👉 Previous Decision: You chose Option A – Feign total obedience to earn a promotion to floor supervisor.
The new supervisor’s badge felt heavy on my chest. It granted me access to areas I’d only seen from a distance before, including the administrative offices adjacent to Sub-Level 4. My pretense of corporate loyalty was paying off.
My first assignment as supervisor was mundane: overseeing the routine data log transfers from the mainframes to the accounting department. It was a task usually handled by a junior clerk, but Marcus had insisted I “familiarize myself with all operational flows.” A subtle jab, reminding me of his control.
I walked past Silas Gable’s office, the chief accountant. The door was ajar, and I saw a woman inside, her head bent over a stack of ledgers. Evelyn Cross, Marcus’s personal secretary. Her presence here was unusual. She usually handled executive correspondence, not financial paperwork.
Silas Gable, a man whose face seemed perpetually etched with suspicion, emerged from his inner office. He carried a thick, leather-bound book, its pages dog-eared.
“Miss Cross,” he said, his voice a low growl. “These are the summaries. Ensure they’re filed with the external auditors by 1600 hours.”
Evelyn, a slight woman with large, nervous eyes, nodded. “Yes, Mr. Gable.” She reached for the book. Her fingers brushed against the spine, then hers darted away as if burned.
“Be careful with those,” Silas warned, his gaze intense. “Highly sensitive material.”
He placed the book on her desk, open to a page filled with neat columns of numbers. My eyes darted to it, catching a flash of a six-figure sum – $200,000 – beside an unusual alphanumeric code.
I knew that sum. It was the amount of my non-disclosure contract.
Silas caught my glance. “Something I can help you with, Supervisor Pendelton?” His voice was laced with an implied warning.
“Just orienting myself with the new department,” I said smoothly, forcing a smile. “Making sure the data logs are flowing correctly.”
“Everything is in perfect order,” Silas said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Miss Cross is simply… assisting with some urgent transfers.”
Evelyn avoided my gaze, her hands fluttering over the ledger. Her fingers were ink-stained, something I’d never seen on her before. She was copying. Or, more likely, re-copying.
As I continued my rounds, a chill settled in my gut. Evelyn Cross, an unwitting accomplice. And a $200,000 retainer, logged not as salary, but as something else entirely. Marcus was using the company’s own funds, funneled through Silas, to pay for my memory suppression. But the unusual code suggested something far more sinister than just my contract. It hinted at a wider financial deception.
I had to get closer to those ledgers.
➡️ Read CHAPTER 5 to continue the story.
+ There are no comments
Add yours