Terminal Velocity
The elevator stops between floors like a held breath.
Sebastian checks his Patek Philippe—7:43 PM. The boardroom waits thirty-seven floors above, mahogany table polished to mirror perfection, where men in thousand-dollar suits will carve up his company like Christmas ham. He adjusts his tie. Silk whispers against starched cotton.
"Christ." Sarah's voice cuts through the mechanical hum. She stands in the corner, her purse pressed against her ribs like armor. The elevator's fluorescent strips cast shadows under her eyes—bruises that makeup can't quite hide. "How long do these things usually—"
The lights flicker. Die. Emergency lighting kicks in, bathing everything in surgical red.
Sebastian punches the emergency button. Nothing. His thumb finds his phone. No signal. The elevator shaft swallows radio waves like a concrete throat.
"Maintenance will have us out in ten minutes," he says.
Sarah laughs—a sound like glass breaking in reverse. "Maintenance." She opens her purse. Inside, nestled between lipstick and breath mints, sits a small silver device. Looks like a garage door opener. Looks innocent.
Sebastian knows better.
"How long have you known?" Sarah's finger hovers over the button.
The red light makes everything look like a crime scene. Makes her look like someone else entirely. Not the woman who brought him coffee for three years. Not the assistant who scheduled his meetings, filtered his calls, knew where he kept his spare shirts.
"Known what?" But his voice catches. Betrays him.
She tilts her head. Studies him like a specimen. "About the accounts. About Zurich. About the children."
The elevator shaft stretches above them—a vertical tomb, forty floors of empty air and steel cables. Below, the same abyss, only deeper.
"Sarah—"
"Seventeen million dollars." Her thumb caresses the button. "Funneled through shell companies. Phantom employees. Ghost payroll." She pauses. "Children who don't exist."
The red light pulses. Emergency systems cycling through their programmed death throes.
Sebastian loosens his tie. The silk feels like a noose now. "You don't understand the pressure. The board, the shareholders—"
"The children's cancer ward at General." Her voice cuts clean. "The money that never arrived. The treatments that never happened." She smiles, and it's all teeth. "I understand perfectly."
His hand moves toward the emergency panel. She shakes her head.
"Remote trigger," she says, holding up the device. "Electromagnetic pulse. Courtesy of my brother—the one you had fired from IT last month. Turns out he's very creative when properly motivated."
The elevator groans. Settlement sounds. Metal against metal, finding new places to rest.
"What do you want?"
Sarah's laugh echoes up the shaft. "Want?" She checks her own watch—a cheap Timex that probably cost less than his lunch. "I want you to understand something about gravity, Sebastian."
She presses the button.
Click.
The elevator shudders. Stops. Sebastian grabs the handrail, knuckles white against brushed steel.
Nothing happens.
Sarah opens her purse again. This time she produces a small recorder. Red light blinking. Patient as a spider.
"That was just a test," she says. "The real trigger is voice-activated. Say the magic words, and we fall. Forty-three floors. Takes about six seconds to reach terminal velocity." She pauses. "Long enough to think. Not long enough to pray."
Sebastian stares at the recorder. At this woman he thought he knew. At his own reflection in the elevator's polished walls—a man in an expensive suit, trapped in a metal box, about to confess to stealing from dying children.
"The magic words," he whispers.
"'I killed them.'" Sarah's voice is steady as granite. "Say it, and the cables snap. Say it, and we both learn about gravity. Say nothing, and we sit here until Monday morning, when the janitors find us. When the FBI finds us. When everyone finds us."
The red light pulses. His heart matches the rhythm.
Outside the elevator shaft, the city breathes. Traffic flows. People live and die and fall in love and steal from children's hospitals. Life continues, indifferent as weather.
Inside, time moves like honey. Like blood. Like the last seconds before impact.
Sebastian looks at Sarah. Really looks. Sees the woman who knew his coffee order, his wife's birthday, his daughter's school schedule. The woman who smiled every morning and called him sir and watched him steal seventeen million dollars from children dying of cancer.
He opens his mouth.
Click.
The cables sing their death song, and gravity—patient and mathematical and absolutely fair—finally gets its due.
The elevator falls.
And in those six seconds of terminal velocity, Sebastian understands that some confessions require the ultimate punctuation mark. Some truths can only be spoken in the language of descent.
The recorder keeps spinning, faithful to the end, documenting their final conversation with the earth below.