Superior, Chapter 12

A contemplative lull washed over my mind as I drove to work the next day.

Last night was like a whirl to me. What to even make of it all? My rival spills her heart about the world she lives in, how all these expectations thrust upon her haven’t made her happy even after getting everything she thought she wanted, and on top of all that reveals everything that I knew about the world was a lie. Amazons exist, they’ve been living among us this entire time, and we’re second-class citizens to the capabilities of even just their children.

What, was Wonder Woman a fucking documentary or something?

Not to mention, Jane had all but won the Senior Vice Presidential position. Everything I had fought for, swiped from my grip by a girl who didn’t even want it. Hell, I wasn’t sure if she’d still take it.

Maybe she’d forfeit it and another VP would get the title. It certainly wasn’t going to be me. After my embarrassing performance over these past few months, I was probably the last person on their minds.

My mind was so hyper-fixated on the thought of Jane I almost tripped over my words upon unexpectedly bumping into her in the elevator. She was on her way up, as was I.

“Jane, a-are you okay?” I asked. I don’t think I had ever shown more genuine concern about another human being than I had right there. She turned to look at me, her face read as if she didn’t even recognize me—like I was just another face for her to micromanage.

She then turned her whole body to face me. Atop her bountiful bosom was a sight that terrified me, but not for the reason it would have all those months ago. Proudly displayed upon Jane’s chest was the security clearance of “Senior VP.”

“I’m fine.”

Her voice was more cold and calculated than ever.

“So, after everything that happened yesterday…” I almost felt betrayed by what I saw. It was as if she had regressed all the way back to who she once was. “Did you at least talk to your mother?”

“Get back to work, John,” was all she had to say in response. If that SVP badge was anything to go by, that wasn’t just a suggestion, that was a command.

As if on cue, my destination arrived. I did as I was told and walked to my cubicle, looking behind my shoulder only to see the elevator doors close on Jane’s stern expression, likely taking her to the floor above. So it was official, then—Jane was my superior. Any decision I had to make would have to be filtered through her judgment. Any work that she felt was beneath her could easily be passed down to me.

When the inevitable meeting arrived, my body ran through the motions as unconsciously as possible. I sat down next to my fellow VPs, a vacant spot where Jane once was. Instead, she was at the front of the room, her chest puffed out as her narrow eyes scanned us like a terminator. Once she was—I assume—satisfied with what she saw, she finally spoke.

“Thank you for such a fantastic offer. I’ll be sure to do my best to bring this company to new, never-before-seen heights.” Her voice had reached a new level of hollowness, the perfect dash of professionalism disguised it well, like a perfect spice in an otherwise bland dish. After that heart-to-heart we had in the gym, I could tell she didn’t mean a single word she said.

Regardless, uproarious applause filled the boardroom, Carl walked up and proposed a toast. “Considering everything you’ve done for us so far, it’s like you’ve always been SVP here!” He then looked amongst the other VOs, including me, and joked “what the hell are we paying you people for? She’s as productive as five men!”

Everyone laughed at that—everyone but me. Carl had no idea just how right he was with that exaggerated assessment. I wanted to be happy for her, the philosophy I held my entire life dictated that she had more than earned this position. It was undebatable, she was simply the most qualified person to have ever accepted the SVP job. Hell, she’d be overqualified as the CEO and she wasn’t even old enough to drink the wine they were toasting to her name.

Returning to work, I found myself unable to focus. There was a tightness in my chest. I just felt nauseous, like my very soul was fighting against itself. I had lost everything. There was nothing I could do to stop Jane, no grand secret to uncover about her supernatural capabilities. She had won, and she had won absolutely. If I tried anything funny, I was as good as fired. I didn’t doubt that she could find a way.

Had she been manipulating me? Was everything she said to me in the gym all a front? If this job was strangling her freedom, why did she take the promotion and then double down on the icy mask that being a higher up entitled one to? Nothing added up, and I was left without any clues or answers to go off of.

With my pride out of the way, all that remained was a suffocating feeling of dread.

I needed a breather.

I race-walked as fast as my stride could carry me, maintaining a respectable pace as to not arouse suspicion. I took a detour, then another. Before I knew it, I was at the back door of the building leading out to the alleyway. I panted pathetically as the cool, refreshing winter air embraced me in its frigid arms, slowly but surely calming me down. How long was I preparing to wait out here? I wasn’t sure.

My lip furled as the pungent odor of cigarette smoke wafted past my nose. I reactively coughed as my eyes darted about, attempting to uncover the source of my discomfort. Who I saw was the last person I expected—Nadia. She was chugging her cigarette like she was on death row, and I don’t think I had ever seen her smoke. The secretary looked to be in shambles, her breathing raggedy with every exhale of smoke.

“Nadia?” I asked.

She instinctively attempted to hide her face, only to immediately recognize the pointlessness of the action and glanced at me slowly.

“Yes… I-I know I probably shouldn’t be out here loitering.”

“Don’t worry about that. Why are you standing back here instead of at the front of the building?”

She seemed hesitant to answer, as if I was going to reprimand her for what she was about to say. I decided to level with her for a brief moment. “Look, today has been completely crazy and it isn’t even noon yet. Something’s going on with Jane, I just have no idea what it could possibly be.”

“M-Ms. Pantariste fired me,” she suddenly and bluntly spoke. The poor secretary looked as if she had been traumatized by war, her dilated pupils gazing off into the vast nothingness of the pristine, white snow that topped the back alley. “I-it’s over… my career is over.”

“Jane fired you!?”

I was in complete disbelief once I witnessed the saddest nod of confirmation wordlessly motion from Nadia’s head.

“But… but why?”

A single tear was shed as the former secretary recounted the experience. “She just… said she didn’t need me anymore. That I was somehow a distraction to her and a waste of company time and assets.” Her lip was trembling at an absurd pace as she desperately attempted to keep her emotions from spilling everywhere.

That didn’t sound like the Jane I knew, or at least the one I had gotten to know. She was clearly madly in love with Nadia and just admitted it to me yesterday. Why was she acting so weird today?

“Y-you’ll rehire me, right John?” Nadia’s voice was desperate, she was practically begging me at this point. “Please, this was supposed to be a big, resume-boosting job and I haven’t even been here for a week. I’m fresh out of college and can barely afford rent as is.”

My first thought was to dismiss her entirely, but I couldn’t. That was the old John’s way of thinking. The John who wanted nothing more than to rise up the ranks and leave anyone else behind when necessary. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to trap myself within that mindset anymore.

“Of course, Nadia. I’ll see what I can do,” I responded to raise her spirits, already knowing that there was very little I could do. Hand was no longer my equal, she was my superior. Whatever she said, went. If she wanted Nadia gone, everyone in the firm would most certainly

“Oh thank you, John!” Nadia exclaimed, bringing me into a tight hug. “I’ll—I’ll do anything to get this job back, y’know. Anything.”

It felt wrong giving a desperate woman false hope like that. It felt even worse knowing that she definitely meant anything. I could feel her plush breasts pushing up against my toned stomach. She was willing to sell her soul just for a Secretary position and all my pathetic member could do was rise to the occasion.

But this was how it was in the industry. My sick mind was quick to remind me. You’ve gotten too comfortable losing to a woman, now’s your chance to win again.

I rejected the siren’s call of Nadia’s body. This isn’t who I was anymore. I eased her tastefully thick body off of mine. “Don’t worry, Nadia, I’ll do my best to get that job of yours back. It’s what you deserve, after all.”

Determined, I returned inside and made my way to one of the highest floors. If even Nadia was disposable to her, something was certainly not right with Jane. Once I got to her floor, there was no receptionist there to tell me to wait.

I walked into her office only to be immediately greeted with her extended finger, telling me to stop in my tracks without a word. She was in the middle of a phone call, her body motionless as she melancholically processed every word spoken to her, transcribing it onto the computer before her.

I waited for god-knows-how-long in her doorway, caught in a bureaucratic limbo between her office and the hallway. Only once she was done with the phone call did she put her finger down. Only then did I realize that she had been typing the entire time at the exact same pace with only a single hand, not mistyping a single character,

“Thank you for your patience, John. You may sit.”

She briefly gestured at the only other empty seat in the room before returning all her focus to the computer screen before her.

I slowly pulled up the seat, the only sound permeating through the room was the dulled drag of the wood against the carpet.

Once I was seated, her icy emerald eyes glanced my way once more. It seemed I finally had her undivided attention. No beating around the bush. No small talk. I needed to get to the bottom of this or I never would.

“Jane, why did you fire Nadia?”

As if she no longer considered this a serious conversation, her focus drifted back to her computer. “She was a distraction. I removed that distraction. It’s as simple as it gets, John.”

“And how exactly was she a distraction?” one part of me was genuinely curious while the other was hoping a poke-and-prod strategy might work to recapture her fleeting attention.

“She was loud and disruptive. She seemed more interested in talking about her own personal life than her job as my secretary.” Once again, straight to the point, without a moment of hesitation.

I needed more. A contradiction.

“Then why didn’t you fire her yesterday when this all began, if she was as obnoxious as you claim?”

She jolted to attention, seeming defensive. “I never—“ she caught herself, not letting her demeanor slip any farther. “I never claimed she was obnoxious. She was… merely disruptive towards the necessary workplace atmosphere.”

There it was. My hook. She clearly still had feelings for Nadia. Why else would she defend her character? I think I finally had something.

However, as soon as I was about to speak up, Jane beat me to it with a devastating blow.

“You know, John, I’ve been evaluating your performance lately. You’re not as productive as your colleagues, are you? Maybe if I demote you to manager you’ll learn to appreciate your time at CurriTech.”

I took a harsh breath at the terrifying thought of being demoted. It had taken me many years of hard work to reach the coveted VP of Lending status and it could all be effortlessly undone in a single emotionless strike.

“That… won’t be necessary, ma’am.”

I felt a pit in my stomach form once I heard my own words come out of my own mouth. It was borderline surreal calling Jane “ma’am,” as I often instinctively did when responding to authority.

“Very good. I’m sure you will pick up the slack going forward. Unless you would be interested in replacing Nadia. That would make the receptionist hiring process much smoother for me.”

“Affirmative, ma’am. I’ll pick up the slack.”

There was a lull in the conversation after that. I was frantically racking my brain for some sort of additional response, one that would snap some sense back into Jane’s mind. But with her dangling the threat of demotion over my head like an anvil strung up by a thread, the last thing I wanted to do was push another one of her buttons.

I excused myself from the room, accepting the dark future ahead of me. Did that talk yesterday really mean nothing to her? Why was she acting like this!?

As I walked to the elevator in a contemplative slump, the world around me seemed to melt into the background. My vision was hazy and unfocused, that was, until the metal doors before me opened.

The pearly gates might as well have been before me, as the woman who stepped out from the doors before me was a certified angel. Her flawless form shattered through my slump like a lighthouse through fog, commanding my attention with every inch of her commanding beauty.

What little olive skin peaked through her business casual attire was toned to perfection. Her shimmering blond tresses sparkled even in the dull, neon fluorescent lights. Her towering frame rivaled only mine, with most of her height composed of the statuesque marble columns that could reasonably be referred to as legs. She was beauty, she was grace, she was flawless feminine power condensed into human form.

She was the same woman as the picture from World War I. The same woman from the Cold War computer room. The same woman on Jane’s phone.

“Oh, you must be John, is that correct?” asked the stunning blonde, painfully forcing me to actually consider what her words meant instead of allowing me to become lost in the heavenly melodies of her voice.

“Y-yes,” I responded as best I could, finding my higher brain functions woefully unequipped to deal with the stunning visage before me.

She shook her head with a knowing smile. “So, you were the man who put all those horrid thoughts into my daughter’s head yesterday, hmm? Well, don’t worry, I whipped her back into shape last night. You’re lucky I’m trying to keep a low profile here, otherwise you’d be little more than a streak of dust on the wall behind you, understand?”

I didn’t in the slightest. I could barely comprehend the whirring thoughts shooting through my head. I nodded anyway.

“Good boy. I trust you won’t bother my daughter anymore?”

I shook my head.

“Very good. Now, run along. I need to meet with Jane. She deserves a celebration for all the hard work she’s put into earning this new promotion of hers.” The elevator doors closed behind me, severing my sightline from her heavenly aura.

I nearly fainted on the spot.