VIII. The New Hire

Molly Buchanon didn't like her job. Not anymore. When she'd signed on out of college being the Talent Acquisition Manager for Tower Zero had seemed like such a windfall. That had been seven years ago, and the number of no notice disappearances since then had ground her optimism down. For the first couple of years, she was able to convince herself that the people had simply quit. She did her best nowadays not to think about what would happen to people who caused problems in Tower Zero.

Today's hire was hardly an earthshaking endeavor--one of the janitors had gone downhill over the past week or so and had been subsequently canned. Molly drew some solace from the fact that since he was just a janitor he had probably only been turned out, not executed. She needed to sort through the list of applicants and get someone cleaning the floors as soon as possible.

She went through the selection, and stopped on the fourth file. It showed a picture of a middle aged man with green eyes. The name listed was "David Briggs." What caught her eye was the comment. It showed four small stars, with the signature "Aaron Snyder" following them.

"Well, one of Snyder's boys. I'm not sure how you get someone like Snyder to get you a job in custodial, but I'm not losing my job over it."

Aaron Snyder was the son of George Snyder, a member of Rehnquist's personal cabinet. Aaron was the head of Talent Management and Acquisition at Tower Zero; ignoring his recommendation was a good way to get fired. Molly had seen more than one Acquisition agent kicked to the curb for not following his instructions. That was that; if Snyder wanted this one, that was one less thing she had to worry about.

Molly set up the paperwork and paperwork and called Briggs' home number. She got an answering machine, which she told to be in for the noon to eight PM shift.

Darrus stood next to the answering machine as Molly recorded her message, nodding approval. Everything was going as planned.