The office was never this quiet.
Even during late evenings when deadlines loomed or emergencies erupted, there were always pockets of noise — a printer humming, someone muttering at their screen, distant laughter from the break room. But tonight, the silence felt total. Unbroken. Almost reverent.
My heels clicked softly against the polished marble floors as I walked, each step echoing down the dim corridor. Fluorescent lights flickered in a slow, intermittent rhythm overhead, casting long shadows that stretched across the walls like skeletal fingers reaching outward.
I had only come back for a simple reason — to double-check a few details before tomorrow’s high-stakes meeting. A quick stop. Twenty minutes at most.
But the deeper I walked into the quiet building, the more I felt a stran
