The Oracle Year: A Novel by Charles Soule

Author:Charles Soule [Soule, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, Suspense, Thriller
ISBN: 9780062686657
Google: zYUkDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B072HLSHDY
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Someone else get on, Leigh Shore thought. Please.

Four floors intervened between the cubicle farm housing the writers, art teams, and assorted other low-level employees and the floor containing the executive offices. Four chances for the elevator to pause, the doors to open, someone to get on, and the doors to close again. Five or six seconds each time. Even one stop would be something. But no. The elevator rose smoothly, bringing her closer to unemployment with each passing moment.

She wished she’d been able to go out on her own terms—quit in a blaze of glory, maybe. She’d never actually been fired before.

Five minutes before, Leigh had been in the conference room with the rest of the office, watching coverage of the ongoing American military efforts to liberate Niger from the insidious grasp of Prophet Idriss Yusuf. Actually, that had supposedly already happened—the president claimed that the Prophet had been killed in a precision drone strike a few weeks before—but no one had told the Prophet’s soldiers. They had continued fighting, even ramping up their efforts, and had taken control of a place she hadn’t even known existed until the news started to cover it—Niamey, the capital.

U.S. forces had expanded their bombing campaign, but there was only so much an aerial campaign could accomplish. The Prophet’s forces had entwined themselves with the local populations, forcing them to remain in the cities and villages to act as human shields. It was becoming increasingly clear that either ground troops would need to go in to clear out the capital, or the United States would have to cut its losses, declare victory, and leave the people of Niger to figure out their future for themselves.

Watching the footage, Leigh was horrified to realize that she was almost bored watching the familiar sight of U.S. warplanes pulverizing a desert country’s infrastructure into sand.

Then Reimer’s assistant had appeared and dragged her out of the conference room, telling her she needed to be up in Johannes’ office immediately. None of her colleagues—even Eddie—would meet her eyes as she got up to leave. She was finally done—she’d pushed too hard. That’s all it could be, and honestly, she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t seen it coming.

Reimer was furious when she’d skipped out on her scheduled interview to film the Oracle riot. She’d gotten an extremely expensive camera damaged, the company had to cover Eddie’s medical bills, and while she’d managed to retrieve the footage he’d shot, none of it was particularly newsworthy . . . all in all, a nightmare of wasted time and money for Urbanity.com.

Leigh hadn’t stepped out of line since, but evidently Reimer had just been letting her twist in the wind. Time was up.

The elevator doors opened. Leigh stepped out and made her way across the executive floor to Reimer’s office.

The door was open. She knocked on it anyway. Her boss looked up.

“Ms. Shore,” he said. “Come in, and please close the door behind you.”

Leigh closed the door and stood in front of Reimer’s desk.

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