The Sphinx in Server Room B

Elena hadn't slept properly since the merger. Three months of waking at 3 AM to stare at the ceiling while her mind replayed conversations from meetings she hadn't even attended. The office felt like a tomb these days—row after row of gray cubicles, her colleagues shuffling through their days with the vacant eyes of the corporate undead.

She was hunting a loose cable in Server Room B when she found him.

'Troubleshooting again?' Marcus's voice echoed off the humming server racks. He was leaning against the emergency exit, that fox-like grin already playing at the corners of his mouth. 'You know, they automated that position last week.'

'The script's broken.' Elena didn't turn from the rack. 'Someone needs to actually touch the hardware.'

'Always the bull in a china shop.' He stepped closer. 'They're going to notice you're fixing things that are supposed to stay broken. Budget allocations depend on these emergencies.'

The fluorescent lights flickered. In the stutter of darkness, Elena considered telling him about the interview tomorrow. About the offer letter sitting unopened in her personal email. Instead she traced the coaxial cable through its maze of connections, her fingers finding the fray she'd known would be there.

'Why do you stay?' Marcus asked quietly. 'Seriously.'

'That's the riddle, isn't it?' Elena finally turned to face him. 'The sphinx at the gates. Answer wrong, you get eaten. Answer right, you realize there's nowhere else to go.'

He laughed—really laughed, head thrown back, the genuine sound foreign in this space. 'God, you're morbid when you're tired.'

'I'm forty-two, Marcus. I've spent seventeen years keeping this building online. And last week I realized I can't remember the last time I made something that didn't exist to keep something else running.'

The silence stretched between them, filled only by the steady drone of servers. The zombie apocalypse had already happened, she thought—it just looked like quarterly reports and performance reviews.

'Marcus?'

'Yeah?'

'Did you ever figure out what you wanted to be when you grew up?'

He didn't answer. The lights stabilized. Elena began replacing the cable, and somewhere in the distance, a phone began to ring.