Story code: ST-001448
Part 4: Market Dynamics
The silence in the ballroom shattered the moment Sterling waved his trembling hand. Two massive private security guards in dark suits closed the distance between the perimeter of the room and the center of the floor. Mateo didn’t fight them. When their heavy hands clamped onto his shoulders, he let his weight go slack, his exhausted body offering zero physical resistance.
He was dragged backward through the sea of horrified wealth. He kept his eyes locked on the podium. Sterling was already leaning over the lucite stand, his microphone muted, whispering frantically to the state senator nearest to him. The senator was pulling away, refusing to make eye contact, his expression a tight mask of political self-preservation.
They hauled Mateo through the grand foyer, his scuffed work boots dragging over imported Persian rugs, and shoved him out the massive oak front doors. The crisp night air hit him again as they marched him down the long, sweeping driveway, away from the warmth of the estate.
“Keep walking,” one of the guards grunted, giving Mateo a final, violent shove that sent him stumbling through the wrought-iron gates.
Mateo hit the asphalt hard, scraping the heels of his palms. The heavy gates clicked shut behind him, an electronic lock engaging with a heavy, definitive thud.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at the canopy of manicured oak trees and the smog-filtered stars. His heart was hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against his ribs. The pure, concentrated sugar of the grenadine syrup was surging through his veins. It had saved his brain from shutting down, but it was a blunt instrument. Without insulin to unlock his cells and process the massive influx of glucose, his blood sugar was going to skyrocket into dangerous hyperglycemia. He was safe from immediate death, but in a few hours, the severe dehydration and ketoacidosis would begin. He had merely traded a rapid demise for a slow, agonizing one.
He sat up, leaning his back against the stone pillar of the estate’s outer wall, and pulled his knees to his chest. His black catering apron was torn, his white shirt underneath ruined with dirt, sweat, and red syrup. He reached into his pocket. His fingers brushed the plastic barrel of his empty syringe.
No job. No paycheck on Thursday. No insulin.
The stark, terrifying mathematics of his life settled heavily over him. Sterling was currently inside, doing damage control. The lobbyist would threaten the catering company, offer a massive campaign donation to the senators, and spin Mateo as a deranged, disgruntled addict who hallucinated the entire kitchen encounter. By morning, the narrative would be sterilized. Sterling would go right back to advocating for the very policies that priced Mateo out of existence.
Mateo leaned his head back against the cold stone. A bitter laugh scraped his raw throat. He wasn’t going to die quietly on the curb so a lobbyist could maintain his pristine optics.
He dug his phone out of his back pocket. The screen was cracked from his earlier fall in the kitchen, a jagged spiderweb obscuring the bottom corner. The battery icon glowed a warning red at fourteen percent.
He opened a social media app. He didn’t bother typing out a text post. He switched it to video mode and reversed the camera.
The screen reflected his battered state. He looked exactly like the casualty of a silent war. His face was ghostly pale, his eyes heavily sunken, and the corners of his mouth were still stained with the dark red grenadine that looked entirely too much like dried blood.
He pressed record.
“My name is Mateo,” he said, his voice a hoarse, grating rasp. “I’m a Type 1 Diabetic. I just got thrown out of Richard Sterling’s estate.”
He coughed, his chest burning with the effort, but he forced himself to look directly into the camera lens.
“I was working his catering line. I didn’t have enough insulin to cover my shift because it costs over three hundred dollars a vial, and Sterling’s lobbying firm makes sure it stays that way. I collapsed. I went into severe hypoglycemic shock.”
Mateo held up the empty syringe, the plastic barrel catching the amber glow of the streetlamp above.
“Sterling found me paralyzed on his kitchen floor. He assumed I was a junkie. He didn’t call 911 because he didn’t want the bad press while hosting a fundraiser for three state senators. He ordered his manager to drag me out to the alley and dump my body off his property.”
He paused, taking a shallow, ragged breath. The sticky sweetness of the cherry syrup coated his teeth, making his stomach churn.
“He stood there with a drink in his hand and told them to drag me away, just so he could go back to telling politicians that capping my medication at thirty dollars would ruin the economy. He is willing to let us die on his floor. I just wanted everyone to see what his market dynamics actually look like in practice.”
Mateo stopped the recording. He didn’t add filters. He didn’t edit the rasp out of his voice or wipe the dirt from his face. He tagged Richard Sterling’s official firm account. He tagged the three senators he had seen sitting at the head table. Then, he tagged every local news station in the city.
His thumb hovered over the cracked glass. His hands were shaking again, this time from the chaotic spike of unregulated sugar thick in his blood. He still had no idea how he was going to get his next vial. He still had no idea how he was going to pay his rent.
But as he hit ‘Post’ and watched the blue upload bar fill across the top of his screen, the suffocating helplessness that had dominated his life for the past year momentarily broke.
The video uploaded. A small notification chimed in the quiet night air.
Mateo pocketed his phone and forced himself to stand up. He swayed slightly, gripping the stone wall for balance. The walk down the hill to the nearest county emergency room would take an hour, and he would be slapped with medical debt he could never repay. But as he turned his back on the gated fortress and began the long, slow descent toward the city lights below, he knew he wasn’t the only one who was going to pay a heavy price tonight.