Story code: ST-001705
Part 2: Terminal Velocity
Maya’s fingers slammed into Richard’s wrist, her blunt nails digging into the starched cuff of his shirt. The sheer audacity of the contact sent a shockwave through the room. Unpaid interns did not touch executive managing directors. They certainly did not wrestle them over synthetic leather bags.
Richard recoiled as if she had burned him, yanking his arm back with a sharp hiss. “Have you lost your mind?”
But his sudden retreat threw Maya off balance. Her shaking arms couldn’t support her own weight, let alone the momentum of her lunge. She pitched sideways out of the ergonomic mesh chair, her shoulder colliding violently with the solid mahogany edge of the table. The tote bag went with her. It hit the carpeted floor upside down, the metal zipper bursting open upon impact.
The buzzing was no longer muffled. It shrieked into the sterile boardroom air, an erratic, high-pitched mechanical wail that demanded immediate attention.
Scattered across the gray carpet were her lifelines. A dozen small, square foil-wrapped tabs spilled from the side pocket, shimmering under the harsh fluorescent lights. And sitting in the center of the debris, dragged halfway out of the bag by its connecting tether, was the device. It was a heavy, industrial-looking plastic block with a cracked digital interface. A thin, translucent tubing snaked out from the top of the block, trailing directly up into the hem of Maya’s silk blouse, anchoring somewhere against her abdomen.
Richard stared at the scattered mess, the color draining from his face before rushing back in a furious, mottled red. He took a cautious step backward, his eyes darting from the wire disappearing into her clothes to the foil squares on the floor.
“What in God’s name is this?” Richard demanded, his voice dropping an octave into a register of pure, litigious threat. “Is this a recording device? Are you stealing proprietary data? Or is this some sort of illicit drug paraphernalia?”
Maya collapsed onto her hands and knees. The plush corporate carpet felt like coarse sandpaper against her bare palms. The impact with the table had sent a fresh wave of nausea crashing over her, and the gray fuzz at the edge of her vision was rapidly shrinking her world into a narrow, dark tunnel. Her brain was screaming for fuel, the electrical impulses in her muscles misfiring so badly that she couldn’t coordinate her limbs to stand back up. The room was spinning, the ceiling tiles melting into the floorboards.
She ignored Richard. She had to. Survival was a primal instinct that overrode corporate hierarchy and the fear of crushing student debt. Her trembling right hand reached out toward the nearest foil square. Just one tab. If she could just tear open one tab and get the chalky, life-saving paste onto her gums, she could buy herself fifteen minutes of consciousness. It was enough time to string words together. Enough time to explain.
Before her fingertips could brush the shiny wrapper, a polished leather wingtip shoe slammed down on top of it.
Maya gasped, her heavy neck snapping up. Richard stood over her, his foot planted firmly on the tab. He ground his heel down with deliberate force, crushing the brittle contents into powder beneath the carpet fibers.
“I asked you a question, Maya,” Richard snapped. “You smuggle contraband into my boardroom, you physically assault me, and now you’re crawling on the floor like a feral animal. Explain this. Right now. Or I am calling the police.”
“P-please,” Maya stammered. Her tongue felt massive, a useless, dry slab of meat in a mouth completely devoid of saliva. The word came out slurred, thick, and utterly unrecognizable. “Need… the…”
“You need to get up, that’s what you need to do,” Richard interrupted, misinterpreting her slurred speech as extreme intoxication. His lip curled in profound disgust. “This is exactly the depravity Carter warned me about with your university cohort. Bringing narcotics into a Fortune 500 firm. Hooked up to some sort of… vaporizer? You are a colossal liability.”
Maya reached for another tab, but her depth perception was entirely gone. Her hand swiped helplessly at empty air. The device on the floor let out a new, terrifying sound. The continuous whine stuttered, choking out a frantic, high-pitched double-beep. *Beep-beep. Beep-beep.*
It was the occlusion alarm. When the bag dropped, the violent tug on the tubing had ripped the insertion needle halfway out of her skin. She could feel the warm, damp spread of blood soaking into the waistband of her skirt. The lifeline was severed. The synthetic hormone keeping her organs functioning was pooling uselessly against her skin instead of entering her bloodstream. The decay was no longer just accelerating; it had reached terminal velocity.
“Look at you,” Richard said, pulling his sleek smartphone from his breast pocket. “You can’t even string a sentence together. You’re sweating like a junkie. It’s pathetic. I am doing you a favor by ending this before you ruin a client presentation and embarrass this firm.”
“Richard,” Maya breathed, her voice a reedy, desperate whisper. She managed to grab a foil tab from the periphery of the pile. Her fingers were completely numb, feeling like heavy, frozen blocks of wood. She clawed frantically at the foil, but she didn’t have the fine motor skills required to tear the seal.
“Don’t speak to me,” Richard said, unlocking his phone with a sharp tap. He turned his back to her, creating an impenetrable wall of bespoke tailoring, and walked toward the heavy oak doors of the boardroom. He pressed the phone to his ear. “Yes, Security? This is Richard Sterling in the executive suite. I need two guards up here immediately. I have an intern experiencing a severe… substance episode. Bring a box for her things. She is a physical threat to company property.”
Maya brought the foil tab to her mouth, trying to tear it with her teeth, but her jaw muscles were locking tight. The gray tunnel of her vision turned completely black at the edges, closing in on the center. The *beep-beep* of the disconnected device echoed in her ears, a relentless metronome counting down the final seconds of her consciousness. She slumped heavily against the sturdy base of the conference table, the sealed tab slipping from her lifeless fingers and rolling out of reach.