Undisconnected

The blue light of her iPhone reflected in Elena's eyes at 3 AM — the same light that had been her constant companion since David left. She popped another vitamin D supplement, the bitter coating dissolving on her tongue like all the promises she'd made to take better care of herself. Someday.

The glass doors of Mercer & Stone slid open, and Elena stepped into the office where she'd spent twelve years becoming someone she no longer recognized. Her hair, once a rich auburn that David used to bury his face in, now hung limp and mouse-brown — she hadn't bothered to dye it since the divorce. Four months of gray roots growing like ivy up the shaft.

"You look like hell," Marcus said, not unkindly, from the neighboring cubicle. "Rough night?"

"Just the usual." Elena forced a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "What's on fire today?"

"The Harrison account. Apparently, they want us to make their zombie startup look like it has a pulse."

Zombie. The word hung in the air between them. That's what they all were, really — walking corpses in designer suits, pretending quarterly projections mattered in the face of inevitable decay. Elena remembered the day she stopped feeling alive: it wasn't when David packed his boxes, but three years earlier, when she realized she could go through an entire week without experiencing a single genuine emotion.

She unlocked her iPhone again. No new messages. Of course not. The vitamin supplements sat in their bottle on her desk — a futile attempt to treat a disease that wasn't physical.

"Marcus?" she asked suddenly. "Do you ever feel like we're already dead?"

He looked up from his monitor, eyes shadowed with the same exhaustion that lived in her own reflection. "Every morning when my alarm goes off."

Elena stood up, gathered her hair into a messy knot, and walked toward the glass wall of her office. Outside, the city moved in rhythm — people who actually lived, loved, died. Not just existed.

"Where are you going?" Marcus called.

"To find something that requires more than vitamins and an iPhone to sustain it."

She didn't look back. Some zombies, she decided, were capable of waking up — if only they remembered they were sleeping in the first place.