Beneath it, he wrote in Sharpie:
Elias felt a jolt of kinship. “The Cross-Functional Synergy Tracker,” he whispered. hidden unemployment
“What do you actually do ?” Elias asked. Beneath it, he wrote in Sharpie: Elias felt
The young man adjusted his glasses. “That’s exactly why. Your ‘Cross-Functional Synergy Tracker’ is invisible. It doesn’t appear in any KPI report. It has no cost center. Firing you would require paperwork that doesn’t exist. You’re not a liability, Mr. Thorne. You’re a null value. You can’t delete a null value without breaking the database.” The young man adjusted his glasses
He looked over at Cara. She was staring at her word cloud. Their eyes met. And for the first time, Elias saw not just a ghost, but a prisoner.
Panic. Elias’s heart hammered. This is it. The reckoning.
He discovered the others by accident. During a fire drill, he noticed a woman named Cara from “Strategic Initiatives” standing alone by the emergency stairwell, not talking to anyone. She had the same hollow, well-caffeinated look in her eyes. They started chatting.