Kro hated what she was about to do.
She stood in her office with her phone already in hand, Ukraine's name on the screen, her thumb hovering over the call button while dread coiled tighter and tighter in her chest. Across from her, Sue sat at her desk, spreading the devastating news of Karina's death to every department in the company. They had managed, somehow, to calm each other enough to function. It was not peace. It was survival.
Kro pressed the call button.
She put the phone on speaker.
The ringing filled the office, clear and sharp in the otherwise heavy quiet. It was almost insulting, how ordinary it sounded.
As it rang, her thoughts turned again to the photograph she had found in Ukraine's house.
There was only one explanation that made sense, and she despised it.
He was a bug.
One of them.
Or perhaps he and Karina had been working together all along.
