The Goldfish Protocol

Elena watched the woman on her monitor through the hidden camera she'd installed three weeks ago. The woman—that vibrant, careless girl with cherry-red hair who seemed to actually *live* in her tiny apartment—danced while cooking dinner. Elena felt like a zombie viewing the living, some museum exhibit of joy she'd forgotten how to feel.

As a corporate spy for Mercer Intelligence, Elena spent her days stealing secrets, infiltrating lives, gathering intel on rival executives. She was good at it. Too good. She'd forgotten what belonging to herself felt like. Her last relationship had dissolved two years ago—Mark said she'd developed the emotional memory of a goldfish, forgetting everything that mattered the moment something new swam into view.

The cable connecting to her hidden camera was her lifeline to this other woman's world. Pathetic, really. Thirty-four years old and living vicariously through someone she'd never met, someone who was probably her target's assistant or some equally tangential connection. Elena should be gathering actionable intelligence. Instead she was watching this stranger paint her nails teal and cry at insurance commercials and live with an abandon that made Elena's chest ache.

Tonight, the red-haired woman looked directly at the camera—no, past it—and held up a small sign she'd written on cardboard: I KNOW YOU'RE THERE. Then she smiled, not angry but conspiratorial, and raised her glass in toast to the invisible watcher.

Elena's finger hovered over the disconnect button. Instead, she typed back through the two-way audio she'd never activated until now: "I'm sorry."

The woman's smile softened. "Don't be. You look like you need a friend."

Later, Elena would wonder who was really watching whom. Later, she would quit her job. Later, she would learn that the woman's name was Maya and she'd worked for Mercer too, once, before the burnout. But for now, as the goldfish in Maya's tank swam lazy circles in its artificial light, Elena pressed talk and began: "My name is Elena, and I think I'm drowning."

The strange intimacy of surveillance became something else entirely—not spying, not invading, but reaching across the darkness between two lonely people, both zombies in their own ways, both waking up.