Corporate Casualties

I hadn't slept properly in three weeks. The cat — Merlin, a judgmental Siamese I'd inherited from my mother — stared at me from his perch atop the refrigerator as I swallowed my morning handful of supplements. A vitamin D deficiency, the doctor had said. But pills couldn't fix what was actually broken.

"You're going to get yourself caught," Elena had warned me three months ago, before she stopped taking my calls. We'd been friends since college, before I sold my soul to private intelligence contracting. She saw what I was becoming. I didn't want to see it myself.

The target's name was Marcus Chen, a mid-level executive at a biotech firm. My job: infiltrate his social circle, gather evidence of corporate espionage. Simple. Clean. Except that somewhere along the way, Marcus had stopped being a mark and started being the first person in years who made me feel something like alive.

We'd spent hours at his favorite dive bar, discussing everything except work. He knew I was hiding something, but he never pushed. That kindness undid me more than any interrogation technique could.

I'd become a zombie in all the ways that mattered — going through motions, executing protocols, collecting paychecks that meant less each month. The spy craft was exhausting mostly in its boredom: endless surveillance, pretending to care about strangers' lives, documenting betrayals that meant nothing to me.

Last night, I'd found what I needed on Chen's laptop. Evidence enough to destroy his career. My handler would be pleased.

Merlin meowed as I reached for my phone. I could send the file. Complete the mission. Collect my bonus and maybe, finally, sleep.

Instead, I deleted everything.

The vitamin bottle sat on my counter — a placebo for a deeper sickness. Some things you can't supplement away.

I picked up the phone and dialed Elena. If she answered, maybe I'd stop being a ghost haunting my own life. If she didn't, maybe I'd finally have to become someone worth knowing again.

Either way, the surveillance was over. I was done spying on myself.