The CEO stands, shakes Thraka's hand, the gesture looking absurd, massive green hand dwarfing human one. "I'm sorry it came to this. You showed promise."
"I found something better than promise." Thraka glances at me, and his expression holds everything we don't have words for, everything that happened in that tool shed and after, everything building between us that corporate policy can't account for. "I found her."
He walks out, leaving me standing there, heart racing, Fitbit probably calling an ambulance, world tilting sideways.
The CEO sits back down, picks up his pen. "Ms. Peace, you're dismissed. I'll expect you at your desk by ten."
I don't move. Can't move.
"Was there something else?"
"You planned this." The accusation escapes before I can filter it. "The retreat, the storm, the cabin. You wanted to see what would happen."
His expression doesn't change. "I wanted to see if our diversity initiative was working. If integration was possible. If Mr. Thraka could adapt to corporate culture, or if he would remain... incompatible."
"And?"
"I have my answer." He returns his attention to his paperwork, dismissal clear. "Close the door on your way out."
12
THRAKA
The metal box they call a desk drawer barely holds my belongings. Pitiful, really. Three months in this world, this realm of fluorescent lights and passive aggression, and all I have to show for it fits in one cardboard container that once held copier paper.
I lift the dead rat first. Dried now, preserved by accident when I left it in the desk's bottom drawer. A trophy from my first successful hunt in these lands, the beast I dragged from the basement depths to impress her. She screamed. Then laughed. That sound, wild and uncontrolled, was the first crack in her armor, the first glimpse of the woman beneath the blazer and spreadsheets.
I wrap the rat carefully in tissue paper, the soft, delicate kind someone left abandoned on top of the printer weeks ago, probably forgotten gift-wrapping from some office birthday celebration. My thick fingers fumble with the thin material at first, tearing it slightly before I adjust my grip, gentler this time. The paper crinkles as I fold it around the small, stiffened body, creating a makeshift shroud for what amounts to the strangest trophy I've ever claimed. Back home, I would have hung it frommy belt or mounted it on a spear. Here, in this fluorescent-lit realm of spreadsheets and ergonomic chairs, I preserve it in delicate tissue paper like some fragile artifact. The absurdity isn't lost on me, but then again, nothing about this place has ever made conventional sense.
The stapler goes next. Red, stolen from Chad's desk after he made the mistake of commenting on my reports using words like "primitive" and "unsophisticated." I challenged him to single combat. He filed an HR complaint. I kept his stapler as a spoil of war. It staples with satisfying violence.
A half-eaten protein bar. Three pens that survived my grip. A coffee mug Orla gave me that says "World's Okayest Employee" because she claimed "World's Best" would be a lie and she refuses to lie, even for morale. The mug is the size of a soup bowl. I need both hands to drink from it properly.
That's it, then. That's everything. The sum total of my existence in this fluorescent wilderness, reduced to a handful of objects that fit in a single cardboard box with room to spare.
I stare down at the meager collection, feeling the wrongness of it like undigested meat. In my old life, a warrior's worth could be measured by his trophies, his scars, the stories told around the fire. Here, I have a dead cockroach, a stolen stapler, and a mug that insults me with measured precision.
Around me, the office continues its relentless hum. Keyboards clacking. Phones ringing. The cursed printer whirring to life before inevitably jamming. The sounds became familiar, almost comforting, the rhythm of this strange tribe's daily rituals. I learned to navigate their customs, their unspoken hierarchies, their bizarre devotion to email chains and scheduled meetings about meetings.
I learned to adapt, to bend myself into shapes that fit within the confines of their fluorescent kingdom, to translate thelanguage of blood and steel into PowerPoints and performance metrics.
And now I'm leaving it all behind.
Steve from Accounting walks past my desk, his perpetual coffee stain visible on his shirt pocket, carrying a stack of manila folders that threatens to topple at any moment. He sees my pathetic cardboard box, stops mid-stride, and his expression shifts from his usual harried blankness to something resembling genuine surprise.
"You're really going?" His voice carries that particular pitch of disbelief reserved for when the impossible becomes real.
"Yes."
"That sucks, man. You were fun. Terrifying, absolutely terrifying, but fun." He shifts his weight from foot to foot, shoulders hunching in that awkward way humans do when confronting emotions they'd rather not feel. "Sorry about the sandwich thing. From, you know, when you first started."
"You have nothing to apologize for. I should not have eaten your lunch without permission. It was a clear breach of tribal custom." I remember that day with perfect clarity, the turkey and swiss on rye, the way Steve's face went pale when he opened the empty refrigerator, my genuine confusion about why he seemed so distressed when food was clearly meant to be eaten. "I did not yet understand the sacred nature of labeled containers."
"Yeah, well." He shrugs, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite the solemnity of the moment. "You offered to fight me for it afterward. That was pretty metal. Chad still talks about it."
We clasp hands in the warrior's grip, forearm to forearm. His grip is weak compared to orc standards, his bones feeling fragile beneath my careful restraint, but he tries. He squeezes with genuine effort, meeting my eyes with something that might be respect.
I appreciate the effort more than he could possibly know.
