The Sphinx Knows

Maya found the sphinx in the corporate garden during her lunch break, its stone face eroded by decades of rain and indifference. She'd always found comfort in its silence — unlike the office, where every conversation felt like a negotiation.

That morning, her friend Elena had left early for a 'doctor's appointment,' but Maya had seen her through the glass walls, hunched over a computer that wasn't hers, a USB cable dangling from her laptop like a dead umbilical. Something about Elena's posture had made Maya's palms sweat against her keyboard.

They'd been friends for three years. Elena had held her hair back when she drank too much at the Christmas party. Listened when she cried about her mother's death. Maya trusted her with passwords, with fears, with the kind of secrets that shape careers.

Now, sitting in the garden, Maya pulled out her phone. A simple search revealed what she'd been too naive to question. Elena's LinkedIn profile — carefully curated, deliberately vague — mentioned 'independent consulting.' But deeper digging revealed a pattern: every company Elena joined as a 'temporary contractor' experienced a data breach within six months. Each time, the stolen intellectual property surfaced with a competitor.

The sphinx stared back at her, its riddle finally clear.

Maya's hand trembled as she hovered over the security report button. She thought about Elena's laughter over drinks, their shared confidences in the breakroom. How Elena had asked, just last week, about the encryption protocol for their new product.

You don't spy on friends, Maya thought. But you also don't let them destroy everything you've built.

Her thumb pressed the screen. The notification vanished into the digital ether. Inside her bag, her phone buzzed once — a message from Elena: 'Coffee later?'

Maya looked at the sphinx one last time, then typed back: 'Some other time.'

She would give Elena this afternoon to pack her things. The choice was no longer hers to make.