An Average Day at Laminax

Chapter 8

The last thing I was expecting when I woke up this morning in my hotel, was to receive a phone call from the Administrator of the Denver Headquarters, saying that one of my best researchers, Oliver Henry Davidson, was infected, and that he was out there somewhere. Smart kid, born in the state of Indiana in some rural town outside Indianapolis. Went to MIT and studied biology before he was offered an internship to work at our Houston branch. He was always quiet, doing his work effectively and applying himself properly. But something I noticed after he was promoted to Senior Researcher, that he was starting to slack off. Showing up to work late, not completing deadlines on time and not being corporative with his co-workers. Five days before the conference, I called up the Administrator of the Denver branch, asking him to bring me a Catte bucket for the conference for one of my workers, which he was happy to do. I gave to bucket to Oliver, and I left the building to meet up with some of the other Administrators of other other branches to go to a kitchen and bar in Aurora. Before he was infected, during when I was having a conversation with the Assistant Administrator of the Portland branch in Oregon, Bryan Lewis, Oliver rang me, and I ignored his call. After the conversation, I excused myself to go to the bathroom, where I listened to the voicemail he left me, with Oliver saying "Listen, Mr. Abel, I don't know what you are doing right now, but you just left me here, lugging around an orange bucket! The people who saw me with it in the building think I'm insane. Come back as soon as possible." I had forgotten that I gave it to him. Without too much worry and body flowing with alcohol, I took a taxi to the hotel where the I was supposed to stay for two days, before flying back to Houston with the 9 other workers I was sent here with. But now, they would return as 8 workers, as I was staying in Denver.

I was back at the headquarters in Denver, about a fifteen minute drive from the hotel that I was in. It was seven in the morning, and the sun was just rising over the horizon. Yet when I walked inside, there was a crowd of people standing at the foot of the staircase, looking at the plastic trap which separated the construction area from the finished building. I pushed my way through the crowd and saw that there were claw marks, going up, down and across the tarp.

Along with tape blocking the tarp, men in security outfits were blocking the way so the crowd couldn't get through. Two men in suits were inside the barrier, looking at the destroyed part of the tarp. I recognized one as Adam Cambridge, an Englishman who I had talked to yesterday, the other being a man from New Zealand named Tangaroa. He was crouching down and looking at a strange, orange substance on the floor. Adam turned to me and told one of the security guards that I could come in, much to the disappointment of the crowd behind me. "Hello, George. I'm sure you heard the news that I told you this morning. One of your workers was... infected." "Yeah, I know that. So... do you know anything about it? Or did you just arrive here?"

"I do, actually. After multiple meetings with other heads of Laminax's American Scientific Departments, I headed about two stairs above to talk with my fellow scientists and researchers about two floors above where the meetings were held. Shortly after I had a short discussion with the Head of Science of the Salt Lake City branch, me and Tangaroa went into a nearby elevator so we could both exit the building and get to our hotel near Denver International, but Tangaroa said that he needed to use the restroom as we entered the elevator. Since there were no restrooms on the floor that we were on, we had to go down to the nearest floor that did have restrooms. Once we arrived at the floor and headed down the hall to the bathroom, me and Tangaroa both talking to each other, and we both didn't notice what was just down the hall... a Catte, looking right at the both of us. I noticed it standing near the end of the hallway, and told Tangaroa to stop. I slowly approached the Catte with Tangaroa, and then it emitted a low growl, and then it hissed. Its fur was also noticeably raised, its tail puffed up, ears pinned back and claws out. It was clearly about to attack the both of us. Then, it suddenly became calmer, before then it running away, down the stairs. Security was called, but by the time they had gotten here, the Catte had escaped."