“Support staff. Entry admin. Anybody nonessential.”
A little laugh. Mean, scared, ugly. “So half this floor.”
My pulse starts thudding in my throat.
I angle my screen but listen harder.
“They’re saying Brautigaum wants a leaner image before quarter close.”
“Leaner image? We make storage polymers. What does that even mean?”
“It means he wants to slash payroll and buy another media package.”
I know I should stop listening. I know eavesdropping is the office equivalent of putting your hand in a disposal unit and acting shocked when it hurts.
I listen anyway.
“Didn’t Tilda ask for that schedule accommodation?”
“Yeah.”
“With the kid?”
“Mm-hm.”
A pause.
Then, “She’s probably gone.”
I sit very still.
The terminal hums under my hands. Across the office, somebody laughs too loudly. Someone else sneezes. The climate system kicks on with a dry hiss. Everything keeps moving with that hideous normalcy the world has when yours is quietly tipping sideways.
Probably gone.
I look down at the spreadsheet on my screen and can’t see a thing. All I can see is rent, food, Jesse, childcare, the broken chair leg by the wall, the unpaid notice on my comm.
A hand lands on my partition.
I jerk.
Nessa peeks around the corner, one brow raised. She’s a procurement analyst with a talent for smuggling contraband pastries into budget meetings and telling the truth like she’s doing the universe a favor.
“You look like you just saw the ghost of payroll future,” she says.
“I overheard them talking.”
Her mouth flattens. “Yeah.”
“So it’s true.”
“Seems likely.”
I stand up so abruptly my chair wheels backward. “I can’t lose this job, Ness.”
“No kidding.”
“I mean it.”
