Palm Lines in the Dead Zone

At 3:14 PM, Maya found herself pressing her palm against the office vending machine as if it were a sacred text. She'd been a zombie since the merger—walking, typing, attending meetings where words dissolved into corporate ether, but she hadn't actually *lived* in months.

"You look like you need this more than I do."

Maya turned. The new guy, Julian, stood there holding out a bottle of B-12 vitamins. His palms were rough, scarred—musician's hands or mechanic's, something real in this building of smoothed edges.

"I'm fine," she said, though her hands trembled.

"The palm reader at the company retreat told me I'd give something important to someone today." He grinned. "I thought she meant my resignation letter."

Maya laughed, surprised by the sound. "That was three weeks ago. You're still here."

"Turns out fear is its own kind of vitamin. Keeps you moving even when you want to lie down." He placed the bottle on the vending machine between them. "She also told me I'd meet someone whose life line was fractured but healing. Said I shouldn't let them walk away."

The air between them shifted. Maya looked at her own palm—she'd traced that fractured line every morning since her husband left, waiting for it to reconnect.

"I'm thirty-five," she said quietly. "I thought I'd be different by now."

"Zombie mode is a valid coping mechanism," Julian said. "But eventually you have to eat something living."

He extended his hand, palm up. An invitation, not a handshake.

Maya pressed her palm against his. His skin was warm, alive, and something in her chest cracked open—the zombie shell fracturing, finally, letting light through to the parts of her she'd thought dead forever.

"Your hands are shaking," he said softly.

"Coming back to life will do that."