Runners

It’s the end of the fiscal year. Hunting season has begun.

Ultimately, it all kicked off with the invention of the “workplace transparency plan.” As ad revenue stagnated, social platforms instead offered corporate clients access to their employees’ private messages. For a small subscription fee, employers could learn who their workers were communicating with and retaliate as they saw fit.

Within months, an entire industry of talent recruiters found themselves stonewalled by a terrified workforce. With electronic communication lost to them, the recruiters — far behind on their quotas — resorted to more drastic methods.

Strive Solutions is a midsize software company on the third floor of a converted building in the old warehouse district. Its two vintage elevators are too old to support ID card readers, so a pair of security doors flanking the reception area are all that stand between potential intruders and Strive’s inner sanctum.

A few minutes past 3:00 in the afternoon, both elevators open and the mob piles out.

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