The Deep had been gone for all of five seconds when the black desk phone the one that only rang when the world was ending started vibrating.
Ashley stared at it for a few seconds like it was a live grenade.
Her left hand was already buried in her scalp, clutching a clump of hair so hard she could feel the roots screaming. She picked up the receiver with her palm slick with cold sweat.
"Barrett," she rasped. "This better be a joke. A long, elaborate, hilarious joke."
"Ashley, it's Miller in Monitoring," the voice on the other end was high-pitched, vibrating on the edge of a total stroke. "We just... we lost Great Wide Wonder. He's gone."
Ashley squeezed her eyes shut, a fresh throb of a migraine blooming behind her eyelids. "Gone? What, did he turn his GPS off to visit a strip club? Tell the horny bastard to turn it back on before I fly out there and castrate him myself."
"No, Ashley. He flatlined," Miller choked out. "We were tracking his Mach-climb over the Atlantic and the bio-suit just... it went dark. Altitude thirty-two thousand, then a straight vertical drop."
Ashley felt the air leave her lungs. "Tell me you're shitting me, Miller."
"He hit the water three minutes ago If we don't move, this is going to be on the six o'clock news before we can even write a press release."
"FUCK!"
"Do I keep my job?"
Ashley slammed the phone down and lunged for the door. She didn't have a vitals monitor, but she had a mental image of Vought's stock price plummeting like a lead weight.
Kevin was standing by the elevators, pouting at his reflection in the gold plating and trying to decide if his "heroic profile" looked better from the left or the right.
He was halfway through a mental rant about how much he hated this building when the office door flew open with a bang.
He turned around, instantly smoothing his hair and putting on his best "misunderstood protector" face. He was actually hoping for an apology.
"Ashley, hey," he started, his voice dripping with fake grace. "It's okay. You don't have to apolo"
He stopped. Ashley didn't look like she was coming to apologize. She looked like a woman halfway through a murder-suicide pact, her eyes bugging out of her head as she charged down the hallway.
He spun around and started frantically mashing the 'Close Door' button. "Come on, come on, you slow piece of"
The doors began to slide shut, a thin sliver of safety finally forming. He let out a breath of relief, watching Ashley's distorted, screaming face vanish behind the metal, until a hand, trembling with rage, slammed into the gap.
The safety sensor tripped
The doors groaned and retracted.
Before the elevator could even fully open, Ashley lunged forward, reaching in and snatching him by the collar of his suit. She jerked him toward her so hard his teeth rattled.
"Please don't hurt me"
"Shut the fuck up, Kevin."
"Get in the water. Now. Great Wide Wonder just fell out of the sky."
The Deep's mouth hung open, his brain struggling to catch up. "What? Like... a crash? Is he okay?"
"He's a goddamn floating corpse, you idiot! And if a single fisherman with a smartphone finds him before you do, I'm going to personally laser your legs off at the knees! Get to the coordinates I'm sending to your suit. Find him, bag him, and bring him back. MOVE!"
Kevin blinked, the gears turning with an audible groan. "But Ashley, the Atlantic is huge! I can't just"
"I don't care if you have to give a reach-around to every dolphin from here to Portugal!" she shrieked, pointing a shaking finger toward the elevator. "GET. IN. THE. WATER."
The elevator ride to the executive floor was agonizing. Ashley spent the entire thirty seconds checking her reflection, wiping sweat from her upper lip, and rehearsing how to tell the Vice President of Hero Management that a top-tier flyer just became fish food.
When the doors opened, she didn't run. You don't run in Madelyn Stillwell's office. She walked fast, her heels clicking on the glass floor, and pushed through the double doors
Stillwell was at her desk, calmly pumping breast milk. The rhythmic whir-hiss, whir-hiss of the machine was the only sound in the room. She didn't look up.
"Ashley," Stillwell said, her voice cool and leveled. "You look like you're about to have a stroke. Breathe."
Ma'am," Ashley gasped, clutching the tablet. "We... we have a situation with Monitoring. It's Great Wide Wonder."
Stillwell didn't stop the pump. She just sighed, a sound of mild inconvenience. "Did he disable his transponder again? I told you, if he's doing another 'high-altitude party' with the college girls, cut his stipend.
"No, Madelyn... I mean, Ma'am. It's not a party. He flatlined."
Stillwell paused. Her eyes shifted from her paperwork to Ashley's face. "Flatlined?"
"His chip stopped broadcasting heart and brain activity at thirty-two thousand feet. He hit the Atlantic Five minutes ago.""
Stillwell disconnected the pump and set the bottle aside. She stood up, smoothing her white dress.
"A flatline. Was he high? I want the last six toxicology reports on my desk in ten minutes. If he overdosed at ten thousand feet, we need to spin this as a 'heart defect' immediately."
"He was clean this morning, Ma'am."
"I sent the Deep," Ashley said quickly. "He's on his way to the crash site."
"Good. Tell him to bring the body to the sub-basement. I want a full autopsy. If Wonder had a heart attack, I want to know why. If he had an aneurysm, I want to know why."
She turned back to Ashley.
"And Ashley? Check the flight path. If he hit a private jet, or God forbid, a commercial airliner, we need to have the 'Tragic Mid-Air Collision' press release ready before the debris washes up. Do not let the Deep speak to anyone. If a camera sees him, he's 'performing a daring rescue.' Understood? Go."
"Yes, Ma'am," Ashley whispered.
She backed out of the room, the glass doors clicking shut on Stillwell's perfectly composed, indifferent face.