What if you threw your life away and the world threw it back? If you found yourself in credit to the value of one life? Would you spend that credit on a worthy cause, if fate offered up the chance?
...
She knew she must eat—yet her breakfast lay cooling on the marble benchtop, untouched.
She should read, watch the television, listen to the radio. Although denied a phone or the internet or any means of communication with the outside world, she must use the sources of information available to her, must stay engaged, if she was to keep her crumbling mind from fracturing into a million fragments—yet the room was silent.
She must rest if she was to continue to fight. She must think if she was to find a way out. She must breathe—in and out, one breath after another—if she was to stay alive, if she was to continue to exist, to survive this day, and then another day and then another, if she was to struggle and fight and resist until the moment came, whether it be tomorrow or in a year or in a decade, the moment when this nightmare would end.
So—as she had done before, every day since she had been taken—starting with a deep breath, she gathered the tattered remnants of her resolve...
And she did.
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"Nick, my man. How goes the report?"
Nick blinked at the indistinct figure standing at the entrance to his cubicle, silhouetted against the dim light of the night-time office. He thought Jayden had long since gone home. Arranging his features into a smile, he gave a thumbs up.
"Awesome," replied his team-leader, returning the gesture. "Shoot me through a copy and I'll give it a once-over first thing, before sending it up to the big boys."
Nick nodded, hoping that would be that, but when Jayden seemed disinclined to leave, he added a second thumb.
"Yeah, I knew I could rely on the old Nickster." Jayden gave his bristled chin a speculative stroke. "Hey, listen—there's something I need to talk to you about. While we've got the place to ourselves, I thought we might have a quick chat. Sound good?"
Given chats were one of Nick's least favourite things, it sounded far from good. But as the question was no doubt rhetorical, he nodded again, heart sinking. Even more so when Jayden retrieved a chair from the adjoining cubicle and took a seat opposite him. Sitting did not gel with "quick".
The tanned features took on a serious cast. "Listen, bro. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just gonna come right out with it. We're letting you go."
So, pretty quick, after all. Nick stared at him, dumbstruck—even more than usual. He'd half-expected a reprimand; that perhaps he'd made some technical error, missed something on a report, or even just forgotten to refill the coffee machine one too many times. That he might be looking at a role review or reassignment. But to be fired? It didn't make any sense. His work was good, and he knew it.
His stunned mind struggled to process the injustice of this development—the injustice, and its seismic, life-altering magnitude. And as it did so, he found his gaze drawn—without conscious volition—to the window closest to his cubicle. To the vista that had, in times of stress, become his mental refuge over these past few months.
