The Vitamin Pact

The fox appeared at the edge of the parking lot every morning at 7:15, a routine as dependable as the vitamin C Marcus dropped into his orange juice. He'd watch it from the breakroom window—lean, russet fur ghosting through the fog, eyes like polished obsidian scanning for weakness.

"You see it again?" Elena asked, sliding onto the stool beside him. She'd been his work friend for three years, since he'd started as junior counsel at Biopharm. She'd shown him the good coffee place, covered for him when his mother died, listened to him talk about his divorce until 2 AM at the dive bar down the street.

"Every morning," Marcus said. "It's hunting something."

"Foxes are adaptable," she said, something strange in her voice. "They survive anywhere. Cities, forests. Corporate campuses."

He should have noticed then—the way she never really left work when he did, the password-protected files on her desktop, the calls she took in the stairwell. But friendship is blindfold; you don't look closely at the person handing you tissues.

The investigation came like a slow avalanche. First the SEC subpoenas, then the forensic accounting team, then the realization that someone had been siphoning research data to a competitor for eighteen months. Marcus sat in the conference room, watching security footage frame by frame, and saw Elena accessing his computer after hours. Saw her copying his vitamin research—the proprietary formula for the new antidepressant that was supposed to save the company.

She'd been a spy the whole time. Not a friend. Just another fox, lean and hungry, pretending to curl up beside you while sizing up your throat.

"Marcus." She found him in the parking lot at sunset. The fox was gone. "I did what I had to do."

"For money?" he asked, though he already knew.

"My brother's medical bills. The company you work for? They're parasites. They price gouge sick people. I sent that research to someone who'll actually make it affordable."

She placed something on his car hood—a bottle of vitamins. Store brand. "You've been taking their supplements for years. Did you ever check what's actually in them?"

Marcus watched her walk away, the fox-red of her hair catching the last light. He opened the bottle and poured the capsules into his palm. There were no labels, no dosage information. Just anonymous pills in a plastic bottle.

He swallowed them anyway.