Chapter Text
John MacTavish was in need of a job, and his resume was lumped full of references; he’d been in the military for the beginning of his legal life. Left before boarding military school, and became a farmhand. From then he became a fisherman, then left the seas to be stranded back on land as a delivery driver soon after.
And now?
“It says here you were in the military?” The interviewer before him was no means young nor spry. He was an older American fellow with a rough personality, one who didn’t crack a smile to a single one of Johnny’s jokes. So he stopped making them.
With his hands tucked between his thighs, he nodded. “Yes sir. I did my obligatory six month boot camp training.”
“Was there a reason you didn’t further pursue that field?”
“Wasn’t cut out for me. Wasn’t,” Johnny couldn’t search for the correct word but all he could think of was ‘volatile’ or ‘stimulating’ enough. “-The right fit.” He said in the end.
The man, who identified himself as Hershel Shepherd at the beginning of the bland interview, flipped through the collected pages of John MacTavish’s life. It seemed, for someone hardly climbing his late 20’s, that there was a lot to flip through.
To be fair, Johnny had been through hell and back with the choices he’d made to be in this exact spot. But that was for God to decide whether it was a good outcome in the end.
Shepherd gave a deep sigh. “This is a demanding job. Long hours of surveillance, as well as high security. I understand you’ve stepped out from being a soldier, but are you willing to take back the responsibility of one?”
When Johnny saw the ad for this job, the original description was vague to say the least. What he had expected of the job was nothing but a security outpost, with no location stated, Johnny was left to imagine a bank, or a hotel security post.
Johnny nodded. “I hope that I can be of service to you. I’m willing to do whatever it is that you need. I’m a quick learner.”
Shepherd gave Johnny a once over before shutting his file. “How quick can you be on the job?”
“As soon as you’d like me.”
“How about tonight?”
Johnny pursed his lips together, somewhat relieved to have a job but unwilling to say that ‘tonight wasn’t going to work because my roommate is making pasta’. “I can do tonight.”
“Uniform is black slacks and a collared shirt. We’ll see about your hair, but usual uniform is a shorter shave.” Shepherd stated. “The shift is 21:00 to 5:00.”
Johnny’s hair hadn’t grown to an unreasonable length, just longer around the neck and ears. He’d been in need of a trim, he thought honestly, but also enjoyed the hair on his head. “I’ll have it situated before tonight, sir.”
Shepherd nodded once before standing, palms pressed into the desk as he stood with a slight grimace. His leg aching. A storm was coming. He could feel it in his joints.
“Come in earlier than 21:00 so we can have you situated and tagged with an ID card.”
“Yes sir.”
“I’ll be seeing you.” Shepherd held his hand out, the only form of appreciation given the entire interview.
“Thank you sir. I’ll do my absolute best.”
He gave a wry look, a suspicious gaze of distrust. As if he’d been crossed before with those exact words. “We’ll see.”
“So, tell me again, why you’re doing this?” Johnny’s roommate, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, watched him standing shirtless in front of the mirror, electric clippers in hand.
“The job has a mandatory requirement.” Johnny said, making a pass through his hair, disposing of the hair in the razor, and starting over again.
“Usually jobs require a close shave, not short hair. And your hair was fine before.”
“You should’ve seen the guy who was interviewing me, didn’t even crack, a smile or a single wink. American too.”
“Oh no, no, no, no.” Said his roommate with unexpected discouragement. “The last American to come through here was an absolute dickhead.”
“You can’t base your experience of one person off of a whole group of people. That’s prejudice.” Johnny mocked.
“No. It’s called behavioral learning; you said the guy didn’t even crack a joke or a smile at your jokes, granted your jokes are shit, but someone would at least make a comment about it.“
Johnny wasn’t even going to begin to dissect that comment. Everyone loves his jokes, no matter how horribly rancid they were. “The point is — that I have a job, and you don’t have to be digging into your savings in order to help out the both of us anymore.”
“It’s not like I’m your friend or anything. It kind of comes with the package deal.”
“Which I am eternally grateful for. Speaking of our friendship, I do have some unfortunate news.” Johnny grimaced through the mirror towards his roommate.
“Oh God. What did you do this time?”
“Nothing horrible. I just.. I won’t be able to make it to dinner tonight because I actually picked up a shift?”
“You’re starting work tonight?”
“He offered.”
“And you agreed?”
“He asked me when I could start working, and I said that I could start working as soon as possible, and that just so happened to be tonight. So I will be missing out on pasta tonight.” By the time Johnny had finished speaking, his shoulders were up near his ears. “But I’d be more than willing to take a plate to go?“
“So you thought that you could come in here, get dressed and shave your head awfully, can I just say, and then take a plate of my pasta to go to a job that you had an interview today, and start today?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
His roommate stepped out of the doorway and out of sight into the living room, where Johnny was able to track them based on movement of the creaking floorboards. He smiled himself in the bathroom when he could hear the floorboard creek in the kitchen.
“So is that a yes?” Johnny asked, a smirk plastered on his face.
Dressed in uniform, and newly shaved with an indistinguishable mohawk, that was scrutinized by his roommate the moment he had showered, Johnny was standing in front of the building, where he was set to work for the unforeseeable future. A container of pasta for his late dinner in hand.
He had been greeted at the end of the road, before the building, by a pair of unfriendly faces that matched those of security guards. They both were equipped with concealed weapons, and walkie-talkies. they had called someone within the main building, confiscating Johnny’s drivers license until he was waved through.
From there, he was escorted into the building by a another security guard with an authorized ID card. The walls and the floors reflected similar brightnesses of the whitewashed marble, both polished and sanitized, while the overhead lights were obnoxious LEDs. there was not a single smell perforating through the hallways, everything felt sterilized and medical.
Johnny felt out of place. He felt the need to run, but he didn’t know what from, not yet. He kept thinking to himself, among the silence and emptiness of each hallway as he navigated behind the security guard, that he should’ve turned away the moment he saw the gates before the building.
He should’ve turned away when he saw the outline of a concealed weapon within the security guard’s belt at the gates. Though he wasn’t a stranger to gun ownership, being a soldier at the beginning of his legal life, it was an uncanny experience to be surrounded by so many armed civilians. And that said a lot as a Scottish Catholic, growing up in the Scottish Highlands, who migrated to the UK.
Johnny was escorted to room that looked more like a medical setting, then an inviting environment where he was supposed to stand guard. The man who’d been guiding him throughout the building turned to him suddenly, giving him a look over, and then spoke.
“This is the temporary personal lounge. This is where you will leave your personal belongings, as well as your phone inside of the lockers, preferably turned off until you leave location. You are responsible for your belongings, as well as the cleanliness of your locker. And if anything is misplaced or left out, we are not liable to replace anything.”
What Johnny had neglected to notice was a row of tall lockers lined against the wall alongside the doorway. Some already had their own combination locks on them, and others were left wide open and empty. Failing to realize the guard before him was actually telling him to empty out his pockets and put everything in a locker led to an awkward stare off before the light clicked on in Johnny’s head.
“All right.” Johnny began patting down his own pockets, emptying them out, as well as setting his container of pasta on the top shelf in the locker before reaching for his phone. He stared at the time before holding the power button, sliding the phone off, and turned back to the guard.
“There’s no refrigeration unit within the building yet, so you can either leave your food in your locker or you can leave it in one of the cabinets.“
Something told Johnny that if he left his container in the cabinet, that it would not be there when he came back. For a place that held no accountability for missing or stolen things, he had a feeling that this would be a whirlwind of a lawsuit. he took his chances and left his container in the locker.
“All right, I believe that’s it.” Johnny clasped his hands together. “I was also told to come in earlier so that I could be able to get my ID? “
The guard gave him a look, as if to say he had no place to say anything, and started for the door. “Follow me.“
Johnny moved in step behind him again. ”This is a big place.” Though he didn’t feel it was necessary to have a conversation, he felt like it would be more inviting if he could connect with at least one person on the job. “I think the only person I’ve seen in these hallways is you,” he joked.
The guard did not laugh. Nor did he entertain Johnny’s boredom.
“I would understand why you need so much security for such a big place.” Johnny remarked.
The guard turned to him, stopping in the hall. “You have no idea what you’re guarding here, do you?”
It should’ve scared him how much information he didn’t know about this place, or about the job, and how desperate Shepherd seem to want to give him the job only that night. But he’d seen horrors on farmland, even while he was at boot camp. This don’t scare him, not one bit.
So he just shook his head at the man before him, and said, “Not a clue.”
That seemed to make him coy. With that motivation, he continue down the hallway with Johnny in tow. As they turned the final corner, up ahead, there stood another guard beside a set of steel double doors, an electronic keycard scanner blinked red parallel to them.
“Who is this?” Asked the guard.
“New overnighter.”
“Johnny MacTavish.” He held out his hand to introduce himself.
They didn’t shake his hand. “Does he have a keycard?”
Revealed from his inner pocket, the guard who had been leading him through the building, held out a day pass. “For now.”
The way they looked at each other when speaking of Johnny made him feel disconnected. He felt singled out, and targeted, and this was his first shift.
The guard stepped aside, revealing a secondary keycard sensor and scanned their own. Their box turned green, while the other scanned Johnny’s temporary pass. The light turned green, and the steel doors gave a wail before an alarm blared from overhead. There was a red circulating siren light within the room they were entering, giving warning that something was wrong.
But the guard waltzed in, and Johnny followed.
The room was the same as the rest that he’d seen; white, bright, and bland. As he entered, to the right the wall had been swapped for a dark glass. It felt cold under Johnny’s palm as he dragged it along.
“This is where you’ll be staying all night. There’s a unit for you to stay and surveillance the room, as well as a security room with an emergency lock down sequence.” Said the guard ahead of him. “There is a list for you to read and study. You follow the rules on it, you get to go home every morning happy. You don’t,” he turned to Johnny, Johnny’s hand straying from the glass, “you can forget this place ever existed.”
Johnny watched him turned and looked to the darkened glass. Within his own reflection, he could see shapes through it. Not common shapes, odd curves and hills. “Is there a room on the other side of this glass?” Johnny asked.
The guard turned to Johnny from a desk, a few feet from the glass wall. Things had been pulled close to it to make it like-able; an orange electrical cable leading up to it, a desk lamp plugged into it, a single serving coffee maker, and nothing else. Two more sockets were left empty.
The pungent smell of something rotten lingered in the air, as well as the sea, where there hadn’t been a single smell outside of cleanliness moments before.
A snotty sneer appeared on the man’s face before him. “Just fyi, you’re not going to make it long here. So, just keep to yourself and remember the way you came so you can leave.”
Johnny furrowed his brow in disgust. Not going to make it long here? Now who the fuck says that to the new guy?
Johnny was left alone soon after. Nothing but an empty wing to survey, two rooms, and no phone. He stared at the glass wall, a sharp corner opened to a long window and then solid wall. It must’ve been massive within. Cupping his hands over his eyes and peering into the glass, he stared into the dark tint.
Johnny felt the coolness of the glass underneath his hands, it was almost shockingly cold. He couldn’t huff a single breath before it would fog up. Glancing to the desk, he turned on the lamp and turned its head towards the glass to shine it over.
What he hadn’t realized is that flecks of debris floated on the other side of the glass. He wiped his thumb along to clear it only to find it still there, the heat of his hands remained. He furrowed his brow in confusion as he brought the lamp closer.
Staring into the dark tint of the glass, smelling the rotten seaside water, he pressed his hand to the glass again to peer through. His thoughts coming in clearly.
“Steamin’ bloody Jesus.” He stepped back to gaze up at the tall wall of glass. “It’s a fucking fish tank.”