Corporate Surveillance

The morning light hit Marcus's desk as Chloe dropped two orange pills onto his notebook. Same time, every day—like clockwork. Their vitamin ritual had become the one constant in three years of working at Stratosphere Dynamics.

"You look like hell," she said, dropping into the chair beside him. " merger talks keeping you up?"

Marcus swallowed both pills without water. "Something like that."

She didn't know he knew.

The email had arrived at 2:47 AM—a forwarded message from HR that shouldn't have been in his inbox. Chloe's weekly reports on his "behavioral patterns" and "loyalty concerns." Detailed analysis of his bathroom breaks, his lunch conversations, his "increasingly cynical attitude toward company leadership."

Corporate spy. The friend he'd trusted with his divorce, his mother's cancer diagnosis, his secret plans to start his own firm. And all along, she'd been documenting it for a promotion that didn't even exist yet.

"Marcus?" Her voice pulled him back. "You okay?"

He studied her face—the slight concern in her eyes, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from when they'd drunkenly fallen off his porch last summer. Was any of it real? Those late-night calls after his wife left. The way she'd held him while he cried in the breakroom. The vitamins she brought every morning because she "couldn't stand seeing him run on caffeine and resentment."

Was that surveillance too?

"Just tired," he said, standing up. "Forgot something in my car."

"Want me to hold your vitamins?" she asked, already reaching for his desk.

"No." The word came out sharper than intended. "I'm good."

He walked out, leaving her puzzled expression behind. Outside, the morning air was already thick with heat. He fished the two orange pills from his pocket and considered them—tiny soldiers in a war he hadn't known he was fighting.

Marcus threw them in the trash.

Tomorrow, he'd draft his resignation letter. Today, he'd buy his own damn vitamins.