Who: Lei Campbell and Carver Ellington What: Lei stumbles onto a part of Astor she's never seen before. Where: The Utility Elevator When: Wednesday evening Rating: PG-13 Status: Complete
Bad weather was bad weather... nothin’ could be done about what the sky decided to drop on Destiny Falls: that was an easily accepted notion from someone who’d spent most of her life in Boston, where sparrows and squirrels often fell from the sky in winter, like little frozen dive-bombs; where Noreasters swept in from the sea and dumped a foot of the white shit on the town in less than six hours, choking up roads and makin’ everyone bitch about how they should’ve wintered in Orlando.
The cold was nothin’ new to Lei Campbell, and neither was the sort of blizzard that howled outside the high-rise walls. Not that she heard the howls... but it was obvious enough by the new forced hair styles on the residents she observed coming in from the cold. Unfortunately it was weather like this that kept people firmly planted in their homes--which meant the staff was short-handed. Lei was one of six housekeepers currently on the clock, on a shift that normally boasted twenty.
She’d been sitting in a blue Lycra chair in the staff break room, waiting for her break to run out when one of the only supervisors on shift handed her a list of extra chores that needed to be handled... a trickle down from the maintenance fellas who were busy keeping the Pool roof and sidewalks clear.
Lei looked at it mournfully, twitching the paper between long, slender fingers and burning holes through it with her dark eyes. Especially when she noticed she had to go to the basement.
Fucking Hell.
The Beijing-born maid really didn’t like going into the sublevels of the apartment building, especially alone (like she knew she would be tonight). Aside from a general creepy vibe, something just didn’t smell right, down below the gym and the residential storage, where the maintenance crews left their carts and supplies, and the walls were all drywall covered concrete. The tip of her tongue explored the back of her teeth as she sat there, brooding over how unpleasant tonight’s shift was going to be, when the table she was leaning on vibrated, rhythmically.
The tiny Asian woman instinctively looked up, and met the eyes of the Head of Housekeeping--an older woman with the disposition of an mutt in heat. At least, around a lot of the younger security guards and crew.
“Break’s over.” Lei focused on her lips when she spoke, chewed her cheek a bit, and nodded. She rose to her feet and pushed the list of To-Do’s in the pocket of her deep gray maid’s uniform, straightening it with her palms on conditioned instinct.
Better get this over with.. Down to the supply room, out with the cart, then back up, she thought, drawing her fingers through the straight-black silk of her hair to tie it neatly in a low ponytail that draped her shoulder. Reluctant steps followed the now well-known path to the utility elevator waiting for her behind no less than three security doors. Ten minutes, tops.
Carver was sitting in an indolent sprawl in the front desk, large booted feet propped up on the polished wood while there was no one there to direct him otherwise. He was supposed to be checking in guests, though thanks to the weather there was jack shit on that front. Still, he didn’t want to complain of being bored and wind up being handed a shovel to go out in front of the building and join in on the fray.
Carver was a southern boy, and they just didn’t hang with snow like that.
Still, the first interruption of his day came with the muted beep on the control panel, indicating someone had accessed a security personnel only area of the building, and he turned to the monitors, flipping through the channels until he saw Lei stepping into the utility elevator. “Poor thing,” he muttered softly to himself. She had to be vastly overworked on a day like this.
She noted her entry was permitted after the swipe of the plastic card attached to her hip, not because of the signifying ding that most people looked for, but for the subtle vibration of the electronic lock in the door, waited for under the palm of her hand.
The elevator was a little easier, considering it just plain opened when it was supposed to, also with the proper coaxing of that electronic key. Lei stepped inside and turned, once again running the palms of her hands down the front of starched and ironed buttons, over the bleach-white apron and the little folded list she felt in it’s pocket.
Bobby Jenks is the new closer in the bullpen... She kept her thoughts trained on the ESPN updates of the last month, centered, of course, around the Red Sox, forcing the sight of the elevator doors closing in front of her with a loud metallic latch she couldn’t hear. Twenty-one with a Series win already... He’ll patch up those holes. Near-black eyes flicked to the button panel to the left of the door when it lit, signalling the system’s readiness for a command. She reached out for ‘B2’, the level just beneath the staff lockers and various storage, where the maintenance carts were kept.
Unfortunately, by some god-forsaken stroke of luck, a sudden tickle solidly grabbed the young maid’s attention and forced her eyes shut with a sneeze. After hitting the button, she rubbed furiously at her nose and ignored the watering in her eyes for balancing in the now moving elevator.
Wonder if we paid too much for him... Her thoughts were back on track, and Lei went back to staring at the elevator doors. Unaware that the button she had pressed was not the one she had intended.
Carver had resumed his deceptive attention on the job at hand, now staring real hard at the computer screen in front of him like there was something he was meticulously reading, but really there was just... Well, nothing specific. Women, music. His guitar. His car. His...
A flicker on the security monitor next to him had him looking at it again. It was the shot of the elevator that Lei had just climbed into, but it couldn’t be right. The display screen above the elevator door did not say the basement, as that was the lowest place Lei could conceivably go, but instead one floor below.
The sub basements.
“Fuck,” he said, louder than he’d intended, his hand going to the walkie talkie on his belt where he paged someone to cover the desk. He had to get down there. Had to make sure she was alright.
The delicate hum of the hydraulics pulsed constantly from the soles of her feet (through the inexpensive padding of nurse’s shoes) and on up through her spine, jerking only when it came to a stop at her floor. Lei rubbed the back of her neck with one hand, stretching a look toward the lift’s ceiling and kneaded out one particularly stubborn knot. Time to get a new pillow. Preferably one with a built in heating pad... Christ, she was looking forward to an extremely hot bath at the end of the night.
Lei sensed the door’s open. She stepped forward with a soft, dejected sigh, and rubbing the inner corner of one almond-shaped eye. Only when both of them opened again did she come to realize...
She was on the wrong floor.
Half a step outside the elevator, the young woman froze, staring at the small, barely lit square room she’d suddenly found herself in. Unfamiliar and cold. Across from her stood a single, metal paned door with a security pad beneath the industrial, external handle and latch, like Lei had seen at the bank... and the two opposite walls were lined with thick fiberglass windows. Or at least, she thought they were windows... It was hard to tell. The only thing she could see through them was blackness.
What the freakin’ hell... She shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t on her list; this was a place she wasn’t supposed to be--and sure as fuck didn’t want to be. Lei forced a dry swallow and shifted her weight, taking a step backward to return to the elevator.
Except the elevator had closed. Of course, she hadn’t heard it.
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention: her heart started to pick up, spreading an uncomfortable chill down her back, pinched hard between her shoulder blades.
There’s no call button!
Lei’s eyes were wide as they could go, cutting through the dingy haze at the summonless elevator, with only a pin-keypad where the unmistakable Up or Down button should be. Her lips fell apart, failing in breath. Panic was close on her heels.
How the fuck do I get back?!
Attempting the security code was out of the question (for right now)--Lei had only been at Astor for two months: of course they hadn’t given her any codes, only the reprimand that should someone use them incorrectly, the repercussions would be unpleasant. Tiny balled fists at the side of her uniform’s skirt curled in tightly with forced control, to keep from just mashing at the numbers blindly.
Okay... Okay, okay... there’s gotta be a way. Maybe this was the lower level of a private parking garage? Parking garages never made her feel like a fuckin’ rat in a maze, though.
She turned her back to the elevator, scouring the darkness beyond the windows for anything familiar, something beyond the ghostly image of her own reflection. Lei’s blood pressure slowly started to rise with each slow, unmeasured step she took toward the opposite ‘vault’ door. Then it suddenly spiked... when it looked like a piece of that darkness moved.
Maybe it was her own shadow.
Carver had flown from the desk to the utility elevator frantically swiping his card as though the voracity with which he attempted to call the elevator to action would make it get to him quicker. If she’d gotten off the elevator she would be stuck on that floor, between the elevator and the door to the room where those... Things were kept. People, he supposed they were, the poor bastards, but Carver simply could not let his mind go there. It was one of those things that was too horrific, too disgusting and utterly depraved that he simply filed it away as one would childhood abuse or any other sort of trauma, as something he did NOT let infiltrate his mind during the light of day, but often kept him up at night.
He hated himself a little more every day for letting this place and that bastard on the top floor wield this sort of power over him.
That fact was never more clear then when he climbed in the elevator, his heart feeling like it might pound out of his chest and hit the button even after the doors had started to close together. He didn’t want to act too drastically and call the attention of the old man, as God knew the old bastard would waste no time figuring out exactly what had him so upset and attempt to fuck with him or Lei further, but it was hard to remain calm.
Lei was sweet, too sweet for this place, and her brother was a friend. He’d never be able to live with himself if he didn’t get to her in time. Knowing what he knew about this place was like a vine of poison, twisting itself around the brain and corrupting everything he’d mistakenly thought once upon a time that he stood for. He didn’t want that for Lei.
The elevator dinged and the door swished open, though he was pushing himself out between the doors when they’d opened up just far enough for him to get his body through sideways. She hadn’t gotten in the room yet but she was looking, and he couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t see something or one of them wouldn’t see her.
If Lei knew... The chances were that she’d be among the people in the basement before she was allowed to walk around with that knowledge bouncing around in her brain. She’d only been there too much, and if the old man thought he had a chance to hurt somebody.
“Lei,” he said, loud and sharp with emotion even though he knew she wouldn’t hear him. He grabbed her shoulder, whipping her around and away from the glass, knowing that the pale, freckled skin of his cheeks would either be considerably more pale with fear, or bright red. “What are you doing?!” he said, shaking her a little (though not enough to hurt her) to compensate for the raised volume he knew she wouldn’t hear. “You do not come down here ever. EVER! Do you understand?!”
Of course, she didn’t hear the elevator door come to life behind her, or the bark of his sharp concern--Lei only knew the sudden shock of a grip on her side and a force the spun her hard enough to threaten dizziness, and that was on top of the fact that her heart shot to the top of her throat with a choked shriek: he’d scared about ten years off her life with that move, and it was clear as fucking day in wide-as-saucer black eyes.
She tensed on instinct to take a good swing at whatever had grabbed her, relaxing only a little when she saw it was Carver, Jake’s drinking buddy and the top reference on her resume’ when she applied for this stupid job. And he was yelling at her?! Drained and wan, she could feel a shake under the solid-wood grip around her biceps, and he looked like he’d seen a fucking ghost.
As much of a distraction his presence was from the mysterious (read: really goddamned creepy) room she’d stumbled onto, their combined anxiety was enough to make following his words especially difficult. It also didn’t help that he was shaking her.
“Whoa, whoa...” She manipulated her breath into what she recognized as speech, a rarity that Carver, as her brother’s friend, was privilege to, when many of the other staff were not. Thin brows furrowed, confusion and frazzled nerves tried to brush his grip away, so her hands could convey most of her talking. They emphasized her point, along with the youthful, but slightly distorted voice. “Slow. Down... What the Hell is this place?”
He didn’t bother to answer her question, as one look at the windows showed movement in the darkness and he did not need to get them stirred up. He wasn’t sure why the room down there had windows - was it to torture those in the darkness with light that would never reach them? Or was it simply for situations like these, to scare the bejesus out of someone and make them think they were trapped down here?
Carver didn’t know, but he wouldn’t put it past the old man to be after both.
The movement threw him into action again, holding her arm as he turned and tapped out the code on the buttons of the elevator, waiting until it swished open to guide her inside and hit the doors closed button before he hit the call button to take them back up to the lobby.
“You do not ever, ever go down there, do you understand me?” He said, speaking slowly and making sure his words would be clear, as as gifted as he was with spoken languages, he knew jack shit about sign.
Carver may’ve been one of those on Astor’s payroll that she knew (and liked) more than many others: she may’ve known him longer than the rest, laughed at him when he was being drunk and entertaining with her brother, but as soon as his grip loosened in the confines of the utility elevator, she sure as shit took a step back, putting at least a comfortable distance between them. Not that she minded closeness, but holding onto her like a rebellious teenager was a little fucking much, thank you.
The tension that wired both of them made Lei’s breath a little hard, staring up at Carver with her hands on her narrow waist, flicking her gaze between a pair of hard blue eyes and over-enunciated speech.
Don’t go down there again? Lei’s reaction was more than she anticipated, with both brows arched high, then covered with her palm in a show of exasperation. She shook her head, dropping her gaze for only a moment before it snapped back up, same with her hands as she spoke, and signed.
“I don’t plan on it.” Emotion was definitely there--a little left over terror compiled with confusion and a deep sense of being unsettled, it probably came out a little more harsh than she intended--but then again, Lei couldn’t hear that.
The elevator started to move, and she swayed with it naturally, one hand caught the wooden rail that ran the middle of the wall. She was still watching him, obviously searching for an explanation: for why he’d yanked her like that, and yelled at her... and why he looked like he just watched someone he loved jump off a bridge.
The moment he had her away from everything and the metal of the doors was firmly separating them from everything else down there, he felt bad. He knew he’d scared her out there just as he knew he was scaring her now, but good. Let her be scared. Being scared would keep her away, and staying away would, hopefully, keep her safe.
He took a deep, calming breath, running the palm of one work roughened hand over his face to collect the cold sweat that had sprung on his skin in the minutes it had taken to get from his desk to her down here. He turned his head to look at her again and, much gentler, dipped enough so that she could see his face. “How did you wind up down there?”
He had to know if someone had sent her. If the old man was playing with her or if it was just her very unlucky day. Had to.
“No idea,” Lei responded verbally, without her hands and in earnest after a moment for just a few more breaths. Her heart had stopped hammering it’s way out of the cage of muscle and bone and polyester uniform, but Jesus, she still felt jittery: a much, much more acute version of the creepy feeling she always got in the basement. If it weren’t for that particular prick of instincts, the sheer urgency in his actions to retrieve her from that place would’ve triggered a lot more curiosity about what it was.
However, as things were... right now, she was just thrown for a loop. The only thing she DID know, was that she sure as Hell wasn’t going back to that room again, if she could help it.
“Greenfield told me I had to grab a cart for the guys working on twelve.” The subtle variations in the Deaf woman’s voice were barely noticeable for the most part, but she was still quite self conscious about it. She’d even prefer writing everything down than actually holding ‘conversations’ (and she mostly let Jake translate for her when the three of them were together), but something told her to bite the bullet this time.
Lei flicked away a few pieces of dark hair from her cheek, then dipped her fingers into the apron pocket to hand him the list. “I never saw that floor before...”
Carver’s eyes closed softly and he took a deep breath through his nose. There was some relief in knowing that she hadn’t been told by anyone to go down there, but still it didn’t mean that the old man wasn’t involved. He could’ve fucked with the elevator. Done anything, and there was jack shit any of them could do about it.
He looked up to where the ‘security’ camera was located in the elevator, the familiar red light blinking slow and soft in the corner, and managed to keep a blank face as he stared into the lens. The old man was watching, of that he had no doubt, and damned if Carver was going to give him more of a dramatic show then he’d already received.
“Lei,” he said, taking her by her shoulders so that she’d look at him again. He spoke slowly, attempting to drop his accent and feeling like an idiot, but he had no other way to communicate with her. He hoped she understood. “If you ever wind up on that floor again, do not get off the elevator. I don’t care what is happening, do not get off. Call the security desk from the phone inside and tell someone you’re stuck and to come get you. Okay?”
The weight of his hands on her shoulders (they practically swallowed them) snapped her eyes up from their insistent study of the elevator panel, trying to figure out where the last twenty-minutes went wrong. Still frazzled, widened onyx disks focused on his lips when they started to move. His effort to slow it down was more than obvious, and appreciated, but the sharp sense of importance in his words combined with the confusion of what had just happened between them only further deepened the natural curiosity. Though that wasn’t the word she would’ve chosen to describe it.
Still, Carver was really good at making his point, and being trapped in a mystery room well below the building didn’t sound like a picnic for her either. Lei pressed her lips together tightly, nodding when he finished. Her eyes were on his again. Nevermind the fact that if she ever did end up down there, screaming into the security phone would be a very one-sided conversation. Talk about another uncomfortable situation.
The words ‘no matter what is happening’ kept running through Lei’s head. Over and over, twisting in her gut like a knot of spikes. She just couldn’t let it go.
“What is down there?” spoken and signed, slowly--just in case Carver had picked up anything from her or her brother over the time they’d been friends. Lei looked lost and a little desperate. “I can’t lose this job...”
“Nothing,” he said sharply. “There is nothing down there. Just stay out, okay? Don’t worry about it, and forget you ever went down there.”
He turned away from her, facing the front of the elevator and taking another deep breath. He’d quit this job a million times over, if he could.
He even managed to keep his face stoic when his walkie talkie crackled and came to life, though the voice on the other end was not that of one of his coworkers. The voice was refined, crackled with age and illness both mental and physical, and served in making every hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“Now, Mr. Ellington,” the voice said, causing his eyes to flick to the security camera, then to Lei who looked oblivious. “You should just tell the girl if she wants to know. I could arrange for you to show her, if you’d wish.”
His jaw firmed, teeth grinding on the words that were boiling on his tongue. Disgust, directed both at himself and that bastard on the top floor, turned in his stomach, causing his hands to bunch into fists at his sides. Fuck you! ran through his mind over and over again, though too much hung on his actions. On his job here.
Astor really didn’t waste any time working himself into the fibers of your life and making sure you stuck.
“No thank you, sir,” he said, voice tight and tense, though he managed, he hoped, to keep the hate from his eyes.
“Very well,” came the voice, now rich with amusement as well. “Still - something to think on, isn’t it.”
The statement wasn’t a question, so Carver didn’t bother responding. He moved his hands behind his back, holding himself steady and forcing his muscles to relax and look professional as opposed to resembling the mother that had found her child juggling knives.
Sure as hell was an odd set-up for nothing. Security pads, an elevator with no call button. All the super secrecy, and now Carver practically manhandling her out of the fucking blue. But Lei didn’t say any of that. The edge and urgency of Carver’s enunciation was enough to leave her a little frightened, on top of feeling like a scolded toddler...
“Okay, okay... Done,” she signed and spoke, her eyebrows pinched together in the middle.
Resentment didn’t go well with fear. It left Lei a little more than confused, and the awkwardness started to filter in when he turned his back to her and stiffened into some at-attention posture. It was safe to say she’d never seen him like that. It was unnerving.