2019 Short Stories
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03 – Screen Saver
After a few more reassurances from the agent, Jones had disappeared, the webcam feed replaced with what seemed to be a slideshow stream straight out of his memes folder. She watched the volley of pictures, grateful at his attempt to distract her. But it was barely working. There was only so much that cute pictures of kittens could do to combat the fact that she was one shitty hiding space away from being hogtied and shipped off to be sold to someone who – at best – would kill her before eating her. She looked down at her phone and tapped her thumb to keep the screen alive. The chat…
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02 – Screen Saver
As tempting as it was to just head home from the new office, management was always less suspicious of her actions when they saw her at least a few times a day. She’d successfully managed to not do any work for three days, simply by walking past Manager Tom’s office a few times a day with a LAN cable around her neck. She called for a rideshare as she packed her laptop and accessories, then headed for the lift, functional, but still covered in plastic as befitted the work-in-progress building. The car pulled into the side street at the same time as she left the service exit, and she waved…
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01 – Screen Saver
Five Years Before Dorian Knocks The new office was shiny. So shiny. Oh so shiny. It was such a shame that it would be three months before they could actually move into it. Screen flipped to a fresh page of her notebook, wrote down the port numbers, then checked the numbers against the assumed map of the new office layout. It would have been much, much preferred if the map had been finished, but actually signing off on complete work was something that the managers seemed to be almost allergic to. Consequently, the first week in the new office was going to entail a lot of rework, which somehow, they…
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Grit and Dust
Click to jump straight to the chapter. Darren’s Agency had an inarguably homey feel to it – and despite speculation from some of her friends, it had nothing to do with growing up in and around the building. Magnolia walked past the empty reception desk – it was only staffed until five in the evening, and even then, it was mostly for show – the out-of-the-way Outpost Agency maybe got one or two unexpected walk-ins per week. The public area – the reception desk and a few interview rooms – were the only parts of the Agency that bore any resemblance to the other satellite agencies that she’d seen, and…
