Another day.

She knew she must eat—yet her breakfast lay cooling on the marble benchtop, untouched.

She should read, watch the television, listen to the radio. Although denied a phone or the internet or any means of communication with the outside world, she must use the sources of information available to her, must stay engaged, if she was to keep her crumbling mind from fracturing into a million fragments—yet the room was silent.

She must rest if she was to continue to fight. She must think if she was to find a way out. She must breathe—in and out, one breath after another—if she was to stay alive, if she was to continue to exist, to survive this day, and then another day and then another, if she was to struggle and fight and resist until the moment came, whether it be tomorrow or in a year or in a decade, the moment when this nightmare would end.

So—as she had done before, every day since she had been taken—starting with a deep breath, she gathered the tattered remnants of her resolve...

And she did.

"Nick, my man. How goes the report?"

Nick blinked at the indistinct figure standing at the entrance to his cubicle, silhouetted against the dim light of the night-time office. He thought Jayden had long since gone home. Arranging his features into a smile, he gave a thumbs up.

"Awesome," replied his team-leader, returning the gesture. "Shoot me through a copy and I'll give it a once-over first thing, before sending it up to the big boys."

Nick nodded, hoping that would be that, but when Jayden seemed disinclined to leave, he added a second thumb.

"Yeah, I knew I could rely on the old Nickster." Jayden gave his bristled chin a speculative stroke. "Hey, listen—there's something I need to talk to you about. While we've got the place to ourselves, I thought we might have a quick chat. Sound good?"

Given chats were one of Nick's least favourite things, it sounded far from good. But as the question was no doubt rhetorical, he nodded again, heart sinking. Even more so when Jayden retrieved a chair from the adjoining cubicle and took a seat opposite him. Sitting did not gel with "quick".

The tanned features took on a serious cast. "Listen, bro. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just gonna come right out with it. We're letting you go."

So, pretty quick, after all. Nick stared at him, dumbstruck—even more than usual. He'd half-expected a reprimand; that perhaps he'd made some technical error, missed something on a report, or even just forgotten to refill the coffee machine one too many times. That he might be looking at a role review or reassignment. But to be fired? It didn't make any sense. His work was good, and he knew it.

His stunned mind struggled to process the injustice of this development—the injustice, and its seismic, life-altering magnitude. And as it did so, he found his gaze drawn—without conscious volition—to the window closest to his cubicle. To the vista that had, in times of stress, become his mental refuge over these past few months.

To the oasis. The island of tranquillity, nestled away among the bustle and grime and endless clamour of the city. As blue as the sky Nick never seemed to see anymore, up beyond the steel and the concrete and the haze. Sparkling, pristine.

And, so far as he could tell, unused.

No svelte, swim suited figures ever disturbed those still waters. No tanned bodies disrupted the rank of deckchairs, their white perfection arrayed in gleaming defiance of their drab surrounds.

In the nine months since Nick had started at LibreTec, in the thirty-nine weeks and two days since he'd been assigned to the not-quite corner cubicle on the thirty-seventh floor, eight cubicles down from the coffee machine and six cubicles across from the first of the real offices, the ones with walls that reached the ceiling and actual doorways with actual doors, in the two hundred and seventy-five days since his work-glazed eyes were first drawn to the startling incongruity of the swimming pool, shimmering in sapphire-hued allure on the rooftop of the adjoining building, he'd never seen so much as a pool-boy, nor even a gardener to tend the immaculate greenery that so strikingly framed the blue.

In time, it had become his oasis. His sanctuary, if only by proxy. After all, it didn't seem to be anybody else's. Yes, he could only see it through the sizeable gap in the corner-seam of his cubicle, but that did nothing to lessen his sense of possession.

Nor the pleasure of his discovery, as he'd worked long into this late-summer evening, that night would not deprive him of his illicit, illusory getaway. Aglow with some sort of internal illumination, ethereal and other-worldly, the cool-blue oblong floated in jewel-like splendour among the muted greys, the murky blacks and the garish neon of the city after dark.

"Hello?" Jayden's voice jerked him from his reverie. "Earth to Nick. Dude, did you hear what I said?"

He turned hollow eyes back to his boss. His ex-boss now, it seemed. "Wh-why?"

Leaning back in his chair, Jayden crossed his denim-clad legs, put his hands behind his head, and gave Nick a long look. He sighed.

"Look, I could sugar-coat it, but I figure since we're both grownups, I'm just gonna cut straight to the chase. You wanna know why we're letting you go? Frankly, bro—it's 'cause you're a pussy."

Even if he'd wanted to, Nick hadn't the first clue how to respond to that.

"Take today, for example," continued Jayden. "The Corriston thing was a shitty, pain-in-the-ass job. I knew it, you knew it, everyone here knew it. But you were the only one without the balls to worm your way out of it."

Nick couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. He was being fired for not dodging work? Just that afternoon, when Jayden had announced the Corriston proposal needed a last-minute rewrite, each and every one of Nick's teammates had immediately voiced their excuses, their apologies, their rock-solid, pre-booked plans, completely unable to be changed.

Everyone but Nick. It had been so much easier to stay silent. Even though he actually had plans—real ones, unlike half the other shifty-eyed apologists standing around him. He could, with perfect honesty, have piped up and explained he had a date, a dinner reservation, the whole shebang. With a girl, even.

But he hadn't. And the saddest thing? If he was being honest with himself, he'd been thankful for the excuse to bail out. Bonnie seemed lovely, or at least her profile did, but Nick had been through enough dating app dinners by now to know how the night would have ended up. Bashing the kinks out of a mind-numbing report wasn't so bad compared to the awkward silences, halting conversation and pained relief of both parties once the whole sorry debacle was over.

It would be fair to say Nick's city adventure, his bold step into a brave, new world, had not been a great success. But while neither a non-existent social life nor doormat status among his co-workers had much to recommend them from an enjoyment point of view, they'd at least been conducive to getting through a truckload of work. And therefore, he'd consoled himself, to boosting his career prospects.

As it turned out—not so much.

"We don't need spineless yes-men, dude." Warming to his subject, Jayden leaned forward, presumably to give Nick the full benefit of his earnest, man-scaped expression. "That's just not how we roll here at LibreTec. What we need are go-getters, think-outside-the-boxers, guys and girls who are agile, quick on their feet, who duck and weave and stay on their toes. And Nick, newsflash—that ain't you. Sure, your work's fine, but it ain't just about the work, dude. Work's great and all, but you also gots to have the 'tude."

"B-b-b—"

"See, there you go again. Perfect example. I just fired your sorry ass, and you've still got nothing to say. Oh, I know all about your issues, it's right there in your file. But frankly, bro—so what? So you've got your problems. You think the rest of us don't? Look at me." He gave his textured, immaculate hair a loving pat—it barely moved. "Started losing my hair at seventeen. Dark times, my man, dark. But did I let it hold me back? Not a chance. Turns out they got a pill for that. I found the solution to my problem, Nick. I adapted and I overcame. That's what you need to do. You need to take this little setback as a lesson and go out there and find your solution. Man up and find your pill, bro."

His pill? Nick thought back on the numberless therapists he'd seen. The hours of consultations, the endless sessions of cognitive behaviour therapy, the countless medications and techniques he'd tried over the years. The work he'd put in, trying to get better. To reach the level of functionality where he could leave the house, hold down a job, even (kind of) socialise—where he could live at least the approximation of something approaching a normal life.

He had gotten better. He was still getting better. And the irony? For all his improvement, he had neither the words nor the will to explain any of this to the smug, coiffured asswipe who'd just fired him for being good at his job.

Taking silence for acceptance, Jayden stood and gave his ex-subordinate a hearty slap on the back. "Good talk, bro." Try as he might, Nick could not detect the tiniest hint of sarcasm. "Listen, let's spare everyone all the goodbye stuff, huh? Clear your stuff out tonight, and we can all make a fresh start tomorrow. Later, man."

Numb, Nick watched him walk away. Motionless, he sat and let the enormity sink in.

It was over. His determined—his desperate—attempt to throw off the shackles of his own limitations, to forge a life of his own, away from the secure but suffocating safety of his hometown, his parents, his therapists and everything else that had shepherded and protected him throughout the challenges of his formative years—all of it, 100% over.

He just didn't have the reserves or the courage to do it all again. Navigating the application and interview process for this job, finding a place to live, putting in place all the various bits and pieces required to get by on his own—dealing with strangers, over and over, day after day—had taken everything he had.

His rent was paid up for a couple of weeks and with the little he'd saved he could stick it out for a few more, but what was the point? He was done. He'd tried and he'd failed. It was back to Nowheresville for the nobody that was Nick Devine.

He gathered his things, putting them in an archive box. It didn't take long; the accumulated detritus of nine months of work didn't amount to much. With a last, lingering glance at the pool, he turned and left his cubicle, the little bland box that was to have been the launching pad for his brilliant career but had instead proven to be nothing more than a beige monument to his inadequacies.

Standing in the lift, box under one arm, he hesitated with his finger over the 'G' button. Pressing that button would be the first step. Pressing that button meant returning to his empty, soon-to-be-emptier soon-to-be-ex-apartment, and it meant calling his parents, with all the stumbling explanations and sympathetic, well-meaning condolences that would entail. It meant stress and stammering and the unravelling of the tenuous new life he'd striven so hard to build. And while that life could hardly be called a raging success, it was still...his. Created on his terms, crafted from his own abilities, owing nothing to nobody. Modest as it was, he'd been proud of it.

And now it was gone.

His finger moved up. And with firm, deliberate pressure, pressed the button for the top floor.