on from underneath. You wander around without going far, trying to see if there is anything that looks like it might be useful in that spell. But you don't want to get caught snooping.

As luck would have it, Sean returns with a plan that will let you do all the snooping you could want. "Andy says to leave it for tomorrow. Probably they'll get it taken out in the morning. I'm supposed to just give you a tour of the complex."

After covering the hanger, he leads you out to explore the rest of the grounds. It's a spacious complex spread over many, many acres, surrounded by a high chain link fence topped with hurricane wire. He points out the various buildings and their uses, and telling you which ones you will probably have to do jobs in. "Not a lot of call for brain work in this position," he says. "Mostly you'll be moving things."

"That's what I told Caleb."

"Johansson?"

You're still more surprised to see that he knows Caleb's name. "Yeah, he wanted this job. Thought it would give him an 'in' with the company."

Sean laughs. "Well, unless he can build a working rocket motor from a lot of baling wire and some plywood, I don't think he'd catch anyone's attention."

"Are there, like, explosives and stuff around here?" you ask. It's a wretched segue, but it's the first chance you've had to wrench the conversation around to the subject.

"We got all kinds of shit around here. You won't be touching it, though, so don't worry. You need special training for that. I only know where it is because they tell me where it is so I won't trip over it. They give you a manual at the front office?" You nod. "Study it tonight. It'll have all the warning stuff in it."

You're glad he thought you were afraid of getting close to that kind of stuff, instead of fishing for information so you could steal it.

"Last stop is right here, then we'll knock off," he says, leading you up to a nondescript tan building. "It's our internal distribution center. They'll sometimes send you over to pick things up." He tugs on the door, but it doesn't open. "Jack musta stepped out a moment," he says. He checks his watch and thinks a moment. "Aw, heck, he won't mind if we break in. Stupid."

"What?"

Sean is punching numbers on a keypad. He tries the door, but it still won't budge. He thinks a moment, and curses quietly to himself.

"What is it?"

"Just bullshit." He punches at the keypad again, and this time the door opens. "We had some stuff go missing a few weeks ago, so they stepped up security on this building. Now they're supposed to lock up when there's no one inside." He ushers you in. "They also changed the keypad combo. Which is typical management idiocy, since the burglars came in through a window."

The inside looks a bit like a post office, with a long counter at the front. He leads you around it and through a door into a space filled with metal shelves, most of them empty. "Doors back there," he gestures, "for taking big stuff in and out. This side is for stuff that's come in. The other side is for stuff that has to go out." He grunts. "Not a lot in here now."

"It seems like a big space for not very much."

"When it gets busy we have a lot." He glances down, and kneels to tie his shoe.

Your heart leaps. His head is near one of the shelves. All you have to do is bend behind him and you can put the mind band to his forehead; you can pretend afterward that he cracked his head as he stood up again. Except he's got that hardhat on ...