Even if she knew Dar was right, and she was being stubborn, it didn't help. She kept her elbow near her side as she made her way down the steps; the hallways eerily empty, as were the sidewalks when she emerged.
The bus door opened as she approached though, and she climbed inside to find a quiet oasis waiting for her completely bereft of staff or visitors. As the door closed shut behind her, the air even cleared and she felt her shoulders relax. "Thanks, Alan." She called into the driver's compartment. "Quiet today huh?"
"Yes, ma'am." The driver called back. "I'll just be here reading my paper. Let me know if you need anything."
Kerry removed her mask and tossed it on the table wincing as the ache in her side started throbbing uncomfortably. She walked over to the courtesy kitchenette area and opened the small refrigerator. Inside there were milk chugs. She took one out and opened it.
"Ow." The twisting made a jolt of pain go all the way down through her groin. "Stupid idiot." She went to her pack and fumbled out the bottle of Advil, opening it and then tossing down the handful of pills with a swallow of the milk.
It tasted good and soothing against the roughness in her throat. Kerry took the chug with her and carefully sat down in one of the leather chairs, leaning a little on her good side to take the pressure off her ribs.
The pain eased. She exhaled, reaching up to unclip the radio mic and pausing.
Call Dar? Find some excuse to reach out and make that contact? She felt the urge to do that, to smooth over the moment's anger between them before it festered and yet, she didn't want to interrupt Dar in front of the rest of the staff for something silly.
Something she knew Dar knew would have nothing to do with what she was calling for.
"Ugh." Kerry let her hand drop and sipped her milk instead. "Dear God I wish it was tomorrow already." She decided she'd rest here for a few minutes, and then go back to the data center and make her amends in person.
Her side did hurt. A lot. She concentrated on breathing shallowly and put her head down on her arm as she waited for the medication to kick in. "Rats." She muttered. "What in the hell else is going to happen to us here?"
Her radio crackled softly, its speaker right near her ear. Then it clicked off, much as she had only moments before.
Kerry closed her eyes, and managed something almost close to a smile.
DAR KNELT BESIDE the open floor, working hard to focus her mind on the problem in front of her. She stared at the cable mess for a long minute before she glanced over at Mark giving him a half shrug. "Our options are fix it, or tell them to fix it."
Mark nodded. "Shaun said the guy in here said their network people are somebody's cousin."
"Great." Dar rested her elbow on her upraised knee. "All right,"she finally said. "Get a couple of the LAN guys down here with a kit. I'll go find the idiots running this place and see if I can get them to take responsibility for it."
"Think they will?"
"No," Dar said. "But I want them on the record refusing to." She stood up and stepped carefully over the open space. "Stupid bastards."
"This is a lot of crap." Mark got up. "Crap on top of crap if you know what I mean."
Dar looked past him, silent for a moment. Then she looked back."Yeah. I'll be back." She ducked out of the computer room and looked both ways, and then turned right and reluctantly headed further into the building.
Reluctant, because her conscience was really driving her in the opposite direction, back to the steps, and the door, and the bus where her partner was supposedly resting.
She felt bad about ordering Kerry out. Even if she was right, and even if she knew her partner knew she was right, it put her guts in a knot remembering the imperfectly hidden hurt in Kerry's eyes when she left.
Stupid, really. Dar prowled the hallways, poking her head into the doors on either side. Most were empty--given that it was Sunday and getting late--and she suspected finding a responsible person who'd be willing to help her was going to be unlikely.
Also stupid. Really.
She paused before a barred window and stared out of it. Maybe Kerry was really pissed at her for what she'd done. She watched the shadows move past the glass. Her partner knew her well enough to give her ten minutes to chill, and then usually she'd be back around her, nudging and poking and putting her in a better mood.
She'd expected that this time. But an hour had passed and her partner had remained in exile, and Dar was starting to feel very unhappy about it.
"Shit." She turned and put the window behind her. "Grow the hell up, would you?"
She climbed up the steps toward the large inner doors and pushed them open, emerging into the trading floor that was now dark, silent and empty.
It smelled. She wrinkled her nose. Not of dirt and decay as the basement below had, when she'd worked with Mark to push the cable back up, but of wood and paper, oil and dust, with the scent of stale perspiration just at the edges of everything.
The room was vast, but seemed far less so with the strips and outlines of cable supports that criss-crossed over the endless series of kiosks and connected them with miles of wires.
Without the clutter, it would have been grand, reminding Dar just a bit of the Grand Central terminal she'd visited on her last trip to the city. But with all the machinery and trappings of modern technology it seemed more like a cyber junkyard.
Dar studied it, reflecting on how much her life had been influenced by the goings on here. Then she shook her head and turned, walking out and back down the stairs.
"Oh, Ms. Roberts?"
Dar paused and waited as a young man caught her up. "Yes?"
"Hi," he said. "Barry Marks. We met earlier?"
Dar turned and faced him. "Yes?"
"Listen," Marks looked both ways, and then back at her, "my boss just called me. "
"I don't care," Dar said. "I've had it up to here with everyone's bosses calling everyone's bosses trying to make people kiss their asses. I'm over it."
"Wait--"
"I don't care who your boss is, or who he called, or what he's threatening, or what he says some other jackass is threatening. I just don't care. Either the damn thing will be fixed tomorrow or it won't. Not a jack thing you can do about it."
Marks stuck his hands in his pockets. "Boy, you're a tough cookie.Okay. I just wanted to pass along a warning, that's all."
Dar rolled her eyes.
"The governor is on his way here." Marks added. "I guess he's spoken to Abercrombie." He gave her an apologetic look. "Sorry about that. Everyone's kind of losing their mind about tomorrow. Any idea what we're going to do?"
"Postpone the opening." Dar leaned against the wall.
"We can't do that."
"Better figure out how to do this the old fashioned way then." Dar indicated the doors to the big room. "I'm not going to tell you it's going to be all right, buddy. It's a clusterfuck. There are parts of this thing ripped up and I can't even find someone from here to go fix it."
"Well--"
"You know whose cousin does the wiring here?" Dar pressed him. "Maybe you can have him call me, since no matter what we do with the uplink it's not going to help with the pile of cable chewed up by rats in there."
"Rats!"
"Can your boss find whoever's cousin it is?" Dar persisted. "Because that would help a lot more than sending me some ridiculous warning."
Marks held his hand up. "I'll call him. He knows the guy who's in charge of the facilities here. Probably some friend of his. Want him to come see you?"
Dar turned and started walking. "Have him see Mark Polenti in the computer room. He knows what to do." She called back over her shoulder. "I've got a--something more important to take care of."