Monday morning, Darren stood outside his old office building.
Axiom Technologies. The place that had fired him for "emotional volatility" and "cultural incompatibility" and all the other corporate euphemisms for "we didn't like your personality."
Now he was back, wearing a suit that cost more than his former monthly salary with a visitor badge that Liz had somehow procured and an agenda that would have made his HR department file charges.
"Remember," Liz said through the earpiece, "you're not here for revenge, you're here for practice, Corporate environments are target rich. Everyone's paranoid, competitive and insecure, all you have to do is give those feelings direction."
The lobby was exactly as he remembered: motivational posters, uncomfortable modern furniture, the receptionist who'd smiled at him every morning and was now looking at him with zero recognition.
"I'm here for a meeting with..." he checked the fake calendar invite Liz had created, "—Samantha Chen in Product Development."
The receptionist checked her system. "I don't see..."
"She might have put it under 'Brand Optimization Consultation.' We've been emailing about it for weeks."
A pause. Clicks. "Oh, here it is, third floor. I'll let her know you're here."
"Actually, I'm a few minutes early. Mind if I grab coffee first? I remember you guys have a great break room."
"Sure, down the hall, take a right."
Darren thanked her and headed for the break room, which was really just a glorified kitchen with a Nespresso machine and a passive aggressive note about cleaning your dishes.
Marcus from Accounting was there, dumping creamer into his coffee. He'd been one of the people who'd actively avoided eye contact during Darren's walk of shame, now he looked up and did a double take.
"Darren? I thought you—"
"Got fired? I did." Darren smiled easily. The suit was doing its work, making him seem unbothered, successful, like getting terminated had been the best thing that ever happened to him. "Best decision Axiom ever made for me, honestly. I'm consulting now, way better money, way better clients."
Marcus's tag shifted: [INADEQUACY: MILD] [$8.50]
"Oh. That's... great. Good for you."
"How are things here?" Darren asked, pouring his own coffee. "Still doing that thing where they track bathroom breaks in the productivity metrics?"
"They what?" Marcus blinked. "No, that's... we don't do that."
"Oh, maybe it was just my team." Darren shrugged. "Although, I heard from a friend still here that they're rolling it out company wide, some new Harmonia update, supposed to optimize personal time management."
This was a lie, complete fabrication. But Marcus's tag flickered:
[ANXIETY: MILD] [$12.25]
"I haven't heard anything about that," Marcus said, but his voice had lost its certainty.
"Probably just a rumor," Darren said easily. "You know how corporate gossip is. Although, come to think of it, my friend mentioned they're doing 'stealth performance reviews' now. Not telling people they're being evaluated, just collecting data in the background."
Another lie. Marcus's coffee sat forgotten in his hand.
[PARANOIA: EMERGING] [$18.50]
"Listen," Darren lowered his voice conspiratorially, "I'm not supposed to say this but since we used to work together... if you're thinking about jumping ship, now's the time. I've heard they're planning layoffs, nothing official, but the executives have been in a lot of closed door meetings."
"Layoffs?" Marcus's face paled. "They haven't said anything—"
"They never do until the day of. Remember Thompson? He found out he was fired when his badge stopped working." Darren paused. "Although maybe I'm wrong, maybe everything's fine, I'm just going off what I've heard."
[FEAR: MODERATE] [$28.75]
Darren finished his coffee. "Anyway, good seeing you, man. I should get to my meeting, tell everyone I said hi."
He left Marcus standing in the break room, staring into his coffee cup, mind racing with completely fabricated threats.
Over the next hour, Darren made his way through the office with surgical precision:
He told Sarah from Marketing that he'd heard the executive team was "concerned about her team's performance metrics."
He mentioned to Kevin from Engineering that "someone" had complained about his code quality in a management meeting.
He casually dropped to Amy from HR that there was supposedly an anonymous survey coming where people could report colleagues for "cultural misalignment."
Each conversation was brief, professional. Delivered with the concerned tone of someone trying to help.
And each one planted seeds of paranoia that would grow in the darkness of corporate uncertainty.
By the time he left, the office had a different energy. People were whispering in the break room. Someone was frantically updating their LinkedIn profile. Kevin was stress eating a bag of chips at his desk, staring at his screen like it might contain answers.
Their collective tags:
[PARANOIA: VARIOUS] [Total Yield: $347.88]
Darren stood in the parking lot and harvested all of it simultaneously. The cold was intense—multiple emotional streams converging, each one flavored with its own specific fears and insecurities—
—they're going to fire me I know it I should have been networking more—
—what did I do wrong who complained about my code it's not even bad—
—anonymous survey that's just code for witch hunt they're looking for reasons—
The scripts dissolved into golden rain.
DEPOSIT: $347.88
Darren leaned against Liz's car, breathing hard. The metabolic cost was significant—his hands were shaking, his heart racing, the emotional numbness that followed harvests was deeper now, like he'd carved out something vital.
The car door opened. Liz sat in the driver's seat, wearing sunglasses despite the overcast Seattle sky, looking pleased.
"Three hundred forty seven dollars for an hour of work," she said. "That's consultant rates, how ow does it feel?"
"Like I just poisoned the water supply," Darren said.
"You introduced valuable information into an information poor environment, some of it happened to be false but that's just... creative interpretation of possibilities." She pulled off her sunglasses, and her gold flecked eyes studied him. "You're getting good at this, the Analyst is taking over."
"These were my coworkers."
"These were people who watched you get fired and did nothing, they probably avoided your eyes. They let the system chew you up and spit you out without a single word of support." Liz started the car. "You didn't owe them honesty, you owed them exactly what they gave you: nothing."
Darren wanted to argue, wanted to say that revenge wasn't the same as justice, that making people paranoid wasn't equivalent to evening the scales.
But $347.88 sat in his account, and the math didn't care about moral equivalencies.
"One more practice session," Liz said. "Then you're ready for solo operations."
"What's the final test?"
"The hardest one." She smiled. "Being deliberately charming."
"WHAT..?"