The Pyramid's Last Breath

Maya sat on the forty-second floor of the glass tower, her reflection ghost-like against the Seattle skyline. The corporate **pyramid** rose beneath her—each level a smaller circle of survivors, each promotion a fresh batch of casualties. At forty-seven, she'd settled into middle management: safe, suffocating, and entirely expected.

Her office mate, Elias, peeled an **orange** at his desk every morning at 10:15 AM. The citrus scent cut through the recycled air and stale ambition. "You know what this is?" he'd asked once, holding up a segment like a gem. "The only thing here that's actually alive."

Maya had laughed. Then something in his expression made her look closer.

"I'm not talking about the fruit."

They'd been sleeping together for three months now—in hotel rooms during conferences, in his car during lunch breaks, once, recklessly, in the supply closet while the quarterly meeting droned on next door. Elias was twenty-eight, brilliant, and wasting away in the Data entry department beneath her. He should have been climbing fast. Instead, he'd made himself invisible.

"Why haven't you applied for the team lead position?" she asked afterward, adjusting her blouse in the dim light of his Honda.

He'd stared at the steering wheel. "Because I've seen what happens to people at the top. They turn into something else. Something... hungrier."

Now the CEO was retiring. The board had brought in a consulting firm to restructure—corporate speak for hollow out the bottom third. Elias's department. Maya had access to the spreadsheets. She'd seen his name in the rows marked for elimination.

She could warn him. Could leak the documents. Could say something, anything, instead of watching him peel that damn orange every morning like everything was fine.

"You're awfully quiet today," he said, juice staining his fingers.

Maya looked at him—really looked—and realized she'd become what she hated. A **zombie** in the pyramid, feeding on those below to survive another quarter.

The orange sat on his desk, impossibly bright against the gray. Tomorrow, she would tell him everything. Today, she reached across the desk and took his hand.