Chapter Text
It was 11 a.m., and already it was over ninety degrees outside. Harrowhark Nonagesimus made a face and unstuck the back of their shirt from the sweaty small of their back, feeling a shiver of revulsion when they felt a droplet make its way sluggishly towards the waistband of their pants. Their car’s air conditioning had broken a while ago and they hadn’t bothered to replace it at the time because it was a brisk fifty degrees out when they noticed. Over the last three weeks, the temperatures had skyrocketed. Summer had come early, to Harrow’s dismay, right in time for Gaius Biomedical to launch their team building retreat.
Harrow hated most things about the situation on principle; first and most fundamentally, they despised having to interact with other people, and avoided it as much as humanly possible. They worked for the company remotely from their apartment, only leaving for groceries and other necessities, and were happy to live the judgment-free, pants-optional, vitamin d-deficient life of a nocturnal hermit. This led up to their second point of contention, this being that they would be spending two weeks’ time rubbing elbows with total strangers. They hated meeting new people, and were of the strong suspicion that anyone who claimed to enjoy it was either lying or should be institutionalized. Third: mandatory fun was absolutely one of the most despicable things invented by corporate executives since unpaid overtime. Harrow’s idea of fun was pulling an all-nighter coding a new Skyrim mod with more anatomically accurate skeletons and bone shatter animation and sorting their horror movie collection alphabetically. Their idea of hell was driving five hours out to some godforsaken ranch in the middle of nowhere and being forced to socialize with people who all probably knew each other already while sweating through their third-best black hoodie ( yes , they were wearing a black hoodie. Yes , with black jeans. Harrow did not care if it was over ninety degrees and sunny, they would absolutely not be caught dead in shorts, and if anyone saw their collarbone, they would evaporate on the spot).
At least they were most of the way there. They’d stopped at a gas station to get themselves one of those terrible bottled coffees– it was cold, at least– and refuel. The cashier had given them a look that they did not care to decipher and rang them up wordlessly. Now, they were sitting in their hot car, and it was becoming clear that they were stalling for time. Harrow let out a belabored sigh and turned the key in the ignition (then turned the radio on, paused for exactly two seconds, turned the radio off again, as was their routine). They offered up a prayer that this whole ordeal would be done with quickly.
Canaan Ranch was a remote plot of land located a few miles down a dusty, bumpy country road with no name. It was spotted, here and there, with little patches of woodland in between swathes of grassy pastures, and the land rolled like a gently billowing flag as they drove past. It was almost enough to soothe Harrow into a false sense of security; it was only when the ranch itself appeared in the distance that their stomach began working itself into knots once more. The grounds surrounding the cabins were sectioned off into various grounds for different activities, some of which were easily seen from Harrow’s place in their car: out the passenger window passed a volleyball court, where two willowy blonde women and a man who looked to be made up mostly of hair gel were batting a ball back and forth, and up on the left, a ziplining course could be seen through the trees. In the fork in the road ahead was planted a post with rustic signs pointing the way to different areas: Fire pits, Hiking Trails and Rock Climbing off to one side, Archery Course, Lake Loveday, and Stables off to another. A mortifying highlight reel of every possible way they could embarrass themselves in front of their faceless colleagues flashed through their mind as Harrow gravely took the road labeled Cabins and Mess Hall.
The “cabins” were better than they expected, at any rate. They more resembled upscale ranch houses than the unventilated shack that was conjured in Harrow’s mind at the word “cabin”. They had, at least, running water and AC and comfortable beds and (dare to hope?) internet connection. Harrow wondered how much they could get away with staying shut in their room. Maybe they’d fake being sick. At the center of the neat rows of cabins was a main hall, decorated in a faux-rustic exterior but no less modern than the other buildings. Harrow parked the car in front of the main hall and deliberated for a moment before they’d stepped out onto the gravel driveway, duffle bag in tow.
No sooner had their boots hit the ground than a diminutive, gray-haired old man in cargo shorts and a green shirt with the words “CANAAN RANCH” emblazoned on the front burst from the front doors to greet them.
“Welcome, welcome!” He was grinning and positively vibrating with cheeriness. It was deeply off-putting. “You’re here for the Gaius Biomedical work retreat, I assume?”
“Yes,” Harrow replied curtly. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus. IT.”
“A name to remember!” The man beamed. “Let’s get you signed in and moved into a cabin, Harrowhard– am I pronouncing that right?”
He wasn’t, but Harrow didn’t feel like correcting him, so they pressed their lips together and hummed a sound they hoped was approximately a response.
“Good, good! My name’s Eddie Teacher. I’m one of the event coordinators here at Canaan Ranch. You can just call me Eddie,” he said, and Harrow knew immediately they would not do that. He waved them inside, all the while gushing about the facilities and events on site. “Now, there’s plenty of activities that your company has planned to do together, but you’ll have some free time to enjoy the ranch and explore as well. Here’s your key,” he said, and dropped a ring with a single key and a ring with a tag that said “9-A” attached. “Now, the cabins are all ready for guests, but if you are in need of anything not provided in the cabin, feel free to come down to my office–” He gestured to a small side hallway they were walking past as he spoke, at the end of which was a door with a sign, handpainted, that read “TEACHER” in happy block letters, “--And ask if we have it on premises.” They had stopped, now, in front of a long fold-out table scattered with sharpies and stickers that read ‘ HELLO, my name is… ’. Harrow looked down at them with disdain.
If Teacher had cottoned on to Harrow’s displeasure, it did not all affect his unflagging cheeriness. He reminded Harrow of an old first-grade teacher they’d once had, a fresh-faced young man in his twenties straight out of college. On the first day of school, each six-year-old had grasped a crayon in their chubby hands and written out their names on a sheet of butcher paper. When the teacher– Mr. Wright, if they were remembering correctly– had stopped by to praise them on their perfect spelling and immaculate handwriting, they had looked him squarely in the eyes, glared, and said “Do not patronize me, Mr. Wright.” They had felt a surge of rage only that of a small child could feel when he had let out a surprised little chuckle. Now, faced with a man Harrow could only describe as if a prune had been magically gifted with speech and the personality of a church camp youth counselor, they very desperately wanted to say, Do not patronize me, Mr. Teacher.
“Go on and take a name tag,” Teacher said, smiling impossibly wider. “You’ll be meeting up with the rest of your colleagues for a quick meet-and-greet at five sharp, and we’ll be serving dinner afterwards. Until then, you’re free to get settled into your cabin and take a look around the premises.”
“Thank you,” Harrow managed, and Teacher gave them a pat on the back and walked away, Crocs squeaking a little on the polished concrete floor. Harrow turned to the name tags, managed to cram the entirety of their name onto one in sharpie (their handwriting was still immaculate, by the way), and reluctantly peeled it off its backing and stuck it to the front of their hoodie. Now everyone would know their name. Great.
The cabin was all right, at least. It resembled in design and function to be a sleek, modern apartment, with a few paintings of landscapes hung here and there– windblown prairies dappled with wildflowers, the shadow of mountains looming in the misty distance; a sunny coniferous glade, the graceful shapes of deer just beyond the trees, shadowy and elusive as wood nymphs; a bubbling creek, painted in effervescent tones of white and blue and shimmering brown. Harrow regarded them briefly before slinging their duffle onto the bed and curling up next to it, a smear of black amidst the polished wood and sleek white. They were already exhausted from the trip up here, from the pitiful teaspoon of social interaction they had been force-fed. They checked the time. 2:25 pm. On an ideal day they would be waking up about now. Harrowhark allowed themselves the luxury of lying for awhile, blinds drawn, eyes closed, the only sounds the muffled hum of the summertime fauna buzzing outside and the soft swish-swish-swish of the ceiling fan above. There was no getting out of the activity set for later tonight, but until then, they would soak in the precious alone time.
But first: they unpacked their bag, tossing their clothes in the set of drawers that lay at the foot of the bed. They took out Maxilla from his careful place and set him delicately between the pillows on their bed. His small black button eyes shone back at their from within the embroidered skull, standing stout on his four paws, stalwart tail sticking straight out. He looked, as always, on guard, and Harrow imagined he was standing waiting to pounce on anything that entered this new, strange place. Harrow moved him quickly from his station to press a quick, embarrassed kiss to his nose before returning him to active duty, then settled in next to him to curl up for a quick nap.
It was with great reluctance and mussed hair on one side (they’d tried in vain to pat it down a bit, but their hair was so thick with curls and cropped so close that they gave up almost immediately) that they returned to the main hall for…”meet and greet”. Harrow dragged their feet the whole way, hoping that maybe at the last minute the nuclear apocalypse would start, or maybe that a black hole would appear to swallow the earth. Inside the hall, a large conference room that Harrow suspected had been converted from a gymnasium was filled with folding chairs at tables and what must have been more than a hundred people filling up the air with babbling. Harrow wished they’d had the forethought to bring earplugs to dampen the noise. They surveyed the room for the least populous area and sat at an unoccupied table near the periphery. There was a stage set up at the front, equipped with a microphone and behind it a ways, three folding chairs.
Their train of thought was interrupted when two men took their seats across from them at the table. The first was a slight, sour-faced man with pale hair pulled back in a ponytail that gleamed a serile platinum in the fluorescent light. He had to have been just as soaked through with sweat as Harrow was, dressed in a button-down shirt and cream sweater vest with khakis. Accompanying him was a large gray mass of a man with the same look and warmth as a heap of granite, dressed in a similar button-down shirt and khakis but sensibly lacking a sweater.
“Good evening,” the sour-faced man said perfunctorily. The grayish bulk echoed him first, then Harrow did so in kind. “What department are you from? I don’t think I recognize you.”
Right down to it, then. “You wouldn’t. I work remotely. I’m IT.”
The one who had spoken made a face. “Thank god someone’s in charge of those things. I despise working with computers, personally. Myself and Colum here work for the HR department. Silas.” He stuck out his hand and Harrow took it reluctantly. It was clammy.
“Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” they said. “But you already knew that.” They gestured towards the absurd sticker on their shirt.
“No harm in acting professionally. This is a work event, after all. Despite what some here seem to think,” he replied, eyeing the hemline of a woman close to them that was riding a little high on her thigh. Harrowhark decided then that they hated these two immediately, along with the enormous sticks that had been meticulously inserted an impressive ways up their rectums.
Thankfully, the lights began to dim just as Harrow struggled for something to say that wasn’t ‘fuck off’. They and the two monochrome HR employees– a perfect gradient trio– turned towards the stage. Light applause echoed through the gymnatorium as John Gaius and his three CFOs stepped delicately onto the stage.
John Gaius was the lone person in the room that Harrow had seen before, albeit only in the glossy pamphlets and staring out from the banner of the “ABOUT US '' page on the company site. They’d thought of him as very ordinary-looking at the time: black hair, short, curly but manageable, a little shadow of stubble around his chin and cheeks, and the feeling that you might have passed him or someone very like him on the street the other day. In person was a bit different, despite his physical appearance remaining identical. It wasn’t the way he was dressed– a well-loved t-shirt and jeans, with a blazer thrown on atop it as an afterthought, as though he’d forgotten his position as head of the company until the last minute. There might have been something, Harrow thought, in the creases in his eyes when he smiled, in his quiet, calming presence, in the way the room fell immediately silent when he approached the microphone and raised a hand casually.
“Good evening, all,” He said, as his CFOs took a seat in the chairs behind him. “And congratulations on another successful year.” More light applause. John Gaius smiled. “This retreat,” he explained, “Is partially my way of thanking all of you for your hard work during these last few years. Without the work of all of my accountants, pharmacists, techs, representatives, researchers, developers, managers– without all of you, this company would not exist.”
Someone opened one of the doors on the left of the gymnatorium, spilling a sliver of light into the darkened room and entered hastily. Bit rude , Harrow thought to themselves. Onstage, Gaius was saying:
“...Successful rollout of a new experimental therapy, a life-saving innovation and the product of sweat, blood, and tears of this company. And I’ll stop myself there, or I’ll be bragging all night.” Some polite chuckles. “So for the next week, what I want all of my employees to do is simply take a break. Relax. Don’t worry about next quarter’s report or sales numbers or the lab equipment breaking again–” more laughter, this time more genuine this time, and Harrow felt like They were missing some kind of inside joke, “--Just relax, take a few days, and get to know the person next to you. You have all earned that much. Please enjoy the ranch. I highly recommend taking a boat out on the lake and spending a few hours fishing. Very soothing.”
“It’s his own property,” Harrow heard Silas whisper to Colum next to their. “He owns Canaan Ranch. Rents it out to scout camps during the spring, I hear.”
“Activities for the week will be announced the day after tomorrow,” Gaius said. “Until then, settle in, enjoy the time off, get to know some new people.” He started to step away from the microphone, then leaned back in to finish: “...Thank you.”
As applause rang out through the room and the lights came back up, something bright caught the corner of Harrow’s eye. A mop of shaggy red hair with a slight, soft curl around the edges, attached to a woman leaning on the wall near the door that had opened earlier. She had her back turned to Harrow, but they recognized her instantly. But it couldn’t be. It would be too ridiculous, too much of a horrible, cruel coincidence that she was here. But when the woman shook her head slightly and turned to leave, there was no mistaking the strong jaw, the small scar that tugged her upper lip a little askew, the gold in her eyes. Harrow thought for a second they’d forgotten to take their meds, or maybe the dosage was getting too low– but no, she was older, taller, far from the terrible teenaged version that existed of her that haunted Harrow’s memories. She was flesh and blood.
Just as the woman looked to be about to leave, something made Gideon Nav look up (fate being especially cruel, or God punishing them for all the awful sins that Harrow had accumulated over the years) and look directly at Harrow. Their eyes met, and Harrow felt their stomach drop straight down like a rock tossed into a pond.
Harrow’s week was not going to be bad after all. This week was going to be hell .