Downtown at Rush Hour. From a look of the pace of traffic, time stood still. The clock, however, reminded hundreds of busy commuters that they were that much closer to being late, and in a handful of cases, fired.
Suzie watched the cars go by from the window of a city bus. She was a young woman in her early twenties and more than a bit out of place among the purposeful pedestrians staring firmly ahead as they hurried towards their jobs. Suzie had fiery red hair, curls framing her pretty, freckled face and her clear, blue eyes. She wore a simple, dark blue dress with long sleeves and a knee-length skirt, and a pair of matching shoes that she thought straddled the gap between stylish and sensible. A silver trimmed black leather purse, hanging from her shoulder, kept her valuables safe, and she in turn kept a hand on it at all times.
The bus moved at a steady pace despite a blatant disregard for traffic laws from the cars around it. The at times suicidal speeders didn't seem to unnerve the driver. Few vehicles on the road could hope to come out favorably from a run-in with the bus and it had the scrapes of paint to prove it. The passengers were crammed in tight, busying themselves with newspapers, phones or simply hanging on for dear life from the precious few handholds.
The lax attitude towards passenger limits carried a sort of safety on its own. Arms, legs and smart phones cushioned each other when the bus made a sharp turn and came to a stop with the squeal of worn brakes. The doors opened with a pssh of hydraulics and disgorged a stream of businessmen and women onto the sidewalk. Suzie felt like a piece of driftwood washing ashore as the crowd dissipated to all sides and left her stranded on the pavement.
The Zenith building rose over downtown like the point of a spear. Office buildings surrounded it, but none dared to reach as boldly into the sky. The black surface of the steel and glass giant shimmered in the morning sun.
Suzie craned her neck to see the tip of the spire. To think that people willingly risked their lives to build that far up - she had enough trouble with tall staircases and would likely have died before venturing up without four solid walls around her.
A gangly, close-cropped man brought Suzie out of her daydream as he shoved past her without so much as a sideways glance. She dropped her gaze to the level of the street again in time to be surrounded by another bus-load of people rushing for their jobs and instantly felt sheepish for acting the tourist. She couldn't afford not to be taken seriously, today least of all. She set out towards the entrance with long strides and tightened fists.
The Zenith lobby was marginally less crowded than the sidewalk, a huge, open space that reached three stories before the actual ceiling began. A central service desk sat square in Suzie's path while a golden company logo - a stylized mountaintop with the letter Z beneath it - rotated gently in the air above it. A row of elevators in constant movement occupied the gallery behind the desk and a coffee shop sat to the right.
She made her way to the building directory behind the reception. The name she was looking for sat at the very top of the list: Zenith Holdings. Several subdivisions of the company were distributed throughout the building: Zenith Publishing, Marketing and the Sales department. Suzie paused by the wall. She cast a furtive glance around her before reaching down to adjust the straps of her underwear. A hint of a blush crossed her face - she hadn't planned to show up to the job interview in her skimpiest thong, but a chaotic state of laundry had forced her hand. The embarrassingly small strip of fabric had dug itself into her privates and she simply had to pray that nobody stared too hard at the redhead wiggling her hips behind a conveniently placed pot of greenery.
With her underwear under control, Suzie got in line for the elevators. She tapped her foot on the polished stone floor as she waited,