Chapter One: Midnight Final

He meant to say the designer. Then he saw his name fading from the redundancy assessment. It was not ordinary ink bleaching. Invisible pressure erased each stroke. The table shifted upward, the second employee moving into the first row. Its borders closed neatly. No blank space remained. Gu Yan snatched up the sheet. His name was gone. “Give it back.” Bai Mi tilted her head. “You deleted me forty-six times. Every time, you called it work.” She raised one finger and swiped upward through the air. The Layers panel on his computer scrolled with her gesture. Three layers that had never existed flashed past: GU_YAN_EMPLOYEE_ID, GU_YAN_ACCESS, GU_YAN_EMAIL. All lay beneath her own. “Now,” she said, “this is work too.”