Chapter 1 - The Conference Room Floor
Claire hit the carpet beside the conference table with a sound that made the room forget how to breathe.
One moment, she had been standing near the glass wall with a folder pressed against her ribs, trying to finish her quarterly risk report while the overhead lights buzzed softly above the polished table.
The next, her knees buckled.
Her shoulder struck the chair.
The folder slipped from her hand.
And she went down.
Around the table, people froze in pieces. A coffee cup tipped but did not fall. Someone gasped. Someone else said her name once, too softly to matter.
Martin Vale did not move toward her.
He stood near the head of the table in his dark suit, one hand still resting on the back of his chair, looking down at Claire as if she had dropped something embarrassing on his carpet instead of her own body.
Then he pointed at her.
“Leave her there,” he said. “She’s doing this for attention.”
The sentence stunned the room more than the collapse.
Claire lay on her side, one arm bent awkwardly beneath her, dark hair partly covering her face. Her navy blouse had wrinkled at the shoulder. Her breathing, if it was there at all, had become too faint for anyone standing to see.
Nathan Brooks moved first.
He shoved his chair back and dropped toward her.
Martin caught his shoulder.
Hard.
“Don’t,” Martin said.
Nathan looked up at him, confused. “What are you doing?”
“She pulls this when she’s cornered.”
Claire did not move.
That was what finally broke the spell.
Jenna, the youngest analyst in the room, grabbed her phone with shaking hands and dialed 911. Someone cursed under their breath. Another coworker backed toward the door as if distance could make responsibility smaller.
Nathan pulled free from Martin’s grip and fell to his knees beside Claire.
He touched two fingers near her neck.
Then his face changed.
“She isn’t breathing!” he shouted. “Get an ambulance now!”
The room erupted.
Not loudly.
Worse.
With that panicked corporate helplessness of people who know emergency protocols exist somewhere in a training portal but cannot remember which module taught them what to do with a dying person on beige carpet.
Martin stepped back.
Only one step.
But Claire would later remember that step more than anything else.
Not from memory.
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She remembered it from the video.
Because while everyone else was looking at Claire, Jenna had already begun recording.
