Story code: ST-001909
Part 3: The Quota
Another deafening crack echoed in the cramped space as a massive, unseen weight slammed against the exterior of the breakroom door. The top brass hinge shrieked, tearing half an inch out of the cinderblock frame. Gray plaster dust rained down on Mateo’s shoulders, sticking to his sweaty neck.
Mateo did not wait to see what was coming through the splintering wood. He spun away from the vending machine, his eyes scanning the sickly pale shadows for anything remotely lethal. He lunged toward the narrow gap between the mop sink and the back wall, his hands frantically searching in the dark until they closed around the heavy, industrial aluminum handle of a floor squeegee.
He jammed the rubber blade under his heavy clog and pulled back violently. The thick metal snapped with a sharp crack, leaving him holding a jagged aluminum spear.
He whirled around, leveling the makeshift weapon directly at Brenda’s chest.
“Call them off!” Mateo roared, the veins in his neck bulging. The survival instincts forged by years of looking over his shoulder, of working in the shadows, finally boiled over into pure, unchecked rage. “Whatever cartel you owe, whatever corporate fixers you brought in-call them off or I swear to God I will go right through you!”
But the woman pressed against the far wall was no longer the ice-cold, ruthless regional director who had marched him off the hot line. Her intimidating posture had completely collapsed. The terrifying corporate smile was gone. In the pale, flickering glow of the vending machine, Mateo saw a terrified, trembling girl who looked barely twenty-five years old.
She was crying. Real, ragged sobs that heaved her chest under the pristine silk blouse. Her hands shook so violently she could barely keep them raised.
Brenda frantically dug her hands into the waistband of her tailored slacks. “I can’t!” she shrieked, her authoritative pitch dissolving entirely into a frantic, youthful panic. “I don’t know what that is!”
Her hand jerked upward from her hip. A heavy, matte-black object caught the ambient light from the snack machine.
Mateo froze, the jagged tip of the aluminum spear dipping slightly toward the linoleum.
It was a standard-issue Glock 19. And right beside it, clipped to a leather holster she had just dragged from beneath her blouse, was a heavy silver shield. Department of Homeland Security. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The sweltering heat of the breakroom vanished, replaced by an absolute, freezing dread. The buzzing of the broken fluorescent fixture seemed to amplify in Mateo’s ears, drowning out the sounds of the kitchen slaughter for one agonizing second.
“You’re not human resources,” Mateo whispered, his voice entirely numb.
“I’m a probationary agent,” she sobbed, holding the heavy pistol with both hands. The barrel shook wildly as she aimed it at the splintering door, her finger trembling near the trigger guard. “I’m a trainee. I just needed one apprehension. Just one to hit my quarterly field quota so I don’t wash out.”
Mateo stared at the silver badge, the disparate, terrifying pieces of the last month suddenly colliding in his mind. The coldness of the management. The mechanical cruelty. It wasn’t just standard corporate greed; it was a highly organized, federal trap.
“The prep cook last Tuesday,” Mateo said, stepping forward, ignoring the gun pointed in his general direction. “The dishwashers last month. You didn’t fire them for taking long breaks.”
“Corporate set it up!” Brenda cried, wiping a streak of ruined mascara and sweat from her cheek with her shoulder. She kept the gun rigidly leveled at the door as another brutal impact rattled the hinges. “The real HR directors are in Chicago! They give us a list of undocumented workers who are about to hit their six-month retention threshold.”
Mateo’s stomach plummeted into a terrifying abyss. This Friday was his six-month anniversary at the restaurant. He was strictly cash-in-envelope, but the kitchen manager had promised him a five-hundred-dollar retention bonus at the end of the week. He had been planning to wire the entire envelope to his sister in Oaxaca.
“Corporate HR flags the bonuses as pending on their shadow ledger,” Brenda babbled, words spilling out in a desperate confession. “Then they send me in with that stupid script! They told me to use the ‘synergy pause’ to isolate you in the breakroom. It prevents a panic on the kitchen floor, and it keeps the dining room completely unaware. Corporate avoids paying out the cash bonuses, and I get my quota arrest without having to run you down in an alley! It was just supposed to be a quiet hand-off!”
A jagged fissure violently ripped down the center of the solid wood door. The distorted, skipping voice bled through the widening crack, the volume impossibly loud, drowning out the roaring exhaust hoods of the kitchen.
*”Immediate… undocumented… session.”*
Mateo’s grip tightened on the broken aluminum pole. He looked from the shattered door to the weeping rookie agent. She had sold his freedom for a probationary performance review. The restaurant had sold him to a federal agency just to save five hundred dollars.
“Where is your backup?” Mateo demanded, stepping closer to her, his fear overridden by a surging, absolute disgust. “Where is the extraction van?”
“They were supposed to come through the alley!” she wailed, her eyes wide with animal terror as she stared at the bulging doorframe. “That was the buzzer! The extraction team was supposed to breach the back door! But the buzzer stopped! They aren’t answering their radios!”
*”Foster… cross-cultural… dialogue.”*
The voice outside was mechanically reciting the exact corporate script Brenda had just used on him. Word for word.
Mateo watched in horror as the heavy brass doorknob sheered completely off its internal rod. The metal cylinder hit the linoleum with a heavy thud and rolled slowly to a stop against his grease-stained clogs.
“That’s not ICE out there,” Mateo said softly, backing away from the door.
Brenda shook her head frantically, her knuckles turning bone-white around the grip of the Glock. “It has to be! They just… they brought heavy breaching gear!”
“It’s repeating your script, Brenda,” Mateo hissed, stepping out of the direct line of the doorway. “Corporate sent you a script to trap me. What did they send to trap you?”
Before the rookie agent could answer, a massive, jagged mechanical claw punched straight through the center of the wooden door, spraying deadly splinters across the small room and violently seizing the steel deadbolt from the outside.