Dead Men Tell No Tales

Marcus stood on the pier at 3 AM, the salt spray coating his face like a second skin. Three years of corporate espionage had turned him into something else—not quite undead, but hollowed out from the inside. A **zombie** in a tailored suit, walking through boardrooms and data centers, stealing secrets that meant nothing to him anymore.

The **water** below was black as ink, churning against the pylons with a rhythm that matched his own pulse. Slowing down. Always slowing down.

"You look like shit, Marcus."

He didn't turn. Sarah's voice came from behind him, whiskey-rough and familiar. They'd been partners once. Before the Bangkok incident. Before he'd sold her out to save his own career.

"I'm working," he said.

"You're always working." She stepped beside him, her silhouette sharp against the harbor lights. "Still playing the double agent? Still feeding secrets to both sides and keeping the best ones for yourself?"

Marcus's jaw tightened. "Somebody has to pay for the lifestyle."

Sarah laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That's the problem with being a **spy** for too long, Marcus. You forget whose side you're on. You forget you were ever on a side at all."

The waves crashed harder now, a rising tide that seemed to mirror the violence between them. She knew. Of course she knew.

"I did what I had to do," he said.

"No. You did what was easy." She turned to face him, her expression unreadable in the sodium-vapor glow. "You want to know what the difference is between you and the real zombies? At least they have the excuse that they're dead. You're just choosing to be."

Marcus reached for her, but she was already stepping away, dissolving into the night like the fog rolling off the harbor. He stood alone again, listening to the water, realizing she was right. Some deaths were voluntary. Some ghosts walked around in three-piece suits, stealing trade secrets and pretending it was a living.

The tide was coming in. And for the first time in three years, Marcus felt something like fear.