Vampires in Space

The Start of a Useless Relationship

I looked into the enclosed elevator lobby. There I saw two men waiting to be admitted to the 56th floor. The enclosing walls of the elevator lobby may have been transparent in the style of modern office buildings for decades on end, but there the resemblance ended. They could not, for example, shoot their way into the office with assault weapons. The beauty of transparent aluminum.

Not that they had any weapons on them. To get up to the 56th floor, these two had already been scanned numerous times, not even counting the Vampire security in the lobby that would have looked them over. Their biggest, best possible weapon at this point would be a toothpick or an ink pen.

Bone-stock humans, which these two are confirmed to be, armed with ink pens against Heather and me. Yeah. Right. They would not stand a chance against my strength, speed, and the fact that Heather is just this side of being a goddess, even if she avoids using that power like the plague. She'd use Vampire capabilities long before leaning on extra-localverse power.

The point is that these two are no personal threat. Not at that level. How they leveraged this meeting with Heather and me is far more concerning.

I opened the thick, glass-appearing door for them, and they came in.

"Thanks." the taller man said.

"Appreciate it." the shorter guy semi-echoed.

They were both dressed in business attire. It probably told them how serious Heather and I are NOT about this meeting when they saw our attire. We were both very casually and comfortably dressed. What constitutes a dress wardrobe has changed down the course of my life, but the universal constant is that business attire is designed to be less comfortable than casual wear.

At least I wasn't wearing shorts and sandals. They forced this meeting and that meant we could not blow them off too hard.

I was dressed. For a pain-in-the-ass meeting like this, they are doing good to get that. I'm going to walk the fine line between showing them my opinion of being cornered and some tiny modicum of respect to keep them from saying we did not take the meeting.

Heather was in complete agreement with me on this, and so she was not more spiffed up than I am.

"Come this way to Adrian and my office." Heather gestured past herself inviting the two men deeper into the office. She turned and led on. The halls were set to subdued lighting levels given it was well past business hours. We were not turning them up just because of this. Not as if Heather or I need lights at all. There was enough to keep the guests from walking into things. It helped make the point that they leveraged this and they were not getting a red carpet.

Our office is big, wide, and open, with two desks and a wall of windows looking out on the rain. There was flashing and booming outside as it thundered. Not counting the flashing the lighting was indirect and warm. Natural tones all about, echoes of the Santa Fe desert colors that no longer were in the city unless they were put there by a designer. It looked more like a club setup than a working office.

The taller man looked at the window wall and shook his head. "Glad we did not drive in that."

"I assume you took the maglev up from Albuquerque?" I asked pleasantly.

"No choice'" said the short man. "That is the nearest major airport. We had to catch a train here from there. You'd think a city at the center of so much business and with a population like this one, there would be a closer airport."

Heather gave that a negative head movement. "No. We don't want one near us. Not public or private. No one in our company travels domestically by air. Trains. Always."