Page 24 of Filthy Little Fix

I glance at the time. My sick leave is still active.

I ignore it. It rings again. And again.

With a sigh that's more annoyance than exhaustion, I finally answer.

"Yeah, Chad? You know I'm dying of a rare tropical disease, right?" I don't care to pretend my sick leave is real. Chad can't reason for shit about anything that doesn't involve his own name and five compliments anyway.

"Leo, my champ!" Chad's voice punches through the speaker, far too cheerful and loud for a man dealing with anything. "So glad you picked up! Look, I know you're... indisposed, but we've got a bit of a pickle here."

A "pickle." Chad's pickles usually involve him forgetting a semicolon or leaving a fucking bracket open. "What is it, Chad?"

"The internal server, buddy. It's... well, it's not playing nice. We've got some data corruption, and the system's just kinda...frozen. Nicole's been trying everything, but you know how she gets." He chuckles, a guilty and annoying sound. "She thinks it's my fault!"

It probably is.

"Did you check if the server's plugged, Chad?," I mutter flatly.

"That's what I thought too! But I checked! Even got Nicole to check! And... it's plugged in! That's why it's a pickle!" His voice is bubbling with his own misplaced sense of accomplishment for checking a plug. "And we need it for the Q3 financial reports. Total standstill, champ. No one else can figure it out."

I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. Chad is useless. I wonder all the time how he even managed to rise to the manager role. I wonder, in fact, howallof my coworkers got the job to begin with.

"Fine. What do you want me to do?"

"Can you... swing by the office? Just for a bit? You're the only one who understands the... the server codes." He recognizes it too. No one knows shit about what they're doing. "I'll make it worth your while. Pizza? My treat!"

Pizza. As if cheap, greasy pizza would compensate for having to breathe the same air as Chad. The idea of going back to that gray cubicle was bland, tasteless. A pathetic excuse of a manager was dragging back the monotony of my daily existence that I had just escaped.

"Fine, Chad," I say. "I'll be there."

"My champ! Knew I could count on you! Hurry up, okay?"

He hangs up before I retort.

I toss the phone onto the desk. The sheer idiocy of my day job. To fix a stupid server.

Chad's code is a monstrosity. He probably tried to implement some "innovative" new feature he saw on a LinkedIn post, then forgot to close a loop or declared a variable inside a conditionalstatement instead of globally. Or, worse, he plugged an old USB drive from his personal collection into the main server and infected it with some ancient, forgotten virus from the early 2000s. That would be just like him, to use the company server for his personal shirtless photos.

I stand up, grabbing a hoodie from the back of my chair. My body still aches.

The walk to the subway is a blur of gray concrete and droning city noise. I hate it. I hate the mundane faces, the predictable movements, the suffocating normalcy. I notice strangers looking at me curiously, even worriedly, and I only understand when I see my reflection in the grimy windows: the dark circles under my eyes, and the bruises. A blossoming mark on my jaw, another faint one on my cheekbone, a crooked black and blue nose, and a fresh cut on my lower lip. Dante.

I reach the office building, a nondescript glass and steel tower. Inside, the lobby is a hive of identical drones in business casual. I head for the turnstiles, the kind with facial recognition cameras that scan your face and beep you through.

I place my face in front of the scanner. It whirrs.

ACCESS DENIED

What the fuck? My ID badge is still valid. I try again.

ACCESS DENIED

My patience, already thin, begins to fray. I glare at the camera. Is it the angle? The lighting? Or…

The fucking bruises.Of course. My face isn't registering correctly. The system probably flagged me as an unrecognized or, worse, a damaged employee.

With a growl of irritation, I turn towards the reception desk. Brenda, a woman whose smile was as fake as her blonde highlights, looks up.

"Good morning, sir! Can I help you?" Her voice is saccharine sweet.