The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

2: The Fire

The client was late.

I'd drifted off to sleep in the armchair, awoken by the acidic tang of smoke. Was a client smoking in another suite?

My dressing gown was stuck to my back with sweat. I always felt too hot when I was high, but somehow Suite 306 itself had become stiflingly hot and humid, like a sauna. A glance in the mirror on the way to negotiate with the shitty aircon unit revealed eyes way too bloodshot to escape a client's notice. Frantically pawing sweat from my forehead to make myself look somewhat respectable for the client, I heard a whirring sound above me.

The sprinkler system above the bed buzzed until the ceiling tiles rattled, then emptied a jet of rusty water straight onto the middle of the bed.

For fuck's sake.

The sprinkler head whirred again, and another filthy brown spurt shot onto the bed and started to spread over the sheets. Cal was going to be fucking livid when the client told him that I was suffering from diarrhea or insanity, or both.

Another rattle as rust-water began to drip steadily out of the sprinkler, adding to the gritty brown pool on the bed. Head in hands, I weighed up options. There wasn't time to go downstairs and ask Ollie to switch rooms; I'd have to wait and take the client with me, groveling en route to Ollie's office, throwing in a couple of keunjeol[1] for good measure.

The room had become unbearably hot, the water from the sprinkler system adding to the humidity. And the smoke smell had become stronger. It was almost as if there was actually a fire.

Shibal.

I couldn't believe how much of an idiot I was. There was actually a fire.

Move, Zeph.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm moving," I hissed.

Maybe it was because I was baked to fuckery, or because I was totally done with this awful day, but instead of evacuating I stood for a while, staring at the pitiful dribble of water oozing outta the sprinkler. I just couldn't believe the unfairness of it. This day had been some kinda perfect shit-storm that had rolled in from the Pacific. Ollie sending me on a job while the building was burning. Raheem being threatened by Cal. Miles getting sick from just being in this fucking place. Luke getting manipulated by some asshole client. We didn't even get the courtesy of an operational sprinkler system when the fucking building was on fire.

Oh yeah. The building is on fire. Fucking move, Zeph!

Suite 306's door knob was blistering hot to the touch as I wrenched the door open, shrinking back when the fumes hit me. The corridor was slowly filling with smoke.

Run, idiot!

The heat in the corridor was even more oppressive than in the suite. Acrid soot tarred my insides as I pushed through the graying air toward the stairs, blinded by billows of smoke unfurling down the staircase from the fourth floor above, and deafened by the almighty roaring of the flames.

It looked like the fire had started in an upper floor of the building, and was eating away at the third floor. A blind run along the corridor of suites brought me to the central staircase, but movement near the top stopped me from leaping down it. Someone was coming up the stairs, maybe Miles or Raheem looking for me.

A bearded man emerged onto the landing through the thickening smoke. He twisted his head around in utter panic, flinching as pieces of smouldering wood crackled and fell into the stairway above us. He wasn't wearing the neat black- and gray-toned clothes that Sigma employees usually wore, nor a suit like clients usually wore. When he saw me he froze, open-mouthed in shock.