Story code: ST-000555
Part 3: The Proprietary Asset
The heavy brass handle stopped halfway. The shadow beneath the door remained perfectly still.
Marcus’s chest heaved. He couldn’t stop the loud, rhythmic gasping. His brain was screaming for oxygen to neutralize the acid eating his blood. Beside him, the rep made a frantic, muffled whimpering sound. A smooth, manicured hand suddenly clamped hard over Marcus’s mouth and nose. The smell of expensive hotel soap filled his nostrils, thick and cloying.
She was smothering him.
Marcus grabbed her wrist, but his grip was pitifully weak. The absolute darkness of the closet swam with jagged red phosphenes. He felt his lungs burning, his chest seizing as his desperate oxygen supply was abruptly cut off. The rep pressed harder, her other arm bracing against his shoulder to leverage her weight. She was willing to suffocate him to keep the room silent.
Outside the door, a metallic click echoed down the hall. A radio squawked-a brief burst of static followed by a muffled, tactical voice. The shadow shifted, and the sliver of pale hallway light reappeared. Heavy boots receded down the linoleum corridor, moving away from the administrative suite.
The immediate threat was gone, but Marcus was blacking out.
With a violent surge of pure survival instinct, he twisted his torso and threw his heavy shoulder into the rep’s chest. She lost her balance and fell backward, her hand slipping from his face. Marcus sucked in a massive, ragged breath. It tasted of dust and his own sour, acetone-laced saliva.
He didn’t have minutes left. He had seconds. If he passed out now, he would slip into a diabetic coma and never wake up.
He dragged himself across the slick floor, lunging blindly into the pitch-black space where she had fallen. His heavy steel-toed boots tangled with her legs. He didn’t aim for her; he aimed for the bulk of the insulated cooler. His heavy forearms crashed into the hard plastic shell.
“Get off!” she hissed, the sound sharp and venomous in the dark.
She kicked out wildly. The sharp heel of her leather dress shoe connected brutally with Marcus’s jaw. The impact sent a spray of warm blood into his mouth, but he didn’t let go. He wrapped his thick arms around the cooler, dragging it toward his chest.
“You’re going to get us killed!” she cried, scrambling over the spilled boxes of dry-erase markers.
Marcus ignored her. He ran his calloused thumbs along the edge of the cooler, finding the thick nylon track of the primary zipper. The brass padlock securely linked the two metal pulls, but the track itself was vulnerable. After ten years of hauling overloaded freight, ripping open jammed cargo nets, and fighting cheap industrial packaging, he knew the weak points of heavy-duty zippers.
He dug the rigid edge of his thumbnail into the tightly woven teeth of the track. He gripped the heavy canvas lining on either side of the seam. His muscles screamed, trembling violently as his blood sugar plummeted further, but he clamped his jaw and ripped his hands apart.
The rep realized what he was doing. She didn’t freeze in fear of the armed intruder. She threw her entire body weight on top of Marcus, abandoning any pretense of staying quiet.
“No! You can’t!” she yelled, her voice no longer a terrified whisper, but a full, desperate shout.
She slammed her fists into his back and clawed at his neck. Her manicured nails dug deep into his skin, tearing angry, wet gashes down his collarbone. Marcus roared through the pain, twisting his wrists violently.
The nylon track gave way with a loud, tearing pop. The zipper teeth separated, bursting open under the massive tension.
Marcus shoved his heavy hand into the gap, ripping the fabric wider. A sudden wave of frigid, chemically cooled air washed over his sweating face. He thrust his hand inside, knocking away hard plastic ice packs and molded foam inserts. His numb fingers scrambled frantically through the dark until they brushed against cold, smooth plastic.
A cylinder. A dial at the top. A cap at the bottom.
An injector pen.
He closed his fist around it and yanked it out of the cooler.
The rep went absolutely feral.
“Give it back!” she shrieked, lunging at his face. Her hands scrambled over his arms, desperate to locate the pen in the pitch black. She wasn’t cowering from the active shooter anymore. She was completely unhinged, screaming at the top of her lungs in a room she had just claimed needed absolute silence.
Marcus twisted his shoulder, shielding the pen against his chest. He brought it up to his mouth, trying to bite the safety cap off, but she grabbed his wrist with astonishing strength.
“That is proprietary!” she snarled, driving her knee hard into his ribs. “It’s an unreleased synthetic!”
“Dying,” Marcus choked out, fighting to pull his arm free.
“It’s company property!” She clawed frantically at his face, her thumb pressing brutally into his eye socket. She was trying to blind him to get it back. “Do you know what that asset is worth? It’s a pre-market prototype! You’re ruining the inventory chain!”
Her fear of the armed intruder had completely vanished, eclipsed entirely by the terror of a ruined corporate ledger. The liability she had been crying about wasn’t a fear of him suffering an adverse reaction-it was the financial devastation of losing an experimental patent to a delivery driver.
Marcus thrashed, spitting blood, and managed to bite down on the plastic cap. He ripped it off with his teeth, feeling the tiny, sharp point of the micro-needle brush against his chin.
The rep heard the cap hit the floor. She threw her entire weight onto his arm, pinning his wrist to the linoleum with both hands, panting like a wild animal in the dark.
“I will be sued,” she screamed, her spit hitting his cheek. “I will not let you take it!”