The winter air bit at his face, but he hardly felt it. The driver, a man in a sharp black suit, stepped out of the car and opened the rear door without a word. Abalardo slid into the back seat. The contrast was violently abrupt. Inside the car, it was perfectly climate controlled.
It smelled like expensive leather and subtle cologne, erasing the familiar street odors of damp garbage and exhaust. The engine didn't roar. It hummed a low vibration that barely registered. As the car pulled away from the curb, Abalardo looked out the tinted window at his neighborhood. The cracked sidewalks, the boarded up storefronts, the gray reality he navigated every single day.
The car glided past it all, untouched, a capsule of immense wealth moving silently through the wreckage. He checked his reflection in the dark glass. The suit looked cheap. He looked tired. He took a deep breath, smoothing the frayed edge of his collar.
He was heading into the sky, and he had no idea if he had a parachute. Kinsley Bates headquarters was a monument to modern capitalism. It was a towering spike of glass and steel that dominated the downtown skyline, reflecting the gray clouds like a massive, unforgiving mirror. Abalardo had never been within five blocks of it. Sector 4 was located in an industrial park by the shipyards, a sprawling concrete warehouse that smelled of diesel and cardboard.
The town car pulled into a subterranean parking garage beneath the tower. The driver stopped at a private elevator bank guarded by a man with an earpiece. "Mr. Web," the driver said, putting the car in park. "This elevator will take you directly to the 65th floor.
Beatatrice will meet you there. " Abalardo nodded, unbuckling his seat belt. Thanks. He stepped out, his cheap dress shoes echoing sharply against the pristine concrete. The guard glanced at his face, checked a digital tablet, and swiped a key card against the elevator panel. The steel doors slid open silently.
Abalardo stepped inside. There were no buttons. As the doors closed, the elevator launched upward with a speed that made Abalardo's stomach drop and his ears pop. The ascent was a physical manifestation of his mourning, too fast, entirely out of his control and moving vertically away from everything he understood. When the doors opened, the environment shifted again.
The 65th floor was silent. The floors were covered in a thick charcoal gray carpet that absorbed all sound. The walls were panled in rich dark wood broken by massive panes of frosted glass. A woman in her 50s wearing a sharp gray dress was waiting for him. "Mr.
Webb, I'm Beatatric," she said, offering a polite but strained smile. "The tension on this floor was palpable. People in expensive suits were moving quickly down the corridors, speaking in hushed, urgent tones. The air felt thick with crisis. " Nice to meet you, Abalardo said, feeling hyper aware of the mothball scent clinging to his lapels. Follow me, please.
It's been a rather aggressive morning. She led him past a massive glasswalled boardroom. Inside, a dozen men and women were shouting at each other, papers scattered across a vast mahogany table. Abalardo didn't recognize any of them, but he recognized the panic. It was the same panic he saw when a shipment of perishable medical supplies was rooted to the wrong state, just wearing a different tax bracket.