I froze at the sound of a yelling voice just around the corner.
“You can’t be serious, Arya.”
Gavin.
He spoke through gritted teeth, his voice a plea and a threat at the same time. “You can’t fucking fire me, you don’t understand. I need the money.”
“You have no reason to even show your face around here, Jenkins.” Arya’s voice was stern, but the quiver behind it immediately set off my alarm bells. “The fact that you come in here to make demands when you received your letter of employment termination, after not responding to any communication for weeks—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, you sick bitch!” The hitch in his voice, immediately followed by Arya’s yelp, turned my stomach. Without thinking, I crossed the corner – just in time to see Gavin grab my manager by the throat, shoving her into the wall in a moment of lost control. Neither of them noticed me.
“Let me phrase it differently.” Gavin lowered his voice to a dangerous growl, smashing his hand over her mouth to muffle her fearful whimpers. “Either you give me back my job right now, or I will—”
Arya’s eyes flickered to me. Her eyebrows knit together in a silent cry for help. I just stood there, frozen – but something about the fear in her eyes snapped me out of it.
I cleared my throat.
Gavin immediately let go of her, spinning around to face me. His eyes widened in confusion – for a moment, I’d forgotten I looked like a coffee-and-milk monster.
Gavin looked like a ghost of himself. Beard stubble disfigured his usually impeccable face, his greasy hair looking like he hadn’t washed it in days. His eyes were hollow, with black bags underneath them.
This is what Somanode does to people,I realized with a shock.This is what happens when we choose the illusion over reality.
Gavin looked from Arya to me. He seemed to calm down slightly as he reached for his nose, as if seeing me immediately brought back memories of our last encounter.
Then, without another word, he turned and strolled toward the exit.
I exhaled with a slow, shaky breath.
“Good heavens, Morgan.” Arya took a step toward me – the small woman was trembling all over her body. “What happened to you?”
“The coffee machine,” I forced out, the lies now rolling out of my mouth as if it were second nature. “It malfunctioned. It… smashed itself. Against the wall.”
Her frown deepened. She was trembling heavily – I had never seen her so panicked, not even that one time when the quarterly results were at an all-time low. “What’s wrong with mister Jenkins?”
“I’m not sure.” My eyes darted toward the exit. Something told me I had to follow him. To get more information? To make sure he wouldn’t cause more damage? “I have to…” I vaguely gestured to my face before rushing after Gavin, not awaiting Arya’s reaction. As if the answer to my messy state lay wherever he went.
My heart raced in my chest as I came to a halt just outside of the open office. Looking to the left was the exit, but if he left that way, I would’ve heard the automated voice saying goodbye to him – another pathetic attempt of this company to pretend they cared. So instead, I marched toward the other end of the hallway, to the bathrooms and the utilities room. Fresh tears burned against my eyelids. The burnt scent of coffee, the awful wet squelch in my shoes, and the horrible clinging of soaked clothes against my skin made it nearly impossible to think straight.
I crossed another corner, then came to a standstill at the end of the corridor, breathing heavily.
One thing I knew for sure: Gavin’s confrontation with Arya wasn’t over. His eyes, usually clinically cold, now had been terrifyingly alert. The eyes of a man who’d spent too long trying to suppress his darkness, only for it all to break out in a moment of weakness. He was out for revenge, and my exhausted, overstimulated brain could only think of two options – he would either smear his shit all over the bathroom stalls, or delay operations by causing a power outage.
The last option seemed more believable and slightly less unpleasant for me to walk in on.
I inched toward the utility room. Looming dread crept into my chest, caging my heart like an invisible voice whispering that something was wrong, terribly wrong.
The sharp scent of burnt ozone through the bitter smell of coffee made me stop in my tracks. A muffled, horrified scream chilled me to the bone.
My blood ran cold.
I only now realized the door to the room was ajar, faint light creeping out of it – interrupted by shadows as if struggling humans blocked the light.
With every step closer, the stench got stronger and the pained whimpers louder, twisting my stomach so fiercely, I felt like throwing up my breakfast I’d struggled to eat this morning.
The same kind of noise John had made before the knife plunged into his neck. A scream of death.
Before I could stop myself, I yanked open the door. My hands flew to my mouth, muffling a silent scream. I stood there, frozen in horror.
