Chapter 2

The office swarmed with activity, everyone motivated to move by their sense of self importance. They changed all the lighting for LED, but it didn't feel like any different kind of light. Ezra sat at his desk staring at a claim he already knew he'd deny.

The language was vague. Water damage, maybe fire. The policyholder hadn't followed protocol, hadn't filled out the forms in time, hadn't submitted proper evidence. A dozen reasons to deny it. He dropped down a menu, selected the red button, and gave the veri-sign permission to use his name.

He didn't feel like a man making decisions. He felt like a filter.

Somewhere down the hall, someone laughed. Too loudly, too sharply. Ezra's head flinched, but his hand stayed steadily moving through the screen.

The inbox never ran out of claims. No sooner would he make progress on the que, and a new batch would arrive. More zip files, more stories already halfway forgotten.

He rubbed the side of his face, thumb running along the line of his jaw. Did he forget to shave, he wondered.

Mornings in the office, one file after another, denying as often as possible. His morning pace was moving fine, until the phone rang.

He let it buzz twice before picking up. Phone calls are never good, he thought, as the acid from his cheap gas station breakfast sandwich began to bubble.

"Claims department," he swallowed, "Ezra speaking."

Silence.

Then a breath. Not static, not noise—just a breath. Wet around the edges.

"You remember me?"

"I'm sorry, who am I speaking to?"

"You fucked me," the voice said, low and level. "You wrote me off like it didn't matter. Like I didn't matter."

Ezra's eyes dropped to the desk, looking for something to write with and something to write on. A post-it and a red felt pen. "Do you have a policy number so I can look you up?"

"I'm not calling for money," the voice continued. "I just want you to know. I think about you. I think about what you did."

A pause. Long enough for Ezra to hear his own heartbeat in the phone line.

"Didn't take much, did it? Just a couple missed forms, and you got to play god. I filled out the ones she told me to"

"I'm sorry sir but intake isn't my department."

"Not your department? This isn't Ezra Calloway at 160 Park Hill Terrace Apartments?"

Ezra's mouth felt dry. "Who is this?"

But the line was already dead.

He didn't move for what felt like forever. The sound lingered in his ear—almost a hiss, like tinnitus or a whisper he wasn't able to decipher.

The office carried on. Phones rang, chairs creaked, someone was laughing again. Ezra just sat there, staring, at the pen pressed against the paper. The red started to bleed out onto the paper, a soft bruise of ink.

Eventually, he reached for the keyboard.

The claim, he cross referenced the phone number from his caller ID. Kemp, two months ago. Could have been two years for all he could remember. Fire damage, incomplete submission, processed through standard denial. Female policyholder. No notes on appeal. Just one highlighted line from an adjuster's summary: "Partner on-site at time of fire, not insured." No name listed.

Ezra scrolled and scrolled. Nothing strange in the words, but something about the spacing, the shape of the form, felt…off. Like it was wearing its normalcy too neatly.

He minimized the window. The screen behind it reflected his face for a second, dull and shadowy.

Someone passed by his desk. He didn't look up, but he could feel it—a flicker of motion, a break in the air.

Ezra stood. He didn't know why, he just stood. Maybe if he shifted his weight the feeling would resettle in his body, like the sand in a flipped hour glass returning to the bottom.

He glanced at the clock. Not even noon. Too early to leave, but something in his chest itched like it wanted to claw its way out.

He sat back down, opened the next file, and tried to shut out his awareness of the ever growing queue of claims.

His stomach turned, but not from the sandwich.

The afternoon pushed on, heavy and graceless. Ezra drank from a cup of stale coffee and stared at a page he'd already read three times. The numbers blurred. Policy terms flickered at the edge of meaning. He could still hear the voice from the phone. The breath before it spoke.

The knowing.

He clicked on to the next calamity, something about stolen property. Missing jewelry. He didn't even check.

"Hey, Calloway."

Ezra looked up. Lydia stood just outside his cubicle, her hand resting on the edge like she wasn't sure if she meant to stop or just hadn't kept walking.

"You okay?" she asked. "You look… I don't know. Pale."

He gave a half-smile, the kind that didn't say what it wanted to.

"Just tired," he said. "Long night."

She raised an eyebrow. "Dating again? It's good to see you get back out there."

He almost laughed. Almost.

"Consider it a shortcut."

She lingered a second longer, lips pursed as she tried to make sense of his words. "Alright," she said, settling on the futility of the task. "Just—don't let this place eat you alive, yeah?"

He didn't answer, giving only a subtle upward nod while watching her go.

The quiet came back too fast. Ezra returned to his screen. The cursor still blinked, the form waiting for input. He typed a note—nonsensical, a string of placeholder text—then deleted it.

He opened another file. Closed it. Opened a third.

No matter how many new files he tried to read, his attention kept coming back to Kemp. Maybe it reminded him of something, but they were all starting to read the same. He leaned closer, not sure what he was looking for.

Nothing. Nothing.

Still…

He minimized the window and sat back, palms flat on his thighs. Outside, clouds had started to gather—gray and low, weighing on everything.

He opened another file, for no reason other than the time had to be passed somehow. The claim had already been processed—standard payout on a flooded basement. He clicked through it anyway.

The notes were ordinary. Adjuster comments, timestamps, scanned signatures. The attached photo refused to load.

Ezra scrolled, faster this time. The page lagged. A metadata field blinked once, then filled in. His eyes caught on something mid-flick, and he scrolled back up.

Calloway, Ezra.

There in the "Referred By" field. Black type, standard font. No formatting to draw the eye.

He stared at it. It didn't make sense.

He'd never seen this claim before, had no memory of referring it. The adjuster's name was someone he didn't recognize. The policyholder had listed a car dealership as their primary contact address. Nothing about it should've connected to him.

He clicked the field. No hyperlink. He clicked again.

Nothing changed.

He tried to back out of the file, but the system hung for a moment before blinking back to the queue.

He sat there, hand still on the mouse.

Maybe it was a glitch. Maybe the system autofilled his name by mistake, maybe he was logged into a different computer and forgot to log out. But his gut said there was more. The layout, the pacing of the notes, even the font spacing felt… staged.

He looked around the office. No one was watching. No one ever was, despite the constant monitoring.

Finally four'o'clock, Ezra minimized the screen and pushed his chair back. His legs needed movement, or maybe just some space.

Walking through the parking garage, barely aware of his fingers' movement, he pulled out his phone and sent a single text.

Are you working tonight?