My phone buzzed, yanking me out of a very committed staring contest with a user’s frozen browser window. Elly. As usual.

  ELLY: yo. u good? vibes are weird today. like extra weird.

  She always texted like she was live-tweeting a heist: clipped, wry, and somehow three sizes more threatening than the message warranted.

  ME: depends. is being stalked at work by a supermodel heartthrob considered good?

  There was a beat long enough for me to imagine her typing, deleting, retyping, then finally sending something that read like a shrug encoded in sarcasm.

  ELLY: … SHE CAME TO YOUR OFFICE?!

  Yep. She got it. I exhaled and probably made a face that telegraphed every part of my panic because Susan in the next cube glanced over with casual concern and then immediately pretended to be deeply engaged in her spreadsheet.

  ME: yup. just… there. in the building. looking like the finale boss of a perfume commercial. said she’d been “thinking about me.”

  Which, yes, is the kind of normal workplace behavior that gets you HR-trained and therapy referrals, except she didn’t work here. I imagined a future where our quarterly review included a slide deck: “Boundaries 101 — How to Avoid Being Stalked at Work by a Client.”

  ELLY: okay. no. nope. unsubscribed. you need sage. or an exorcist. or a restraining order.

  Honestly, it probably wasn’t a joke. The look Elly gave me over text is the same one she gives when anything goes sideways: amused, irritated, and vaguely hungry for the chaos. The office, meanwhile, continued to hum around me like a badly tuned refrigerator. People who had previously been normal human colleagues were suddenly either whispering like gossipy owls or giving me the sort of sideways looks I got when I’d accidentally worn two different shoes to a meeting.

  ME: and maybe a new job. Greg already thinks i’m having an affair with a client

  Elly popped a laugh emoji that somehow read like sympathy and a sharpened blade.

  ELLY: lol is that the almond guy?

  ME: yes. he chews each one like he's filing a tax deduction. but seriously—she shouldn’t be able to just walk in like that, right? am i going insane?

  I hoped the monitor’s glow would be convincing if I stared hard enough. My hands kept wanting to hover over the ticket queue like a ghost operator, but my brain kept rewinding the memory of her heels clicking in the reception area: purposeful, precise, wrong in a way my gut found rude.

  ELLY: slightly but that’s not new

  Rude was fair. Elly had a talent for summing up the part of reality I was too polite or too scared to see. Maybe I was emitting some kind of supernatural Bluetooth signal. Maybe I was just Dan: loud hair, soft heart, and an aura that read “please be dramatic tonight.”

  ME: i’m serious. people are acting weird the whole floor’s been giving me sideways looks like i walked into a cult meeting and asked for decaf

  ELLY: ...okay… real talk? this might sound nuts but you’ve always had this weird thing about you

  ME: wow. rude again.

  ELLY: no, not like that! i mean you draw people in. you’ve always had it like some weird signal. I just thought it was emotional damage and good hair but now?...

  ME: you think i’m sending out thirst beams?

  ELLY: not thirst but yeah maybe you’re putting out a frequency the weirdos can hear like magical bluetooth

  Magical Bluetooth. Of course. Why hadn’t I assumed it before? Somewhere between coffee and the 10:30 mass inbox purging, I was apparently broadcasting to the supernatural equivalent of car alarms.

  I put my headset back on and tried to act normal. “Elysium Solutions, Dan speaking, how can I help you?” My voice in the call sounded overly professional, like I was putting on a costume. The caller was a man whose router had decided to be dramatic. I coached him through resets like a meditation, the words soothing him and also dialing down the panic in my chest.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  That’s when Greg noticed.

  Greg moves through the office the way an ensign moves through a battleship — precise, obligatory, and deployed at intervals where morale falters. He wasn’t loud, but his attention was a statement: when Greg looks at you, you feel weighed and measured. Tonight, he had one of those protein bars permanently attached to his wrist; he chewed while he judged the world.

  He hovered at the end of my cube, eyebrows drawn into the exact shape of a man composing a complaint. One of his superpowers is passive intimidation — a look that says “I supervise” without ever needing to say “I supervise.” He’d earned it by being annoyingly correct about timecards and the optimal AFK posture for maximum productivity.

  “Everything okay, Mercer?” he asked, which in Greg-speak means, “Have you broken a team morale policy?”

  I pulled my headset off, gave him my best single-tear-of-distress smile. “Just a weird client. And, uh—coffee issues.” Which was true; the communal coffeemaker had exploded earlier and we were all walking around with faint, oily perfumes because of it. Small lies keep office peace.

  Greg’s eyes flicked briefly toward the lobby where, on any other day, an HR-approved man in a polo would have been pushing a dolly. Tonight, the lobby looked like a runway. For reasons that made my skull feel tight, I pictured the perfume-commercial woman standing there with a brochure that said, in very small letters, contingent destiny packages available.

  “You sure you’re focused? We have the Anderson ticket pile, and you’re best when you close them under thirty-two minutes.” He bit off a piece of his protein bar in a motion that was both casual and ceremonial. He was the kind of man who could eat a power bar and make you feel like he had also judged your life choices.

  “I’m on it,” I told him. “Just—pulled a weird shift last night. Fatigue.” Which was not untrue. Insomnia had begun to tangle with being mildly hunted. Same difference.

  A few cubes over, Susan — who had that tiny cactus that always looked like it was judging me — poked her head over and mouthed the word “are you okay?” because apparently office concern now had to come with a plant-based prop.

  Greg looked as if he might leave it at that, and it was all fine until Elly sent me another message.

  Greg stiffened the way a general stiffens when a parade goes off-script. He watched my phone with a hawk’s gaze, which was a weird combo because Greg’s face always reads like a spreadsheet, and spreadsheets aren’t generally predators. But tonight his eyes tracking the phone felt like a spotlight deciding whether to redirect its beam.

  Then, inexplicably, phones dimmed; a guy two cubicles down abandoned his keyboard, staring at some nowhere point; the vending machine coughed and dispensed two bags of chips like an offering.

  Greg paused midchew, looking around, confused.

  There was a ripple among the staff — an almost audible intake of breath that made my ears ring. Someone, somewhere, laughed too loudly to counteract the quiet. Greg’s jaw worked a thoughtful chew. He looked at me, and for the first time since I’d sat down, I felt less like a person and more like an exhibit in a museum where the description plaque had gone badly missing.

  “Dan,” he said softly, but the quiet was the most menacing sound. “If you need to step out, do it. I can cover a few calls.”

  I told him thanks, meaning it, and then sat there like a man who’d been handed the keys to a theater fire alarm and wasn’t sure which lever to pull. My cursor blinked, a tiny metronome of my failure to act.

  A coworker — Mark in the llama tie — used the opportunity to pop his head by and whisper actual gossip. “Yo, Mercer, did you see that new client in reception earlier? She was, like, movie-star pretty. Some of the marketing guys are already plotting a fantasy team-up…” He trailed off, realizing Greg was there.

  “Please don’t,” I said into my headset, because the router issue was suddenly interesting again.

  “It’s Mercer’s client.” Greg remarked.

  “Oh. Okay.” Mark blinked in confusion. He made himself suddenly scarce.

  Greg lingered, eyes like a hawk. “You good?” he asked again. His voice had dropped below conversational volume, and for a second the whole world might as well have narrowed to the two of us.

  “Yeah,” I lied, and maybe because I was exhausted my brain chose honesty as a desperate, messy art form.

  He gave me a look that was a question and a judgment and a map all at once. “She won’t get in here again. Security knows not to let her in. We’re a team here, Mercer.”

  I nodded, because filing a report that said, “a ridiculously beautiful woman made my coworkers act like extras in a soap opera felt impossible to put in a ticket. Greg left with a last chew of his protein bar. Then he strode away, his gaze sweeping across the sea of cubicles like it was an assignment, to protect this brand’s liability.

  I took a breath, straightened my spine, put my headset back on. The user on the other end of the line needed IP resets, not mythology. Still, my fingers hovered over the keys for an extra beat, and I could feel the smell of someone important and wrong in the building like ozone before lightning.

  Elly’s message flashed once more, unread.

  ELLY: if she even breathes on your stapler report it. also wear sage. also maybe ditch Greg with a fake doctor's note to go home

  I smirked then, because in between the chaos and the fear, there was always Elly’s version of comfort: absurd and practical all at once.

  ME: will do. thanks for the crisis hotline.

  ELLY: anytime. also call me if she asks to “see you about your account.” that’s a trap phrase i legit made up

  I typed a quick thanks, closed the ticket with a flourish, and then walked toward the lobby like a man going to sign for a package that might have his life inside. Greg’s advice echoed in my head. Don’t let it fester.

  I tried not to fester.

  I tried not to look like I was walking into a side quest, but karma has a sense of humor.