Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [24]
Given what his closest friends were going through, having to live in a hole in the ground seemed a small price to pay.
He wasn't sure if he'd be able to attend Bad Movie Night for a while, but that was looking more and more like it was a good thing. Vince was getting increasingly depressed, and Eleanor's ability to stay employed was the only thing keeping her and Jack going. Much as he loved the idea of viewing Evil Brain from Outer Space or The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies with his oldest and dearest friends, Mark had the feeling that the Bad Movie Nights weren't going to be any fun for some time.
Least of all for the one person in the group still gainfully employed.
Not that his new job would give him much time for fun.
But that was okay. At least he had a job…
The residence they provided for him in the Hive was actually nicer than his apartment in downtown Raccoon City had been, and the cafeteria was well stocked. Mark could barely boil water, and the idea of living somewhere where the food was provided appealed to him greatly.
On this, his first morning at the new job, he had only a cup of coffee. Never much of a breakfast eater, Mark really only needed his morning caffeine to get himself started, and that did him until he took lunch at around one or so. The cafeteria had a nice French roast, and he had served himself a cup with some milk and Equal. He didn't bother with a lid—he preferred his coffee lukewarm, and leaving the top exposed cooled it down faster.
He headed toward the elevator that would take him from the cafeteria level to his office in Pharmaceuticals, coffee securely in his right hand, the gray jacket of his brand-new suit slung over his right arm.
Someone collided with his back, sending him stumbling forward, and jostling his right arm.
A sharp stab of heat seeped into his chest right over his heart where the still-hot coffee spilled on his new white shirt, and a great deal of the liquid splattered onto the jacket he had over his right arm as well.
Mark looked up to see the retreating form of the person who had bumped him, moving purposefully down the hall, not having even broken stride after the collision.
"Thank you!" Mark cried out in annoyance, but whoever it was didn't even turn around.
Finishing his approach to the elevator bank, Mark inspected the damage. His ID badge, clipped to his shirt pocket, was dripping coffee, and the stain had gone through both his white shirt and his undershirt. He'd paid hundreds of dollars for this suit.
Next time, Mark promised himself, he was going to grab a lid.
A pretty young woman with curly hair looked at Mark with sympathy.
"Some people," she said sympathetically.
"Yeah," Mark muttered. He looked up from his stained clothing to see that the woman had big, beautiful eyes. He ventured a smile. "It's a brand-new shirt."
"New suit too?" she asked.
Mark wondered if his first-day jitters were that obvious. "Yeah. First day."
The woman nodded. "Men don't usually get that worked up over a stain like that unless the suit's new."
Chuckling, Mark said, "Yeah, well, I've hardly gotten to use it."
He looked down at her ID badge, which gave her name as Ella Fontaine. Mark wondered idly if she was single. Not that there was good reason to wonder this, since he knew damn well that he'd never work up the courage to actually ask her out if she was. The only dates he'd gone on since college were those train-wreck blind dates Jack and Eleanor had set him up with over the last couple of years which, if anything, made his fear of talking to women even more pronounced.
With a low chime, the elevator announced its arrival. A man in a gray suit exited, and Mark, Ella, a woman in the white shirt, pants, and coat indicating someone who worked in one of the labs, and a few others got on. A wretched Muzak rendition of Simon & Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" wafted over the speakers
About two seconds