Wait... it's the morning of the company-wide layoffs. I know exactly what happens next — the manager who smiled at me is the one who wrote my name on that list. Not this time. I already saved every email.

The screen of Bradley Vance’s laptop cast a harsh blue glow across his sunken, ash-gray features.

"I can't just cancel the layoffs," he whispered, his hands trembling so violently he could barely keep his index finger on the trackpad. "The board approved the headcount reduction three weeks ago. The institutional investors expect an eighteen percent reduction in operational expenditures before the end-of-month financial disclosures. If those numbers don't show up on the wire, the stock valuation tanks before the pre-IPO roadshow."

"Then you’d better find eighteen percent somewhere else," I said, standing upright and crossing my arms. "Because not a single engineer, analyst, or support specialist is walking out of this building today."

Elena Rostova sat completely motionless beside him. Her posture had shifted from corporate authority to icy, defensive calculation. She had quietly slid her legal separation agreements into her leather briefcase and closed the clasp with a discreet click. She was no longer HR; she was a survivor on a sinking vessel, watching the captain drown in his own bilge water.

"Elena," Bradley pleaded, turning his head toward her, his voice cracking with desperation. "Help me out here. Tell him this is corporate suicide. Talk to him."

Elena didn't even turn her head. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead on the glass wall overlooking the floor, where seventy employees were still sitting at their desks, watching the fishbowl with mounting, terrified suspicion.

"You put my department on an outsourcing schedule for November, Bradley?" she asked. Her voice was terrifyingly calm, devoid of any corporate jargon. It was the voice of a woman who had just realized she had been sharpening the blade meant for her own neck.

"It was a preliminary draft!" Bradley stammered, his eyes darting frantically. "It was just an exploratory model requested by the venture partners! It didn't mean anything!"

"Everything you put in a spreadsheet means something, Bradley," she said coldly. She turned to me, her expression unreadable. "What are your terms, Mr. Evans?"

I pointed at the screen. "Open the human resources executive dashboard. Pull up the master termination requisition batch: REQ-2026-Q4-TERMINATIONS."

Bradley swallowed hard, his throat clicking. With slow, agonizing keystrokes, his manicured fingers navigated the internal enterprise portal.

The master list populated the screen.

Seventy-eight rows of human lives. Names, employee IDs, tenure dates, and severance multipliers. Next to each name was a red toggle switch marked CONFIRMED FOR RELEASE.

I saw Sarah Jenkins: Product Analyst I – 11 months tenure – Severance: 2 weeks. I saw Tom Rivera: Senior Infrastructure Engineer – 6 years tenure – Severance: 6 weeks.

"Delete the batch," I commanded.

"If I delete the batch," Bradley groaned, pressing his palms against his temples, "the automated workflow alerts the Chief Financial Officer and the legal team instantly. The system requires an executive authorization code and an audit justification log."

"Then you’d better write a compelling justification, Bradley," I replied, checking the countdown timer on my phone.

02:15... 02:14... 02:13...

"Two minutes," I said casually. "At zero, the SEC portal receives the unredacted ledger. If that happens, you won't be worrying about your job, Bradley. You'll be worrying about which federal penitentiary has the best commissary."

A strangled, animalistic sob escaped his throat.

Bradley grabbed his mouse. With jerky, spastic motions, he clicked into the administrative override console. His fingers flew across the keyboard, entering his master twenty-four-character administrative passkey:

ADMIN_AUTH_OVERRIDE_VANCE_B_9942

The prompt flashed: ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO PURGE CURRENT REQUISITION BATCH (78 RECORDS)? THIS ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE.

"Do it," I said.

He clicked CONFIRM.

A green status bar swept across the screen: BATCH PURGED. NOTIFICATIONS CANCELLED. USER PRIVILEGES RESTORED TO ACTIVE STATUS.

Across the open floor outside Glass Box C, an audible ripple of confusion spread through the rows of cubicles.

Sarah Jenkins suddenly sat up straight at her desk. She hit her spacebar. Her monitor flickered, and the red "Account Disabled" error vanished, replaced by her active Slack workspace and her project dashboard. Tom Rivera gasped, his hands flying to his mouse as his Jira tickets reappeared in real-time.

The execution had been aborted mid-swing.

"There," Bradley wheezed, slumping forward until his forehead was nearly touching the keyboard. Sweat was dripping from the tip of his nose onto the spacebar. "It's done. The batch is purged. The staff is safe. Now stop the upload. Please, Marcus. Stop the upload."

"We're not finished, Bradley," I said.

The timer hit 01:20.

"What else could you possibly want?!" he screamed, his voice cracking into a shrill shriek that made the security guard wince.

"I saved the team," I said softly, leaning down once more. "Now we're going to fix the budget deficit you created."

I reached over his shoulder, pulled his laptop toward me, and opened a blank internal executive memorandum template addressed directly to the Chairman of the Board and the Compensation Committee.

"Type what I dictate," I instructed.