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spookyspaghettisundae · 4 months

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Future Proof Onboarding

Click, click, click, click, click, click—

The small metal spheres on both ends of the array suspended in the Newton’s cradle kept swinging away one side, then back, striking the center set. This tiny display of force always sent the sphere on the opposite end into swinging up and back to mirror its motion, then repeating the endless cycle all over again on its next click against the center set. Tiny shockwaves of force, back and forth, back and forth, ever since Spencer tipped the first ball and started reading the papers on his desk.

Click, click, click, click, click, click—

A steady rhythm, in perpetual motion.

Chloe Grant stared at the Newton’s cradle on Malachi Spencer’s desk. It helped her focus and keep her composure, preventing any feelings of nervousness from surfacing. She suppressed all usual habits, kept her hands folded in her lap, and second-guessed if she even wanted this job.

The cold reception at the front desk in an otherwise empty lobby, the ride up in a spacious elevator made of mirrors, and the dizzying view of the city from the thirtieth story in Spencer’s office all conspired to drain every shred of confidence she had harbored before stepping foot inside the building.

The longer she sat there, the more her ego deflated, even though her CV contained everything the job listing was asking for, and more. Military service with decorations, an education in cybersecurity, half a decade of working in private security at a multinational, and a pristine record without as much as a parking ticket to her name.

However, a lot of things about Future Proof LLC were unusual.

Chief among them was the CEO himself, Malachi Spencer, whose office she now sat in, while he studied her cover letter and CV with a stern and cold gaze. Taking far too long for what it should have taken to scan the papers proper.

Click, click, click, click, click, click—

Was this a test? In and of itself, testing her patience?

Chloe Grant possessed a healthy dose of arrogance and the ability to assert herself in almost any environment. She was tall and fit. Back in high school, people would derisively call her “Jack’s Beanstalk” because of her shorter boyfriend at the time. But it all conspired to sharpen her competitive nature, and thicken her skin. Her physique lent itself to playing basketball, and that, in turn, primed her for joining the military later on.

Drills, duty, discipline. Hard work, long hours, loss and therapy; Chloe had seen a lot and never shied away from seeing more. More of the world, more of herself.

Even so, she grappled with something she hadn’t felt since high school, which is why a lot of these memories were bubbling back up.

She felt insecure.

Malachi Spencer was a tall black man. Angular facial features matched his thin and slender frame, lending him a sharp look. If any person had ever looked like a knife in human form, then Malachi Spencer fit the description.

The sharpness extended to his attire, as Spencer was dressed in a sharp white three-piece suit, all tailored to perfectly fit his form, and probably worth a small fortune on its own. Paired with his rigid posture, he projected a regal air of strictness and severity. Every motion of his, no matter how subtle, conveyed a sense of swift and exacting purpose.

Just observing Spencer for a few minutes, it was clear he was not a man you disappoint without coming to deeply regret your failures.

Everything about him screamed unchecked power, and it left Chloe with another feeling to keep the growing insecurity company.

Inadequacy.

So, Chloe stared at the Newton’s cradle to keep herself centered, just like the metal spheres in the middle. They looked perfectly still, while repeatedly being struck from both sides by the spheres at each end.

Click, click, click, click, click, click—

The papers in Spencer’s hands rustled as he finally put them down onto the shiny surface of his glossy desk.

He looked up over the rims of his thin silvered glasses, as if he only needed them to read. His gaze burned with a fiery intensity.

She clenched her jaw and made eye contact. Chloe kept her composure as still as the statue of a Greek goddess. Against all odds, her arrogance and confidence returned. She was used to asserting herself against men in power—whether they truly held it, or only mistakenly believed they did.

It was time to prove herself, and she could do that better than with any written application.

Malachi Spencer beat her to the punch.

“You must have questions,” he said. The first words since asking her to take a seat across from him at his desk.

The same sharpness of his appearance also extended to his way of speaking. Authoritative, determined, and with a seriousness that would make the grim reaper blush.

“Yes, sir,” she replied without missing a beat. “I did my research on Future Proof LLC—and on you—and I couldn’t help but notice how well-sanitized the firm’s public image is in regards to its operations. Is there any NDA I should sign before we proceed?”

Spencer’s left brow twitched. He leaned over the desk, slid a sheet of paper and a pen towards her, and then leaned back, steepling his fingers while he waited.

Chloe scanned the form. It looked like any others she had signed before, though the threat of litigation carried a far higher and more punishing sum than she had ever glimpsed before. She struggled to imagine the sheer amount of zeroes behind the number that they would sue her for in the event of a breach of contract.

As she harbored no intention of letting things ever come to that, it did little to stop her. After all, she was a professional. And if the pay here was half as good as the company’s outward secrecy, she was willing to enter this agreement.

In a heartbeat.

Spencer wouldn’t wait long. The pen glided over paper as she signed her name on the bottom line.

She slid the items back over to Spencer, who didn’t even bother casting as much as a glance at them. His fierce gaze had been resting on her all the while.

“Our background check beforehand suggests you are a good fit for our company. Your record is clean. Too clean. I hate nasty surprises, so I will only ask you once, now. Is there anything about you we should know?”

How thorough was the background check, she wondered?

“I am terrible with Secret Santa gifts,” she quipped.

His burning gaze turned into a scowl. She kept her composure, sure not to display any form of shrinking under his severe expression.

With awkward delay, the corners of his lips twitched until they formed a thin-lipped, cold smile, never quite reaching his eyes despite extensive practice.

Spencer chortled like a villain out of a James Bond movie.

Then, as abruptly as the laugh cut out, all humor vanished from his expression again.

“One more question,” he said. “Are you squeamish around animals?”

Chloe blinked. Now he had truly caught her off-guard.

Were there animal experiments being conducted in Future Proof that the public had never heard about?

Possible… given the ridiculous sum she had just agreed to be sued for should she ever leak.

“I don’t much like dogs,” she admitted.

Spencer harumphed.

Seizing the initiative, she started asking her own questions. She knew she always impressed in doing so.

“What is it I would exactly be doing for Future Proof?”

Click, click, click, click, cl—

With a sudden gesture and his finger to stop a metal ball, Spencer halted the perpetual motion of the Newton’s cradle.

“You would be acting as a field operative on an international stage, cooperating with a team of trained professionals, all of the same high caliber and integrity as you, Miss Grant.”

Fancy words. Still keeping things vague. Though Spencer’s overall air lent them weight, gravity, even.

It was starting to sound more and more like mercenary work, dressed up in silk. His pregnant pause gave her space to let that sink in and pose another question.

“And this work is based on contracts with interests in the private sector?”

Spencer removed his glasses, gingerly folded them, and rested them on an otherwise almost empty desk.

“Future Proof LLC is partially funded and supported by three private interest groups, but our sole contractor is the United States government. We carry out our work with absolute discretion as to maintain plausible deniability, even should an operation go awry.”

Chloe narrowed her eyes. Spencer continued.

“Abroad, we get in and out of hotspots before local authorities or armed forces can interrogate the legal liberties we take. Domestically, we are often on site before national agencies can show up to ask questions about the incursions we handle.”

She blinked. The first time her composure showed any cracks.

Such an odd choice of word to hint at the nature of the company’s operations.

“What kind of incursions?”

Another thin-lipped smile crept across Spencer’s lips. This one reached his eyes—genuine. A genuine smirk, knowing something she did not.

Like it amused him.

“I will leave that for your future colleagues to brief you on,” he said.

Cocky. As if she had already taken the job, despite only having signed the NDA, she thought.

“I am intrigued,” she again admitted. And it had all only served to reignite her deep wells of confidence. Curiosity killed the cat, sure, but that kind of caution needed to be thrown into the wind sometimes. She cocked a brow and nailed what it all boiled down to. “Though the price must be at least adequate for all this secrecy and, what I must assume are the risks of death, injury, and incarceration in foreign nations. What am I going to earn if I join your operations?”

Spencer’s smile widened. He didn’t miss a beat.

His response shot out like a bullet.

“Name your price.”

She fired back. High enough to expect he would haggle her down, but not so high as to suggest she had her head in the clouds, nor so low that it would undersell the importance of the company’s work, or her own skillset.

“Three hundred thousand a year at a minimum, not including benefits and any insurance policies.”

Spencer extended a hand across the desk.

“You’re hired.”

The world began to spin around Chloe. Not a sum she had expected him to agree with, as it far eclipsed what international mercenaries usually earned—though the NDA should have tipped her off. No haggling. Higher than she expected, far higher than the previous private firm she had worked for in a similar capacity.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. But the world continued to spin.

The cloudless blue horizon and city skyline that dominated the view from Spencer’s corner office kept spinning. It turned into an ocean of heavens and glass that she was swimming in, and the rest of their conversation drowned in it.

Somewhere, in the middle of that brain fog, she shook that thin hand of his. A firm shake, from both of them.

Hours later, she had signed on with Future Proof LLC. Shaken Malachi Spencer’s hand a second time in agreement over the terms of her new employment there. Written her signature at the bottom of stacks upon stacks of legal papers, ushered here, then there, talking to several faces whose names she immediately forgot.

The offer was too good for her to pass up. The insurance policy was more generous than she could have dreamt of, ensuring securities for her mother should the worst come to pass.

The vagueness of the nature of their work no longer put her off.

At the end of the day, Chloe Grant even told herself: morality was best kept flexible. She placed her work ethic above all, and part of her was excited to learn more about whatever mysterious work as a field operative awaited her at Future Proof.

A man of Pakistani descent named Singh soon gave her a tour of the corporate headquarters. Most of the offices above ground were exactly as she expected: opulent, vacant, and focused on administrative tasks.

Rida Singh showed her to her new office, though he cracked a joke that she’d probably only be using it to take naps, “like Mischchenko and Pruitt” usually did. She didn’t even know yet whom Singh was referring to.

All of it was a blur. Floating on a sea into the unknown.

Surreal.

Yet it made her giddy. It all gave her a sensation akin to butterflies in her stomach. Everything about Future Proof’s corporate tower filled her with wonder and exalted curiosity.

The place was so high-tech and cutting edge wherever they went, they had to be hemorrhaging money. Every computer, even every printer looked like it had been upgraded or replaced in recent months. Office workers made zero security mistakes as they spoke on phones, locked their screens when they left their desks, and typed away at their computer keyboards.

Lights were dimmed and brightened with state-of-the-art touch sensors, doors opened and closed automatically without direct contact, every glossy surface of chrome or glass or plastic was polished to perfection. Chloe didn’t spot a single speck of dust nor a smudge of grease anywhere.

Her new office featured a glass front and tall floor-to-ceiling windows like Spencer’s office, though the console on her desk and voice controls offered settings to render every translucent surface entirely opaque. A place for naps indeed.

Singh, according to their initial introduction, was head of Central Operations. Whatever that meant.

He looked like the opposite of Spencer, and he was definitely no soldier. He was a young man in his late twenties, probably Chloe’s junior by a whole decade or more. He dressed like he worked at Google or some startup tech company in Silicon Valley, rather than someone in communications for what had to be an international mercenary outfit. He wore a baby blue jacket slung over a hip T-shirt with some nonsensical meme written across it, topping a pair of stonewashed jeans, and bright white designer sneakers on his feet. The amount of product he must have used to style his hair probably even eclipsed the costume budget.

Also, unlike Spencer, Singh was deeply insecure around Chloe. Furtive glances indicated that her very presence intimidated him. A whole head taller than the younger man, she exuded a cold and collected professionalism, further conveyed through all her forced smiles. Even in her best black dress and shoes she had worn to the interview, her muscles and frame lent her physical appearance a powerful energy that was bound to scare a little nerd like Singh. Even still swimming and disoriented by the surreal experience of exploring her fancy new workplace, she still carried herself with the same composure she had mustered in front of the CEO, and she would do the same even if Singh introduced her to the building custodian next—whom she expected to be a wizard.

Singh carried keys and magnetic cards to every room in the building and every level of the elevator he showed her to. After a cup of coffee in the break room, they headed onto the elevator. He flashed the red magnetic key card at the touchpad and entered a number that snapped Chloe out of her daze.

Minus twelve.

Twelve levels below ground?

How huge was this place, and what the hell did they have down there?

Her expression provoked Singh into emitting a nervous chuckle.

He wagged a finger, grinned, and said, “Everybody looks like that upon their first visit. Wait till you see Containment.”

Chloe scoffed.

“Containment? What, like… little green men? What exactly is Future Proof really doing?”

He chuckled again, now with more confidence. The young man let his head hang and then shook it before meeting Chloe’s inquisitive gaze.

“Dinosaurs,” he drawled out.

His grin went from ear to ear, beautiful white teeth on display like a Cheshire cat’s.

Now it was her turn to laugh. His smile persisted, and her laugh descended into a smile before fading entirely.

He was serious.

“Oh, you. You’re shitting me.”

He shook his head again.

“This is my favorite part of the onboarding process.”

Though he still grinned, the spinning and dizzying sensation made Chloe’s head swim again. She felt it in every fiber of her being, and it only made the entire experience more surreal.

He really wasn’t joking.

“Pull the other one,” she said, clicking her tongue, and still dismissive of the possibility.

Dinosaurs? Really?

Ding.

The elevators slid open, and he guided her down a long and tall corridor. There and then, she learned he had been doing anything but joking.

“Welcome to Future Proof’s containment facility, Grant.”

Behind thick, bullet-proof glass panes, she stared into an underground jungle with deep wonder. That wonder turned to a festering terror in her gut. A large lizard’s eye blinked and gazed back at her, and a large mouth opened to show rows of glistening fangs.

The glass fogged up when the Velociraptor snorted against it.

“Like I said, my favorite part of the onboarding process,” Singh said with another chuckle. “This is usually where some people start screaming. One person even quit on the spot.”

She timidly tapped the glass with a fingernail.

“Too thick to hear you,” he commented. “But that mix of curiosity and caution tells me you’re gonna fit in real nice around here.”

Too thick to hear her nail clicking through the glass, the raptor bared its fangs again, reacting to her motion. It snorted and the glass fogged up again.

“Holy shit,” Chloe breathed.

“Oh boy. Wait till you see the Tarbosaur.”

“The what?”

Chloe backed away from the glass. So did the raptor. That sensation of butterflies in her stomach was long gone. The terror quickly subsided, as the thick metal doors and complex security measures all around her suggested the creature was well-contained. Even so, she remained unsettled.

More so as she swiveled, and really took in how many such huge containment cells lined the central corridor.

The Velociraptor on the other side of the protective glass between them faded into the shadows of the artificial jungle.

“Eh, it’s like a smaller T-Rex. Oh, and, don’t worry. Between Mischchenko and Burch, we got all the expertise on dinos we need. I just repeat the fancy names they rattle down. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough, too.”

He smiled and winked and shot her with a finger-gun gesture.

He continued on through the corridor, past different containment cells. Chloe almost stumbled as she struggled to peel her gaze from the glass window from which the Velociraptor had vanished.

A pack of small dinosaurs hopped up at another protective glass pane as the two humans passed it by. Though almost cute at first glance, Chloe clocked the many tiny claws and teeth. Treating that pack like a visit to the petting zoo was probably as healthy as diving headfirst into a woodchipper.

Other cells contained far larger specimens. A truck-sized beast with horns and a plated head languidly ate straw from a gargantuan pile. Something with a long neck sat by an artificial pool, lapping away at the water.

Chloe’s ability to articulate any more questions faded as quickly as everything else in her mind. Landing this new job no longer challenged her confidence… it challenged the very understanding of how the world even worked. It challenged her whole concept of reality.

“Did… did scientists engineer these…?”

Singh emitted another nervous laugh.

“Oh, no. Oh, hell no. No, they came through Anomalies.”

“What?”

“This.”

Singh swiped a black magnetic card in front of the sealed door at the very end of the corridor.

The dizziness nearly toppled Chloe at this point. It took all her focus to stay standing upright.

Hermetic seals hissed and metal discs clanked as they twisted and the large gate unlocked. Doors several feet thick, laced with steel and electric wiring, both slid inwards in eerie unison.

Beyond their threshold, a large glowing sphere hovered mid-air, surrounded by several odd devices that looked like they had been stolen from a science fiction movie’s set.

“This… is an Anomaly, Grant. Can I… call you Chloe?”

Slack-jawed, she stared at the huge glowing sphere. It shimmered with triangles of light, unstable and glittering, like a sea of broken glass reflecting sunlight, all formed into a ball.

“No,” she snapped out. Fascinated by the so-called “Anomaly”, she had neither eyes nor ears for Singh and didn’t mean for her reply to have sounded as mean as it had.

The Anomaly… for some reason, it reminded her of the Newton’s cradle on Spencer’s desk.

“This is… this is where those dinosaurs came from?”

Chloe took a timid step into the sprawling chamber. Lights blinked on countless consoles, myriads of systems arranged in a circle around the Anomaly. Monitors emitted a cold glow with countless charts displaying an incomprehensible amount of data on screen. Cables and wiring connected all manner of machines and devices that she couldn’t even hope to start comprehending just yet, and a handsome, gray-haired man in a lab coat quietly tapped away at a keyboard, squinting at a screen by the far end of the chamber, seemingly oblivious to both Singh and Chloe entering his domain—or too focused on his work.

“Nope,” Singh said. “Well, except that really ugly thing in Six-Dee. The rest came from other Anomalies and got stuck in our time before anybody could put them back. No, this puppy? This one leads to the future.”

Still slack-jawed, Chloe’s internal battery ran dry. She failed to retort or ask anything else.

Didn’t even know where to start.

Singh continued chattering with melody to his words, “Yeah, I said it. You heard me right. The future. Welcome to Future Proof, Chloe Grant. I’m looking forward to working with you. And that over there is Doctor Solomon, head of engineering.”

Chloe approached the Anomaly. Slowly, but surely—as if she was afraid it would suddenly explode. Awed, as it was the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes upon.

She extended a hand. Reaching out to touch it.

Doctor Solomon paused in tapping on the keyboard and looked up, casting a glance to Singh before locking onto Chloe.

Singh joked with another chuckle, “Oh, yeah, it’s cool. Don’t ask me or anybody else if it’s cool to touch the big weird glowing orb. It’s, uh, it’s sealed right now, by the way.”

The mysterious glowing orb was cold to the touch.

Klaxons started blaring. Red alarm lights flashed with hectic rhythm.

“Shit,” Chloe hissed. “I thought it was okay to touch it!”

Singh and Solomon exchanged a glance before the gray-haired scientists finally spoke up. His voice was calm and soothing, a stark contrast to the alarm invoked by klaxons and lights.

“Nothing to worry about here. The Anomaly is stable. No, that there is your cue—you’re needed.”

Singh said, “Yeah, uh, okay. I guess that cuts the tour a bit short, let me get you to the armory and ready room. What size are you?”

“Uh, excuse me?” Chloe asked. “What’s going on now?”

Doctor Solomon chuckled. He leaned over the console, folding his hands, and cracking his knuckles. “Don’t break anything you can’t afford to buy,” he said with a smile.

“Your size, for the uniform,” Singh repeated, more urgency swinging in his tone. “Look, okay? Follow me. That alarm says the ADS detected an Anomaly somewhere. We need to get you to the ready room with the other operatives, Grant. Come on!”

She did.

With quick steps just shy of jogging, Chloe Grant followed Singh back out from containment, all the way to the elevator.

All the way back down that long and ominous corridor, the Velociraptor eyed her from the shadows, through the thick glass.

Hunger lurked in its eyes.

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