Badge Sweeps
Roland didn't remember deciding to move — one second he was frozen with his phone raised, the next he was in the stairwell, the service door easing shut behind him a half-breath before Doyle's heels reached the boardroom threshold.
He took the stairs two at a time down to twelve, lungs burning in a way they hadn't since he was forty, and nearly ran straight into Louis Tran wheeling a trash barrel out of the break room.
"Whoa — hey." Louis caught the mop cart before it clattered into the wall. "You training for a marathon or something?"
"Thought I heard something on fourteen." Roland's voice came out steadier than he felt.
Louis studied him a second too long — twelve years working nights together taught him to read Roland's face like a gauge. "You're sweating."
"Old pipes make old men sweat."
Louis didn't push, which was its own kind of kindness. He just said, "Elevator's slow tonight, take the stairs the rest of the way — security's doing badge sweeps for some audit thing," and rolled his barrel on down the hall.
*Badge sweeps.* Roland's stomach dropped, but he filed it away, finished his floors on autopilot, clocked out at eleven-fifty like every other night for thirty-one years, and drove home with the phone sitting on the passenger seat like it might go off.
His apartment was dark except for the porch light Elena used to leave on for him, which he still turned on out of habit four years after she was gone. He microwaved leftover rice he didn't eat and finally looked at his phone.
Three blurry photos of a spreadsheet. And one text from his daughter, sent at 9:14 that night while he'd been standing outside a lit-up boardroom he shouldn't have been listening to.
*Dad — insurance denied Eli's treatment again. Said his coverage is "under restructuring review." Can you call the benefits office tomorrow? I don't understand what that means.*
Roland read it twice. Then a third time, slower, the words *restructuring review* sitting next to *Project Anvil* in his head until they lined up into something that made his hands go cold.
They weren't planning to hurt the retirees someday.
They already had.