Chapter Nine - The Interview

The next morning came, and I awoke after a solid nine hours feeling like I'd only slept for six. As in, not exhausted, but like I wasn't finished sleeping off some debt.

Whenever I had something serious going down I always awoke with my stomach in knots and feeling a little cramped. Same symptoms as starting my period, but not, which had ruined a few afternoons in the past, actually.

Anyway, the point was, I woke up feeling nervous and antsy, and that was incredibly stupid.

I'd literally succeeded in this exact interview before.

I took a shower, which was cold because I was out of hot water for the rest of the month unless I upgraded my apartment, then I got changed into my freshly laundered clothes.

It wasn't anything I was too comfortable in. A single-pleated, asymmetrical top, done in a deep burgundy, with tight slacks and a clean-enough blouse. There was a little stain on it that bothered me, but it was covered up by the jackets. The pumps I wore were insanely pinchy at the toes and somehow too loose around the heel, but I wasn't going to carry around running shoes with me all the way to the edge of the city centre.

In fact, I was leaving my 'costume' for tonight at home as well.

If I had more cash, I'd be renting out a Night-A-Day motel room to stash things in, but nah, it was fine. Interview was in the AM, just before lunch. I remembered the interviewers being in a bit of a hurry at the end, even.

After petting Mister Couchtop, then cursing as I removed some of his fur from my pant legs, I stepped out of my apartment and happened to run into Misses Tone. She talked my ear off for a moment about some problem or another. Then she commented on my nice suit and I told her that if I nailed the job, I definitely wanted to quintuple my hot water budget.

She wished me good luck, then I was off.

Last time I'd splurged on a taxi. Last time I had more than nothing in my pockets, cash-wise. So, I Saved, then took the next bus into the city centre.

Then I Reloaded and took the next

one after that, because some drunkard puked on my shoes.

If it wasn't for my cheating magical powers, this would not have been a great start to the day.

Eventually, I made it into the Inner Ring of Fortress ENE. This was the space protected not just by taller walls and constant barricades and old bunkers, but by an encircling 'dead zone,' a space some fifty-metres across where nothing was built and where not even a shrub was left alive.

It had been nice, in a sort of brutalist way, once. A huge circle of nothing around the city.

Now it was collecting trash, the burnt-out husks of old cars, and a few hobo camps went up almost as quickly as they were taken down by the F-ENE PD. The city within that space jumped upwards in quality and price. The buildings were shinier, with more care put into keeping them pristine, the shops more ritzy and glamorous, and everything was just nicer.

Inner Circle was a nice place to be. Centre was better.

Something like ninety-percent of the D-rankers living in Fortress ENE lived in one circle or the other. It made it one of those few places where a decent percentage of the population (as in, almost one percent) were full-on ranked magic users.

That meant that everything was stupidly overpriced, but it was also safe and secure in a way that many places just weren't.

That wouldn't last with the breach. Not that I particularly cared if the ivory towers tumbled, but the breach had wrecked its way through the outer city first. I wasn't in a position to know how many had died during those couple of days, but it couldn't have been less than tens of thousands.

Luna Corp's HQ was on the edge of the Inner Circle. It was one of the smaller buildings there, which meant it was still taller than the apartment block I lived in. The building was a matt-black, with, unsurprisingly, the company's logo on proud display at the front, high above the doors.

At a glance, no one would have guessed that Luna Corp wasn't doing so well financially.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Not that I had ever had the opportunity to look at the books, but I was an employee for nine months. Once the glitz and glamour of a new job wore off, I started to notice the cracks. There had been a few small rounds of layoffs, some C-suite left to work elsewhere, and some of the company's few C-rankers had been poached.

I think, at the end, there had only been Louise and maybe two others left. Not a single B-ranker.

Not that that was terrible.

In common parlance, a D-ranker was worth a squad of soldiers. I wasn't sure if that was true or not, and I suspected that in reality, it varied too much to be real.

Still, that same folk knowledge said that a C-ranker was the equivalent of a company, which meant a couple of platoons, each one composed of a few squads. The difference in firepower was immense.

The bus stopped half a block over, and with the previous bus being missed, I found myself speed-walking over to the corp's front entrance.

The space was pretty normal for a mid-level corporation's lobby. Wide open space, a nice counter, some seating. No one around, but then again, Luna Corp wasn't a company that sold a service to the public. Its clients were more governmental.

I walked up to the front, where a pretty young woman with some pretty intense cyberware. She looked up as I approached. "Hello, and welcome to Luna Corp, where the sky is the limit. How may I help you?"

A smile plastered itself on my face out of sheer habit. "Hello. I have an appointment in... seventeen minutes, for a job interview. With mister Damien and I believe Miss Serena?"

"Ah, one moment," she said before asking me for my name.

I told her what she needed to know, and after a few moments of staring vacantly into the air, she smiled in return. "I see. I look forward to you joining our crew. You'll find the interview room at the rear, past the red door. This security card needs to be worn around your neck at all times."

She gave me a card, with a picture of my face on it, likely taken from her own eyes and printed silently under the desk. It had impressed and spooked me the first time. Not so much now.

I did as Rita instructed, going past her counter and through the correct door, then down a slight corridor into a waiting space. There were two others here. One of which I recognized as a fellow E-ranker that had done shifts and some training at the same time as me.

Luna Corp was trying to bolster their numbers, which meant a lot of new, low-ranked employees. Other corps were doing the same, and I wasn't sure anymore if this was the best choice, only... Yeah.

I sat, then waited. I made sure not to fiddle on my augs or pull out any distractions the way the third guy in the room was doing. He didn't get the job last time, and I didn't expect that to change now.

He was next. I waited ten, then twenty minutes, and then he was out and walking past with a scowl. Then it was the other guy's turn... I think his name was Darren? Something like that. We'd never been friends but he wasn't a bad sort.

Finally, after fifty minutes of sitting there, it was my turn. I gave in to the temptation and made a Save. Just in case.

"Miss... ah, you're here," a vaguely familiar woman said. She was a bit on the chubby side, but her suit was nice. Miss Serena, from HR. "Please, come on in."

I put on that same fake smile and followed her into another corridor, then into the interview room. It wasn't too much to look at. A space, a table, some chairs. It was a bit comfier than a police interrogation room, with a couch that no one would use in one corner and a coffee machine in another, but that was it.

Damien was sitting at the table already. He was a tall, skinny man, with a serious face and glasses that flickered with text that I couldn't read. One of Luna Corp's twenty-odd D-rankers.

"Hello, and good morning," I said as I gestured to a seat. "May I?" I asked.

"Of course," Serena said with a smile as fake as my own. "So! Let's start you with an easy one, why do you want to work at Luna Corp?"

***