The Raw and the Rotten

Marcus stood before his bathroom mirror at 6:45 AM, dry-swallowing a vitamin D supplement his doctor had insisted upon. "You're not getting enough sun," she'd said, as if the problem could be solved with a pill rather than the twelve-hour days he spent under fluorescent lights at the investment firm where he'd worked for thirteen years. His phone buzzed on the counter—his ex-wife again, asking about the divorce papers. He ignored it.

The train ride into the city was always the same: strangers pressed against strangers, everyone scrolling through their phones, avoiding eye contact, existing in that liminal space between where they came from and where they were going. Marcus felt sometimes like he was watching himself from above—another zombie in the apocalypse of modern life, consuming and being consumed, moving through motions that had lost meaning years ago.

"Marcus," she'd said the night she left, "you're not living. You're just... not dying. There's a difference." She'd packed her things while he sat on the couch, unable to move, unable to speak, feeling something essential rotting inside him.

At the office, his managing director David called him into the conference room. David was a man of impossible appetites—expensive dinners, younger women, increasingly aggressive deals. He'd earned the nickname "the bull" not for his strength but for his propensity to charge through situations without regard for collateral damage.

"The Mercer acquisition," David said, tapping a pen against the glass table. "There's something off about their financials."

"They're solid," Marcus said. "I ran the numbers three times."

David's eyes narrowed. "I spoke to their CEO yesterday. He mentioned something about a subsidiary we haven't accounted for. A company called VitaCorp?"

Marcus felt his stomach tighten. He'd seen that name in the footnotes of the Mercer financials—a vitamin manufacturer that had lost a major lawsuit the previous year. He'd flagged it in his initial analysis, then removed it after a senior partner had told him not to "overcomplicate the narrative." The deal was too important to the firm. Too many people had already been promised bonuses.

"It's immaterial," Marcus heard himself say. "Less than two percent of their revenue stream."

David studied him for a long moment. "You sure about that?"

Marcus thought about the empty apartment waiting for him. The vitamin supplements he took to stay functional in a system that was slowly killing him. The way he'd stopped asking questions, stopped noticing inconsistencies, stopped being the person his wife had married—all because the alternative was admitting he was part of something rotten.

"I'm sure," Marcus said, and watched as something died in David's eyes too.

"Good," David said, standing up. "Because there's a lot of money riding on this. A lot of people counting on us."

Marcus nodded and walked back to his desk, sat down, and opened the Mercer file. His hand hovered over the keyboard. Then he picked up his phone and texted his ex-wife: I'm coming over Saturday. I want to talk. For the first time in months, he took a breath that felt entirely his own.