the deleted files
1418 Words
The office felt colder than the penthouse. It was the smell of air freshener and hard work that didn't belong to her. Maren sat at her desk. The gray wool of her new sleeve rubbed against the wood. She looked at the laptop. It was sleek and black. It was her only window to the world, but there were a lot of restrictions on the laptop. Every time she tried to access an outside news site or a personal email server, a red box appeared: Access Denied. See Administrator.
Alaric was in his office. Through the glass wall, she saw him moving. He was on a call. He looked powerful. He looked like he had never known a moment of doubt in his life. Maren looked away. She felt a sick knot in her stomach. She thought about the yellow paper she had found hidden in the back of the penthouse closet. She thought about the dates. They were written in a frantic, shaky hand.
She opened the corporate database. Her fingers were trembling. She had to be fast. She had to be quiet. She typed in the first date from the list: May 12. The screen spun for a second. A small circle of white light chased itself on the black background.
No results found.
She tried the next one. June 4. Again, nothing. No logs, no meeting minutes, no security badge entries. Maren felt a bead of sweat roll down her back. She looked up at the glass wall. Alaric was still talking. He was looking at a map on his wall, pointing at a city in Europe. He wasn't looking at her. Not yet.
She went deeper into the archives. She looked for employee records from three years ago. She searched for names of personal assistants. She searched for anyone who had lived in the penthouse. She knew he had to have a record of them. Draken Industries was built on data. Alaric didn't throw things away; he categorized them.
The folders were there. The system showed a directory of names, but when she clicked on them, they were empty. The files had been wiped clean. There were no photos. There were no tax forms. There were no emergency contact numbers. It was as if the people who had worked for him had never been born. It was as if they were just shadows that had passed through the building and vanished into the gray stone.
Maren leaned back in her chair. She felt a wave of cold air hit her face from the vent above. He hadn't just fired them. He had erased them. He had taken their names and thrown them away, scrubbed the server until the digital memory of them was gone.
She looked at her own name at the top of the screen. Maren Vance. Active.
She wondered how long it would stay there. She wondered what date would be written on the next piece of paper hidden in a closet. Would the next girl find her name in a folder and find it empty?
"You're not working, Maren."
The voice came from the intercom on her desk. It was sharp. It was clear. It sounded like he was standing right behind her.
Maren jumped. She nearly knocked over the white orchid in its glass pot. She looked at the glass wall. Alaric was standing there. He wasn't on the phone anymore. He was staring straight at her. He didn't look angry. He just looked disappointed, the way a teacher looks at a student who didn't study.
"I was just... I was trying to find a file," Maren said. Her voice sounded thin in the big room. It felt like the high ceilings were swallowing her words.
"I can see your screen from here," Alaric said.
He walked out of his office. He didn't rush. He moved with a slow, heavy grace that made the room feel smaller with every step he took. He stopped at her desk. He reached over her shoulder, his arm a solid weight near her head, and closed the browser. His hand was large. It covered her entire view of the screen.
"There is nothing in the past that concerns you," he said.
"The files are empty, Alaric. Why are they empty? Where are the people who held this job before me?"
"Because they don't matter. The people who were here before failed. They didn't understand the rules. They didn't understand me." He leaned down. He was so close she could see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes and the perfect knot of his tie. "You're different. You’re smarter than they were. Don't waste that intelligence on ghosts. Ghosts can't help you, Maren. Only I can."
Maren looked at his hand on the desk. It was steady. It was the hand of a man who never lost anything, a man who decided what was remembered and what was forgotten.
"What happened to them?" she asked.
Alaric didn't answer right away. He picked up the orchid. He turned the pot slowly, examining the roots through the glass. "They left. They went back to their small, messy lives. And eventually, they forgot I ever existed. Just like the world forgot them. It’s a natural process. Some people aren't built for the height of this building."
He was lying. Maren could feel it in the way the air in the room seemed to vibrate. He didn't let people forget him. He didn't let things go. He held onto everything until it broke, and then he replaced the pieces.
"Get back to the spreadsheets, Maren. I need the numbers for the merger by noon. The data needs to be perfect."
He walked back into his office. He didn't look back. The glass door shut with a soft click that sounded like a final sentence.
Maren stared at the black screen of the laptop. She saw her reflection in the glass. She looked pale. She looked like a ghost herself. She realized then that she wasn't just a prisoner. She was a replacement. She was filling a hole that someone else had left behind, sitting in a chair that was still warm from a predecessor who had been deleted.
She started to type. She filled the cells with numbers. She made the columns straight. She did exactly what he wanted because she knew he was watching her heart rate on his own screen.
But her mind was shattered. She was thinking about the handwriting on the yellow paper. He likes the way you break.
She wasn't going to break. Not yet. The fear was there, but beneath it, she felt a flash of pure, hot rage. It was the first time she had felt anything other than terror in days. It felt good. It felt like fire in her veins.
She looked at Alaric through the glass. He was sitting at his desk, perfectly calm, reading a document. He thought he had wiped the files. He thought he had cleared the history and made the world start with her. But he had forgotten one thing. He had forgotten that she was still human. He had forgotten that she had memories of a world outside this glass box.
She wouldn't find the names on a computer. He was the master of the digital world. She would have to find them in the house. She would have to find the physical things he had missed—the things that couldn't be deleted with a keystroke.
The clock on the wall ticked. Each second felt like a drop of water hitting a stone. Maren worked until her eyes burned. She didn't look up when it was almost noon. She didn't look up when the other employees on the lower floors left for lunch.
She was waiting for the night. She was waiting for the moment he went to sleep and the penthouse grew quiet. She was waiting for the chance to look into the corners he thought were clean.
She had found a crack in the glass. Now, she was going to see how far it went. She looked at her wrist. The silver band was glowing green. It was happy. Her heart rate was steady. She was being a good girl.
Inside, she was already screaming.
- Writer
