Story code: ST-001851
Part 4: Screen Share
The mahogany doors did not splinter this time; they simply exploded inward.
Tactical officers poured into the corner suite, a chaotic blur of black Kevlar and blinding white flashlight beams. “Get on the ground! Show me your hands!”
The adrenaline that had propelled Marcus across the county and through the barricade simply evaporated. The chemical static in his brain shifted from a roar to a crushing, physical weight. He didn’t raise his fists. He didn’t try to run. He just let go of the edge of the glass desk.
His knees hit the pristine white carpet first. Before he could lower his torso, a heavy body slammed into his back, driving all the air from his lungs in a sharp, violent hiss. His cheek bounced against the floorboards beneath the thin rug. Someone yanked his arms backward, wrenching his shoulders to the absolute limit of their sockets, and the freezing bite of steel handcuffs snapped tightly over his wrists.
“Suspect is secured! Clear the room!”
Marcus lay pinned under the weight of an officer’s knee. His heart hammered an erratic, terrifying rhythm against his ribs. The withdrawal was back in full force, turning his muscles to rigid, agonizing knots. He gasped for air, turning his head slightly to the side to avoid suffocating on the carpet.
From this angle, he had a clear view of the space beneath the desk. He could see the Director’s pristine white heels. They were completely still.
Above him, a tinny, metallic voice echoed through the office. It wasn’t coming from the police radios. It was coming from the sleek silver phone the Director had dropped on the glass surface earlier. The call hadn’t disconnected. The impact had knocked it onto speakerphone.
“Dr. Thorne?” the voice demanded, crisp and echoing with bureaucratic authority. “Dr. Thorne, what is going on there? We are still viewing your screen share.”
Marcus blinked, his blurry vision focusing on the massive curved monitor above the desk. The glowing green bar graph of the Q3 Federal Emergency Response dashboard was still dominating the display. But in the top right corner, right next to the glowing green indicator light of the built-in webcam, a small picture-in-picture window was open. It displayed a grid of three faces. Men and women in dark, conservative suits, sitting in a windowless briefing room.
Federal auditors.
Marcus let out a dry, rattling breath that might have been a laugh. The Director hadn’t just been admiring her handiwork when Marcus kicked the door in. She had been in the middle of her quarterly review. She had been actively presenting her perfect utilization metrics to the very people who authorized the performance bonuses.
“Dr. Thorne,” a second voice chimed in from the phone, this one sharp and alarmed. “Is that the raw data? Are those emergency evaluations marked as patient-requested?”
The white heels finally moved. The Director lunged forward, her knees hitting the floor just inches from Marcus’s face as she clawed desperately for the phone and the wireless mouse.
“It’s a mistake,” she stammered, her polished, clinical composure completely annihilated. Her hands were shaking so violently she knocked the mouse off the desk. It clattered to the carpet next to Marcus’s head. “The system-there was a glitch in the reclassification algorithm-”
“Do not disconnect this feed, Aris,” the first federal voice ordered, slicing through her panic. “Do not touch that terminal. We are locking the regional database from our end pending an immediate audit. If you close that window, it will be considered destruction of federal records.”
The Director froze. She stared down at the overturned wireless mouse, just inches from Marcus’s nose. Her chest heaved. The color had drained completely from her face, leaving her looking hollow and suddenly very old.
“Get him up,” an officer barked.
Rough hands grabbed Marcus by the armpits and hauled him to his feet. His legs felt like lead. The room spun wildly, the edges of his vision bleeding out into gray static. He swayed, completely reliant on the two tactical officers to keep him upright.
Vance was already in handcuffs near the bookcase, sobbing quietly, his ruined charcoal suit smeared with dried swamp mud.
Marcus looked back at the Director. She remained on her knees, staring blankly at the floor. The giant green bar graph above her was no longer a symbol of victory. It was a perfectly preserved, federally broadcast confession.
The officers dragged Marcus toward the shattered doorway. Every step sent a jolt of nauseating pain through his nervous system. He was going to jail. He was going to spend the next seventy-two hours in a concrete cell, sweating, violently ill, enduring a withdrawal that would tear his mind and body apart. He had no home to return to, no car, and no medication.
But as they hauled him down the executive hallway, away from the frigid air conditioning and out toward the sweltering, ruined coast, the crushing panic in his chest finally eased.
March was a long way away. But the algorithm was dead.