He picked up his kit. For future reference, there's a red fault indicator on the call panel. Small light upper left corner. If that's on when you press the button. Best practice is to take the stairs and report it.
She looked at him steadily. Are you giving me safety instructions? I'm giving you information, Marcus said. What you do with it is your business. Something shifted in her expression.
Not softened exactly, more like rearranged, like furniture moved 2 in and suddenly the room looks different. That's a useful distinction, she said. Most things are if you look at them right, he gestured toward the stairwell. Stairs are clear. Lobby elevators running fine.
You can pick that up on 10. He turned to go. What's your name? He looked back. Marcus Webb.
Facilities level two. Viven Callaway, she said, which was unnecessary, and they both knew it, but she said it anyway. And he appreciated the gesture in a way he couldn't quite articulate. I know," he said and smiled and headed back toward the mechanical room. She thought about him more than made sense.
Viv wasn't the kind of person who spent time examining her own mental wandering. She was too busy to indulge in self analysis beyond what was functionally necessary. But she caught herself in the days after the service elevator noticing Marcus Webb in the building. Not in a way that felt like anything. Just noticing the way he moved through a floor with a tool bag slung over one shoulder, unhurried and focused.
The way the maintenance crew talked to him differently than they talked to each other. Not with deference, but with the easy comfort of people who trusted his read on things. The way he seemed to actually enjoy his work, which was not a quality Viv encountered often in people at any level of an organization. She started reviewing the maintenance request logs, not for any particular reason, just reviewing. She found that the service elevator fault he'd mentioned had been flagged for repair twice over the past 8 weeks.
Both times caught by Marcus' routine checks and both times delayed by supply chain issues on the replacement sensor. His notes on the repair order were thorough. He documented the potential failure window. He'd been right about exactly when it would fail. She pulled his employee file.
Marcus Webb, senior facilities technician. Three-year tenure performance reviews exceeds expectations all categories every cycle. Emergency response record. 14 incidents handled average resolution time 11 minutes below department standard. Commenations from three separate department heads.
One note from HR 2 years ago indicating he'd been offered a facility supervisor position and declined to maintain current schedule flexibility for family commitments. She read that last line twice. The next week, she found herself walking through the service corridor on the 9inth floor. At a time she had no professional reason to be there, and she told herself she was doing a building walkth through, which she did sometimes, which was true enough to be technically defensible. He was replacing an HVAC filter panel when she came around the corner.