The Spy in Open Plan

I trace the lifeline on my palm during the Monday morning meeting, pretending to take notes while my gaze drifts to Sarah. She hasn't looked alive in months. We used to be friends—the kind who texted at 2 AM aboutexistential crises and shared bottles of wine on her balcony when promotions fell through. Now she's just another zombie in the open-plan office, her eyes glazed over from spreadsheet-induced hypnosis.

The irony isn't lost on me: I'm the corporate spy hired to document her declining performance, to build the case that will end her career. My palm sweats against the notebook where I record her mistakes, her late arrivals, the way she stares blankly at her monitor for twenty minutes at a time. I tell myself it's just business, that everyone becomes a zombie eventually in this line of work, but the lie tastes like recycled office coffee.

"Your palm says you're at a crossroads," she'd told me three years ago, drunk on cheap merlot and the possibility of something better. We'd joked about running away to open a bookstore, about abandoning the corporate grind. Now I watch her from across the desk, counting down the days until I deliver the report that will finish what the company started years ago—the slow murder of her spirit.

She catches me watching. For a second, something flickers behind her eyes—recognition, maybe, or just the ghost of the person she used to be. I look down at my palm, at the line that supposedly determines how long I'll live, and wonder if there's a word for someone who murders their friend in slow motion, one spreadsheet at a time.