Chapter 70: Seventy: Ibis Industries Headquarters
He picked the lock on the other end of the overpass to let us out of the cage. Then I led us up and down multiple ladders and edgings, at one point nearly falling, if Mr Raring had not caught me and helped me hold onto a ladder while a cramp assaulted me. It was difficult to find a way back into the building that had not been smashed or blocked with rubble. Eventually we managed to make our way into an abandoned office by squeezing past a broken pane of glass and the metal that had held it in place. My left arm got scratched and bled freely on the way through. Computers of the latest models still sat in their cubicles, awaiting the return of their workers. How nostalgic.
"Ibis Industries headquarters," I told Mr Raring, pointing at the big logo on the wall. Where my dreams had both begun and died. The naive little girl from back then had been quite the geek and had hoped that Ibis would be the place where my skills would be noticed and career take off. "Years ago, my first job was here as a lowly office administrator. Did you know that there's a sort of hidden room behind the photocopy machine that I used to hide in sometimes. It's covered by the corkboard, but you can swing that aside to crawl in. Nobody could ever find me when I was in there. See," I showed him the space that was still there but covered with cobwebs and dust. "They used to always make me climb the step ladders to get boxes on or off the upper shelves. When I was occupied, they'd sneak photos up my skirt of my underwear. If I wore trousers, I got pinched instead. At least with a skirt, no one touched me as often. That was until the ringleader of those harassers let loose a modified version of one of his little computer viruses that he was always sending to my machine. I underestimated the virus. It got out of hand and took down the entire company network, firewall and ummm… anyway, it took a while before someone came up with a way to deal with the virus."
It had taken me over an hour to quarantine and kill that virus before it destroyed the internet for good, sweating and hoping no one would come looking for me until I'd fixed the internet. It wasn't exactly my fault, but I had been the one who had directed it toward the computers of my abusers after just managing to deflect part of it from mine. I had used that idiot's machine to deal with everything to make him look like the real culprit - because he was.
"That was you?" Mr Raring laughed in disbelief. "You're the culprit who crashed the internet?"
"Uh," I gave a quick glance at him. "Can I say no? It wasn't really me."
"Do you know how much money the country's economy lost in just that one hour? I knew the man was telling the truth, but we couldn't figure out who the culprit was. You covered your tracks very well. You didn't even leave a fingerprint on his keyboard," Mr Raring gave me a stern look that made me nervous. "That, my girl, is a big crime."
"Well, I resigned after someone spilled their coffee down my shirt and used the excuse of cleaning me up to touch me all over. I mean, they didn't need to put their hand inside my shirt, under my bra or in my underwear for a coffee stain, right? The bosses wouldn't even consider my complaints as harassment. I was just a little worker, you know? They just bent me over their desks and...You aren't going to go and report me, are you?"
"In light of how things stand in the war at the moment, no. We'll keep it a secret between the two of us for now. Tell me, how did you fix them? And the bosses," Mr Raring asked. "I'm guessing you didn't leave it at that, did you?"
"I'm not one to go get revenge on people," I protested. "I'm not."
"Jean, tell me what did you do?"
"The man tried to help me wipe the coffee off my shirt, but he was really more interested in feeling me up, you know?" I tried to explain, "and if no one ever taught them a lesson, who would? I mean, getting cornered by him every break and him…"
"Don't make me ask you again, Jean," Mr Raring said in his dry voice, while he helped me clear the path to the fire escape stairs.
"I sent an anonymous letter to his wife," I admitted at last, rubbing my head. The headache was getting worse and even my eyes were throbbing. "And his two mistresses. As for the rest of those bullies, I plastered anonymised copies of the photos they had taken all over their cars and sent the media an anonymous tip."
"That kerfuffle was at least a year or more later," Mr Raring said, looking somewhat amused.
"Well, I heard from Tony what they were doing to the new office girls, so I let them have it."
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