Fifteen Minutes

Panic is a cold, oily slick that coats your throat until you forget how to swallow. I stood in the middle of the Hub’s darkened open-plan office, clutching Becca’s badge like a religious relic, my knuckles white under the bruised purple glow of the emergency lights.

The Black Box server room hummed behind me—a mechanical beast breathing sub-zero air—and the dual monitors on the administrator’s desk were still screaming the truth I couldn’t unpack. Tom on my porch. My mother in a clinic. And the woman who looked exactly like me, the one Simon called the Original, finally free of her chair.

"Fifteen minutes," I whispered, the sound swallowed by the acoustic foam tiles.

I sat in the chair. It was still warm. The sensation made my skin crawl; it was like sitting in the lap of a ghost. I forced my fingers to move, my forensic spreadsheeting speed taking over even as my brain tried to short-circuit. I didn't need a password. I was already in.

I opened the root directory for the Mather Protocol. My thumb brushed the barcode behind my ear—the lump that wasn't a tumor, but a 2TB solid-state drive embedded in my skull.

"Ghost logs," I muttered.

I needed the metadata. I needed to see the audit trail of the deletions—the zeroes Simon added to the Dayton invoices, the transfers to Margaret Vane’s Wells Fargo account, the heartbeat sensors that tracked Version 1.5 until she reached Unit 204. If Simon was shipping the company's data offshore in lettuce crates, there had to be a digital manifest.

I found the file: *LOG_LIQUIDATION_MASTER.vmf*.

I plugged a fresh USB drive—the one I’d taken from the evidence sergeant’s desk—into the console.

*Copying... 0%*

The progress bar was a mocking, stagnant grey.

*1%...*

"Come on," I hissed, leaning into the monitor. The fans in the rack behind me surged, a high-frequency pitch that made my teeth ache.

Outside the heavy steel door, the elevators chimed.

I froze. The sound was a gunshot in the silence of the Hub. I ducked beneath the desk, my Lululemons sticking to the polished floor. I schlepped my bag closer, my heart heart-stoppingly loud in my ears.

Footsteps.

Slate-grey Allbirds. They had that soft, sustainable *scuff-scuff* sound that Simon Kress brought into every room he intended to colonize.

"Sarah, check the gateway," Simon’s voice said, muffled by the steel door. "AgriCorp is reporting a lag in the George Town uplink. If Version 2.0 is still accessing the terminal, I want her localized."

"The Find My tag is bouncing," Sarah replied, her voice a low-frequency hum of corporate malice. "She’s either in the alley or she’s figured out how to spoof the MAC address. Very 'Olivia Benson' of her."

"She’s an analyst, Sarah. She doesn't spoof. She reconciles."

The door handle rattled. My breath caught in my chest, smelling of sandalwood and expensive coffee—Simon’s scent, even through the air filtration.

I looked at the monitor above me.

*64%...*

The progress bar was crawling like a wounded animal. I squeezed my eyes shut, my forehead resting against the cold underside of the desk. I was one bad day away from becoming a true crime podcast, and the ending was looking like a burial in Dayton.

"The door is jammed," Sarah hissed. "The magnetic strike plate is out of alignment."

"Force it," Simon commanded. "The backup overwrites the timeline in twelve minutes. We don't have time for administrative friction."

A heavy *thud* shook the desk. Then another. They were choosing violence.

I looked at the screen again.

*89%... 92%...*

I reached up, my hand trembling as I hovered near the USB port. The thuds were getting louder, the steel door groaning under the pressure of a shoulder or a crowbar.

*98%... 99%...*

*Download Complete.*

I yanked the drive out just as the door gave way with a screech of tortured metal. I didn't amble. I dove deeper into the leg-well of the desk, pulling the Herman Miller chair tight against the opening.

Simon and Sarah stepped into the sub-zero roar of the Black Box.

"The terminal is active," Sarah said, her beige tracksuit appearing in the narrow gap beneath the desk. I could see her sneakers—clunky, expensive things that looked like they’d never seen a warehouse floor.

"She was just here," Simon whispered. I could feel the heat radiating from him, a stark contrast to the server room’s chill. "The chair is still warm."

He amled toward the desk. I pulled my knees to my chest, my lungs burning as I held my breath. He stopped inches away. I could see the hem of his dark jeans, the sustainable fabric mocking my desperation.

Simon reached out. I saw his hand—the one that had kissed my neck as Version 2.0—rest on the mouse.

"Guest_User_404," he read from the screen. "And look at this. A SQL injection in the signature field."

Sarah laughed—that soft, melodic sound that made my blood run like liquid nitrogen. "She tried to drop the table. Very 'I understood the assignment' of her. Too bad the database is read-only during the restore."

"She’s getting expressive," Simon said, his voice dropping to that intimate, paternal register. "Version 1.5 was a hot mess, but 2.0 has teeth. I almost hate to liquidate the hardware."

"The hardware is compromised," Sarah snapped. "Thorne wants the Caymans team to have a clean slate. 3.0 is already in place. Look at the Ring feed."

Simon tapped his Apple Watch. "The delivery has arrived."

I looked at the back of the monitors from my hiding spot. I could see the glow reflecting off the server rack. A crate of Romaine lettuce was sitting on my front porch in Grandview. Tom was opening it.

"Nice catch on the T, Clara," Simon whispered to the empty room.

He turned away from the desk. "Let's go. We need to meet the 'wellness' team at the airport. If Mahesh talked, we need to ensure his family plan is terminated."

They amled out of the room, the steel door hissing as it tried to seal itself against the damaged frame.

I waited. One minute. Two. The mechanical roar of the fans was the only thing left.

I crawled out from under the desk, my legs shaking so hard I had to grab the terminal for support. I checked the clock on the wall.

2:14 AM.

Becca’s break was over. The 24-hour window was a whole communist parade of red flags, and I was currently standing at the finish line.

I grabbed my bag and ran. I didn't use the stairs this time; I ran for the service elevator, the one that led directly to the loading docks. I hit the button for the basement, the G-force of the descent making my stomach drop through the floor.

The doors slid open. The loading dock smelled of diesel, rain, and the faint, sweet decay of organic waste.

A white van was idling at Bay 4. Not a company van. An unmarked transit model.

The back doors were open.

Mahesh was inside. He wasn't transitioning. He was strapped to a pallet, his mouth covered with silver duct tape, his eyes wide with a raw, expressive terror.

And standing over him, holding a GreenSprout reinforced vest and a handheld iris scanner, was the woman from the Starbucks.

My reflection. Version 3.0.

She looked up as the elevator doors groaned. She didn't look sus. She looked confident.

"Nice catch on the T, Clara," she said, her voice an exact, haunting duplicate of mine.

She held up the iris scanner. The red laser was already armed.

"But you missed the most important detail," she whispered, stepping off the loading dock toward me. "If I'm the one taking the job in George Town... then what exactly is Simon shipping in the crate marked 'Asset 8492'?"

I looked behind her, into the dark interior of the van.

Sitting next to Mahesh was a crate. It wasn't full of lettuce.

It was full of human hair. My hair.

And then my Apple Watch buzzed—a notification from my Find My network.

*Asset 8492 is currently at: Grandview Heights Cemetery.*

"Tom isn't a teacher, Clara," Version 3.0 said, her smile astronomical in its audacity. "He’s an undertaker. And you’re three years late for your own funeral."

The van’s engine roared to life. Mahesh let out a muffled scream.

I lunged for the doors, but Version 3.0 was faster. She chose violence, slamming the heavy steel bolt into place, locking me on the dock as the van peeled away into the Ohio drizzle.

I stood there, gasping for air, clutching the USB drive that contained the logic reversal of my entire life.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. A BeReal notification.

*⚠️ Time to BeReal! ⚠️*

I opened the app.

The photo showed a dark, narrow space. It was lined with unfinished concrete and smelled of ionized air and cardboard dust.

In the foreground was a pair of Allbirds.

In the background, visible through a small, barred window, was my mother. She was crying.

The caption read: *Liquidating the final liability. #FamilyGoals #NoMoreBackups*

I looked at the location tag on the post.

It wasn't Dayton. It wasn't the airport.

It was the crawlspace behind my own guest room.

The call really was coming from inside the house.

And then I heard the sound of a key turning in the loading dock door behind me.

Simon’s voice crackled through my AirPods, low and intimate.

"Tell me you're guilty without telling me you're guilty, Clara. Who’s holding the camera?"

I turned around.

Standing in the doorway wasn't Simon.

It was Tom.

He wasn't holding a phone.

He was holding a shovel.

And he was wearing my father’s wedding ring.

If Tom was the undertaker, then who was currently lying in the grave marked *Clara Vane*?