Maybe there was a word for the way time slowed as she and Nouresh fell from the entrance of the maskhål and onto the futon in the Nihilist Bachelor Cube. Maybe it was a specific phenomenon that had been studied by physicists or LitenVärld’s FINNA division. Maybe Tricia had an instructional video about it. Spooky Action in the Workplace: Side Effects of Collapsing Wormholes and You. Or maybe it was just the first of many PTSD symptoms that Ava could look forward to.

Whatever it was, Ava felt curiously detached as she observed the chaotic swirl of bodies around her. Tricia, Ursula Nouri’s granddaughter, and half a dozen coworkers crowded around her and Nouresh. The young woman grasped Nouresh’s pale, bloodstained hand in her own. Tricia yelled for someone to call for an ambulance. All of their voices were muted, as if coming from far away. Ava wondered if she was somehow still in the tunnel created by the maskhål, and that’s why everything sounded like faint and fading echoes. Was this her world? If it was, why did it feel so strange?

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

Ava hated the hot chocolate from the food court. So of course, that’s what Tricia brought her.

Tricia set it down on the vast desk that occupied nearly half her office. There was a crack in the glass top that had been mended with a thick band of epoxy, and Ava found her eyes tracing its length as Tricia made her way to the other side. Everything in this place was so ugly.

Tricia cleared her throat. “It seems like you were successful in retrieving Mrs. Nouri.”

Ava glanced up at her. She recognized one of Tricia’s patented Managerial Faces: Empathetically Dealing With Conflict. “Ursula Nouri got eaten by a plant,” Ava said. “That’s her ‘appropriate replacement.’”

Tricia’s Managerial Face cracked into a frown. “I see. Well, the EMTs told me that she was seriously injured, but will likely recover.”

“Did they say where they were taking her?” asked Ava. Her eyes drifted back to the epoxied crack in the glass.

“Saint Joseph’s Hospital, I believe.”

Ava nodded. There was a long, heavy silence. Then she said, “Jules isn’t coming back.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected. Tricia to swear, fume, roll her eyes. Make a cutting, disparaging remark, at the very least, about Jules’s unreliability.

Instead, Tricia nodded again. “I understand.”

Ava flicked her eyes up from the crack, boring into Tricia. “Do you.”

Tricia transitioned smoothly into the Blank Wall. “What a loss,” she said. “Jules was a great employee.”

She thought Jules was dead, Ava realized.

Tricia pulled open one of the desk drawers, fished some papers out of it, and slid them across the desk. “I’ve got some additional paperwork I’ll need you to fill out, detailing the incident for internal records and for OSHA—”