The Sphinx at Net Zero

The corporate lounge smelled of lavender cleaner and quiet desperation. Elena sat on the leather sofa, her iPhone 15 glowing with unanswered messages, watching through the glass wall as her colleagues played padel on the company's new court. They moved with desperate energy — thwack, grunt, laugh — as if the game could somehow prove they were still alive, still vital, not what they'd become.

She felt like a zombie herself these days. Three years of mergers and acquisitions had hollowed her out, leaving something that moved and spoke and negotiated deals but no longer remembered why any of it mattered. The dead didn't know they were dead; that was the joke. She knew, and she kept showing up anyway.

"You're not playing?"

Elena looked up. Marcus stood there, sweat-stained shirt clinging to his chest, paddle in hand. He was the sphinx of their department — inscrutable, ancient in his thirty-five years, possessed of secrets he never shared. His riddles were simpler: Why do we stay? What are we waiting for?

"Not today," she said. "Maybe never."

He sat beside her, and she caught the scent of him — salt and effort, something uncomfortably human. "The partners are discussing another restructuring."

"They're always discussing something."

"This time they're talking about you."

Her thumb hovered over her iPhone screen, where her mother's message still waited: *Your father died yesterday.* She'd read it four hours ago and done nothing. The sphinx waited beside her, and somewhere beyond the glass, the padel ball struck the wall with a sound like a heartbeat.

"What do they say?" Elena asked.

Marcus studied his hands, then met her eyes with that devastating, sphinx-like clarity. "They say you've been walking dead for months. They're wondering if anyone will notice if they finally put you down."

The ball struck the wall again. Thwack.

Elena's phone buzzed. Her sister this time. She turned it face down on the leather sofa.

"Someone would notice," she said.

"Would they?" Marcus stood, offered his hand. "Come play. The world doesn't end because we step away from it for an hour."

She thought about zombies, about the dead who didn't know they were dead, about the sphinx who offered riddles instead of answers. She thought about her phone screen-down on the sofa, about the messages piling up like snow.

Elena took his hand. "One game," she said. "Then I have to make some calls."