The Sphinx in Sector 7

The spinach from lunch still clung to Marcus's front tooth—a small green flag of surrender that no one had mentioned during the three-hour meeting. He'd caught his reflection in the darkened monitor: forty-two years old, bearing the weight of a mortgage he couldn't afford, pretending to understand the new organizational chart.

"It's a pyramid," Chen had said, pointing to the whiteboard with dramatic flourishes. "But agile. A living, breathing pyramid."

Living pyramids. Marcus almost laughed. Instead, he nodded, feeling the familiar press of his dress shoes against his heels—too tight, like everything else in his life lately.

The corporate retreat had been Elena's idea. A weekend in Palm Springs to "realign." Two days of team-building exercises and PowerPoint presentations about synergy and vision. Now, Monday morning, the pyramid remained unchanged, only the players had shifted. Marcus's old department had been dissolved. He was now Sector 7, reporting directly to The Sphinx.

That's what they called her behind her back—Viktorova, with her enigmatic smile and questions that sounded like riddles. "Marcus, what value do you bring when the code writes itself?" She'd asked during his interview, her fingers interlaced on her mahogany desk like a puzzle.

He'd mumbled something about oversight. Quality assurance. Human judgment. She'd merely raised one eyebrow, like the stone creature outside the Egyptian museum downtown—implacable, ancient, knowing something he didn't.

Now his palm was sweating against the mouse as he opened the email announcing his new role. Acting Director of Human-AI Integration. The spinach was still there, he realized—a small rebellion against the machine age.

"Marcus?" Elena stood in his doorway, holding a cardboard box. The corporate version of a coffin. "They're asking for your office by three."

He touched his tooth, felt the green fleck, and smiled. "Tell them I'm bearing gifts."

"What?" Elena's confusion was genuine.

"Nothing." Marcus deleted the email without reading it. Outside his window, the city lights flickered on, a million tiny pyramids blinking into existence. He opened his drawer, took out the resignation letter he'd written three months ago and never mailed, and placed it on his desk.

"What are you doing?" Elena asked.

"Becoming a riddle," Marcus said, and walked out past security without stopping at his desk, without checking his email, without caring that he'd left his computer unlocked, without giving a damn about the spinach or the pyramids or anything else that had chained him to the earth for twenty years.

The Sphinx would have to find someone else to solve.