The Dead Don't Quit

The office lights hummed at 2 AM, that particular frequency that makes your teeth ache. Elena adjusted her hat—a vintage fedora she'd bought on a whim, now her armor against the fluorescent purge—and watched the spreadsheet numbers blur together. She'd been a **zombie** for three years now, since the merger, since David left, since she stopped remembering why she'd wanted this career in the first place. The dead don't quit, she thought bitterly. They just keep going to meetings.

Her phone buzzed. A message from Marcus: *Still at it?*

Marcus with his **fox**-like grin and his increasingly frequent excuses to stop by her desk. Marcus, thirty-four, divorced, wearing his loneliness like an expensive cologne. She should have been suspicious from the start. The way he knew things—how she took her coffee, that she'd been interviewing across town. Small things, until they weren't.

The realization had come last week, slipped from a drunk VP at the holiday party: *Oh, Marcus? Yeah, he'sManagement's little **spy**. Keeps tabs on who's restless.*

So she'd started playing along. Let him think he was winning. Let him think there was something between them besides mutual exploitation. And tonight—tonight she'd leave him a little gift on her desktop. Not the resignation he'd been expecting. A file. Everything she'd collected about the embezzlement scheme she'd uncovered by accident. Let him explain to the **bear** of a CEO why he hadn't reported it.

Elena saved the file, encrypted it with Marcus's own birthday—the fool had used it for everything—and stood. Her knees popped. The hat tilted rakishly. Outside, the city waited, indifferent and beautiful, full of people who might actually be alive. She smiled, something genuine for the first time in years, and walked out of the zoo without looking back.