Friday mornings at Everworth & Halden LLP began the same way every week: stale coffee, background anxiety, and a universal longing for death or happy hour, whichever came first.
But today felt different.
The difference wasn’t in the weather, gray again, as always, or in the news, which once again vomited a cocktail of economic dread and social collapse onto every feed. No, the difference was in the silence. A particular kind of silence.
The kind that settled in after something subtle went very, very wrong.
Miles Harlan walked into the office exactly one minute late. Not enough to be rude. Just enough to avoid the awkward elevator chats. His coat was slightly damp from the rain; his shoes clicked softly on the polished floors.
No one greeted him. Good.
Lisa Myer’s office door was closed. Darius Kent’s desk was empty. HR was busy with a “routine internal review,” according to the whisper trail. No one looked at Miles. Not out of fear, just because he didn’t register. A face in the crowd. A ghost in a collared shirt.
Just how he liked it.
He sat down, opened Outlook, and skimmed the morning threads.
-
“Lisa’s looking rough.”
-
“Darius took ‘personal leave.’”
-
“Why’s HR sniffing around Accounting?”
Miles sipped his coffee. Bitter. Burnt. Beautiful.
A few keystrokes later, a PDF attachment quietly appeared in Rachel Lin’s inbox. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even confidential. Just a receipt trail. Out-of-policy reimbursements. A spreadsheet with too many blacked-out cells.
Enough to nudge her curiosity a little further.
The art was in the pacing. Push too hard and they catch on. Push too soft and they fall asleep again. The goal wasn’t destruction. It was... movement.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
He turned in his chair slightly and stared at the ceiling vent. A faint whirring. HVAC system humming. White noise for most.
But Miles had found a trick years ago, an acoustic dead zone between the third and fourth cubicle rows where voices carried up into the vents and bounced straight into the janitor's closet near the fire escape.
No one ever checked the janitor's closet.
Every morning at 8:46 a.m., two employees from Legal passed through the cubicle corridor and swapped five minutes of gossip. Miles called them the Canary and the Echo.
He waited.
Right on schedule:
“HR’s digging up dirt on Kent. Something about falsified reports?”
“Didn’t Lisa sign off on those?”
“Exactly. She’s losing it. I saw her crying in the stairwell.”
Miles didn’t smile. He just nodded to himself. The system was reacting. That was good. That was interesting.
And then, something new:
“You hear about the email?”
“What email?”
“The anonymous one. Just one line: ‘We’re watching.’ Half the execs got it.”
Miles froze.
Only for a moment. Barely enough for even himself to notice.
The email wasn’t from him.
By noon, the building was a hive of nervous energy. People were moving in clusters, speaking in code, peeking over cubicle walls like soldiers in a cold war. Darius’s name had become a ghost-story footnote. Lisa hadn’t come out of her office.
And Miles was trying to figure out who had played his game.
He spent lunch not watching coworkers, but watching cameras. Not digital ones. The old, analog types, the security globes installed back in 2003, long since forgotten by IT. Most were dummies. Some weren’t.
He traced sightlines. Mapped routines. Calculated access.
He found three weak points in the building’s surveillance network. Two were practical.
The third was poetic.
In the women’s restroom on floor twelve, vacant due to “construction” a ceiling tile was slightly ajar. A single red wire poked through the gap. Not standard.
He filed that away for later.
At 3:12 p.m., he received a visitor.
Not a manager. Not a peer. A janitor.
The man was old. Balding. Wore thick glasses that made his eyes look like wet marbles. No name tag.
He held a manila envelope.
“Someone left this for you,” the janitor said.
Miles accepted it without a word. The janitor walked away. Miles turned the envelope over.
No name. No markings. No stamp.
Inside: a single printed sheet.
“What happens when you lie to a liar?”
“See you next Friday.”
Miles folded the page and slipped it into his drawer.
Now that... that was fun.
He stayed until after dark. The office emptied slowly, uneasily. Whispers trailed behind every pair of heels. People made excuses not to go to happy hour.
Something was off and everyone knew it.
Except Miles. He felt great.
At 7:46 p.m., he stepped out into the city. The rain had stopped, but the puddles shimmered under the streetlights. His breath fogged the air as he lit another cigarette.
A figure watched him from across the street.
Tall. Lean. Business suit, no tie. Umbrella not open.
Miles stared back. Didn’t speak. Didn’t wave. Just observed.
The figure nodded once, turned, and disappeared into the night.
Miles blew smoke through his nose.
“Let’s dance,” he said to no one.
[END OF CHAPTER TWO]