Then he pulled out his phone and took a photograph because what he was looking at was not a malfunction. Someone had physically bypassed the automatic reset circuit on the transfer switch. It was a manual override, the kind of thing that required someone to physically open this panel and reach inside and change the configuration with their hands. It was not something a power surge caused. It was not something that happened by accident.
It was something a person had done. Darius stood there in the cold room with his phone in his hand and thought about Gerald upstairs saying, "I've never seen these error codes before. " and thought about the way the emergency lighting was cycling in that too consistent rhythm and felt something moved through his chest that was not quite fear but was close enough to it that he went he started to pull up Gerald's number on his phone that was when the lights went completely out not cycling not flickering out every emergency strip in suble 2 going dark at once and the room becoming the kind of black that has weight to it Darius stood stood completely still for two seconds. He breathed. He switched on his work light, a heavyduty LED unit clipped to his tool bag strap, and swept it around the room. Nothing had changed.
The generator was still running. The transfer switch panel was still open. Everything was exactly where it had been. He pulled up Gerald's number and dialed. Nothing.
No ring, no connection, no signal. He tried again. The same nothing. Cell signals out. He told himself.
Storm interference. That's all. But he knew that wasn't all. Cell signal degraded in bad weather. It didn't go from full bars to absolute zero in under a minute unless something was actively disrupting it.
He clipped the work light to his collar so it pointed where he looked, shouldered his bag, and started back toward the stairs. The elevator was not supposed to be his first choice. He was already thinking about the stairwell, about getting back up to the lobby level, about whether Gerald had access to a landline or a radio. And then the elevator doors on suble 2 opened in front of him without pressing anything. He stopped.
The elevator car was lit. The interior light was on, warm and ordinary, completely at odds with the flickering darkness of the rest of the building. And standing inside it, her back against the rear wall, her arms crossed over her chest, holding her phone with the screen cracked and dark, was a woman he recognized from her photograph on every business profile he'd ever seen associated with the building. Victoria Hayes looked at him with eyes that were very steady and very controlled and said, "Are you the maintenance technician? " "Yes, ma'am. " "Darius Coleman, building services. " "Good. " She said it like she was checking something off a list. Get in.
The emergency stairwell on the south side is flooded. I checked 20 minutes ago. This is the only option that isn't underwater. Darius looked at the elevator. Looked at the woman inside it.
Thought about everything wrong with this situation. Ma'am, the backup power is cycling. I wouldn't recommend I'm aware, she said. I also have a board presentation in 6 hours and a company that is currently in the middle of something I cannot explain in a stairwell. So I am asking you to get in the elevator.