“Another fucking unknown caller,” Ana looks to her co-worker and says. She points at her phone, lit up and shakes her head. “Why do these damn robots keep calling? Do people really answer them and do whatever they want?”
“They must,” Ana’s co-worker Steve says. “I do not understand who answers them, probably some 80-year-old bored women.” The phone finally stops ringing and they both look at each other and laugh.
Ana turns back to her computer and get a notification that says she has a new email from No-reply at a company with a company name a single letter misspelled from their company. She smiles, giggles, and then turns back to Steve.
“Going to get me another gift card,” Ana says. “It looks like the Security nerds are at it again trying to get people to give up their account information.”
“Those guys seriously need a hobby,” Steve says. “Or a girlfriend, they can all even share her.”
Ana turns into her computer to open the email and hits forward, noticing the subject is a single line telling her to answer her phone, with nobody in the email.
“Wait, that’s fucking weird.”
Steve looks over at Ana. Her phone rings again. She answers the call.
“You are being hunted,” the robot voice on the phone says. Ana wondered who got their Siri to call her and say that. “Run.” The phone call hangs up immediately.
“That’s pretty fucking weird,” Ana says pulling the phone away from her ear. She looks at Steve who stood up and was focusing on the door at the other side of the room. “What are you looking at?”
“There are two men that just walked in the front door, and they look pretty intimidating.”
“The call that I got told me I was being hunted and to run.”
“These guys look serious, I’d take that advice,” Steve says, leaning back down. “Go that way, and I’ll see if I can figure out how to get rid of them. Go!”
Ana slips down onto her hands and knees and scoots across the floor, away from her desk and across the back wall of the office. She knows that her best bet is heading around the back of the cubes, stay low, and hope they go toward her desk so she can slip out the front door.
Steve stands up again and heads toward the men, Ana hears his feet shuffle across the floor.
“I noticed that the two of you are looking around, is there someone I can help you find?”
“We’re looking for Ana,” one of them say. “We need to find her, it’s important.”
“If you want to wait in the lobby, then I can have her come to you when she gets back from using the restroom.”
Ana hears the footsteps of both men heading to the other corner of the office where the restroom is. The stomping, and the conversation has all of Ana’s coworkers watching the men, focusing toward the restroom. She crawls forward, leaving the office through the front door on her hands and knees like a toddler.
“This is the first time I’m glad the pisser is in the back corner,” Ana whispers to herself under her breath. As she clears the doorway, she looks back over her shoulder. She watches to see if they come running and breathes a long sigh when she does not see or hear them approaching. As she turns to face forward again, she gets a large hand slammed down onto her shoulder.
“Ana,” the deep, raspy male voice asks. “My associates and I are trying to find you, and here you are crawling away.”
Ana looks up to see an older gentleman, wearing an expensive suit, a white shirt, and a bright red tie. She questions to herself what she should do next. He attempts to make eye contact with her and she bows her head down quickly.
“Don’t hurt me,” Ana says meekly. “I don’t know why you are looking for me, but please don’t hurt me.”
The man laughs.
“I’m so sorry if we scared you,” the man says. “I’m Robert Ellington, your uncle hired me to come and find you. I’m an attorney that does some work for him here and there, and I am proud to call him a friend.”
Ana’s face twisted to become slightly relieved. She looked up at Robert and leaned herself back so she sat a little more straight on her knees.
“He bought a winning lottery ticket a few weeks ago. As we talked about how to best use the funds, he decided that he had done well enough in life to allow the winnings to go to his nieces and nephews. We are here to find you, and help you with all the various forms, to keep your identity safe after you collect the winnings. You’d be surprised at what weirdos come out when they know you are suddenly worth a few million dollars.”
“But the phone call,” Ana said. “It said you were hunting me, run.”
Robert let out a huge laugh. His eyes expressing how funny he found this. “It should have said something like you are being hunted as you won and we need some signatures.” He saw that Ana still looked confused. “We assumed that you knew your uncle had won a lot of money, you think he’d have called and told you.”
“I had no idea,” Ana said. “But why the robot call and the email?”
“Everyone assumes a phone number that they don’t know is a robot,” Robert smiled. “And we find that more people than not open emails that look close to their companies normal email addresses.”