The Corporate Zombie
Maya stared at her iphone, the blue light casting shadows under eyes that hadn't slept properly in three weeks. Another message from Marcus: "We need to talk about the Thompson account. Now."
She wasn't a spy—she was a senior analyst at a midtown hedge fund—but sometimes the clandestine nature of corporate sabotage made her feel like one. Marcus wanted her to dig into Thompson's personal finances. Cross a line. Again.
The elevator dinged. Mitchell stepped in, reeking of expensive cologne and that particular brand of arrogance that came from never being told no. He was the office bull, charging through meetings with opinions he'd stolen from someone else's Slack channel.
"You look like shit, Maya," Mitchell said, not unkindly. "Dead on your feet."
"Just tired."
"Zombie mode," he nodded. "We're all walking dead here, sweetheart. Some of us just hide it better in Italian suits."
Maya forced a smile. Mitchell was an asshole, but he was an honest asshole.
She thought about last night—standing in her kitchen at 2 AM, eating cold spinach straight from the container while watching cooking shows she'd never have the energy to replicate. The loneliness had hit her then, sudden and sharp as a paper cut. When did her life become this series of gray rooms and fluorescent lights?
The elevator opened onto the forty-second floor. Marcus was waiting, his face that particular shade of impatient.
"Did you get what I needed?"
Maya looked at her boss, really looked at him. The man who'd once promised her mentorship, who'd slowly eroded every ethical boundary she'd ever had. She thought about the spinach container in her trash can, the unanswered texts from her mother, the way she'd started to view her own reflection as a stranger's.
"No," she said. "I didn't."
Marcus's face reddened. "Excuse me?"
"I'm done being your corporate spy, Marcus. And I'm done being a zombie."
She walked past him, toward her desk, toward her phone, toward whatever came next. For the first time in years, she was actually hungry.