The Monday Morning Dead

Mara watched them shuffle through the glass doors at 8:47 AM—her coworkers, or what was left of them. Three months of mandatory overtime had turned the department into something she could only describe in the privacy of her own mind: zombies. Not the Hollywood kind. The corporate kind. Eyes glazed from spreadsheets, movements jerky from too much caffeine and too little sleep, shuffling toward their cubicles like they'd forgotten how to walk with purpose.

She tucked a stray hair behind her ear—her stylist had called the auburn shade 'ambition,' but lately it just looked tired. At her desk, she noticed something: the ethernet cable at its port, slightly unscrewed. Someone had been in her workstation.

Again.

Her stomach did that thing it had been doing for weeks—that slow, cold twist. Someone was reading her emails. Downloading her files. She'd reported it to IT three times. 'Must be a glitch,' they'd said, not looking up from their phones.

But IT hadn't patched the camera she'd found taped above the supply closet last month. They hadn't explained why her predecessor's resignation letter still sat in her draft folder, unsent.

At 6:00 PM, she drove to the padel club. This was the only place she could breathe. The enclosed court, the glass walls—like her office but honest about its transparency. Mark was already there, stretching against the wall. Their matches had become something else entirely. A way to be close enough to touch, far enough to deny it.

'You're playing angry tonight,' he said, bouncing a ball against the glass.

'Am I?' She served. The ball cracked against the wall, rebounded hard.

His eyes found hers. 'I know what you are, Mara.'

Her heart stopped. 'What?'

'The spy.' His voice was gentle. Almost sympathetic. 'Corporate sent you to find the leak, didn't they?'

The air left the room. 'No. Mark, I'm not—'

'Then why does your computer log off at midnight every night? Why do you take the stairs to avoid security cameras?' He stepped closer. 'I've been watching you back.'

The silence stretched between them, charged and terrible.

'I'm not the spy,' she whispered. 'I'm the target.'

His expression shifted. Something broke behind his eyes—relief, then guilt, then something like surrender.

'Then I failed,' he said quietly. 'They told me to get close to you. Find out what you know.' He reached for her hand, his thumb tracing her palm. 'I was supposed to report Friday. I didn't.'

She pulled away. 'Who's 'they'?' It was almost funny, in a terrible way. All this time, thinking she was hunting shadows, and the shadow had been standing across the net from her, laughing at her terrible serve.

'Same people who turned us into zombies,' he said. 'Difference is, I know I'm selling out. You still think you can win.'

The court lights hummed overhead. Outside, the parking lot filled with employees arriving for evening leagues, unaware they were playing in someone else's game.

'Mara,' he said, 'come home with me. We can stop pretending.'

She looked at him—really looked—and saw the exhaustion, the loneliness, the terrible compromise of a man who'd forgotten what he was fighting for. The same thing she saw in the mirror every morning.

'No,' she said, and meant it. 'I'm going to finish this.'

She walked out alone, hair loose around her shoulders, for the first time not tired anymore. The corporate zombies would shuffle in tomorrow at 8:47. But not her. Not anymore. In her car, she connected her phone to the dashboard cable—every corporate secret, every surveillance log, every blackmail email from legal, already backed up and addressed to the Times.

The dead wouldn't stay dead forever.