The Edge of No Tomorrow

2 | Sepia

I swipe my key card at the door and slide into the office. The air is stuffy and cold. My desk is littered with folders and tacked with glossy family photos. I peel a sticky note off my array of glitter-gel pens, reminding me to buy milk and to call the landlord to fix the air conditioner in my apartment that's been busted since I moved in. Not that any of it matters, anymore.

Across from my desk is Kayden's. His mop of brown hair pokes out from behind his computer screen. I don't know what the hell he's doing; the servers have been down since the emergency alert. It isn't like anyone is going to call customer service when nothing matters anymore. When the last thing on anybody's mind is their faulty technology.

"Have you ever played solitaire?" Kayden's gruff voice pulls me from my thoughts. The words are the colour of nebulous purple, a vast eternity. "Nina, I'm talking to you."

"Solitaire?" I repeat, circling my desk to glance at his screen. "No. Where did you find that?"

"I don't know. I think it came with this computer," Kayden answers with a shrug. Turning to me, his gaze rakes over my dishevelled hair and my smeared makeup. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing. This is just how I look." I take a seat in my office chair and spin halfway around, not bothering to turn on my computer.

"You look awful," Kayden remarks with a bubbly laugh. His round face is dusted with unshaven stubble, and his hooded eyes bore into me. "Did you have to fight your way onto the bus again?"

My chair rotates like the axis of a planet. "I always have to."

"Are you sure that's safe?" Kayden asks for the second time this week. "You shouldn't have to compete just to get here. There's nowhere else you can stay?"

"I'll be fine. I don't want to..." There are a thousand ways to finish this thought, and I say none of them. I don't want to leave. I don't want to spend what time I have left away from home.

I falter, trying to figure out how to continue. The painted beige walls of Maci's office seize as my heart drums in my ears. Like always, I come up empty.

Kayden has never asked me what I'm still doing in Nalona. I've never asked him why he shows up for work every day, uncannily early for a shift he no longer works. We're both drifting on this life raft, making sense of the senselessness. Outside of work, I've barely ever spoken to him.

"Where's Cates?" I ask, nodding to the office behind Kayden. "I thought he was coming in today."

"He'll be here," Kayden says, with a smile affixed to his face. It doesn't match the darkness in his eyes. "I'm sure he knows we're in the office when we're not supposed to be. The least he can do is fire us."

Atlas Cates founded Maci Incorporated four years ago, when he was my age—twenty. He was married young to a woman who left him shortly afterward, like a bubble bursting. One second, she was there. The next, she had sold her share in the company that bore her namesake, liquidated her assets, and was never seen again.

Last week, Maci Incorporated consisted of twenty-five employees. Now, there is nobody left to carry his legacy—save for Kayden and me.

"I assumed Cates would be gone, by now," I say. If his wife was a bubble, then Cates is an unpredictable hurricane.

Kayden shrugs as I pick at my fingernails. I bring my phone screen into view, avoiding my message history.

Before either of us can speak again, the sound of the door opening cracks the silence wide open. Atlas Cates takes a tentative step into the room.

He's clad in a sepia overcoat with a button missing. Layered underneath it is a white shirt stained with a liquid that looks distinctly like crusted blood. "You wouldn't believe the morning I've had!"

"Join the club," I hiss under my breath.

Kayden glares at me and says, "You look, um—"

Tucking his hands into his pockets, Cates drifts closer to me. He sets a calloused hand on my chair, which I promptly shrug off. "Fabulous, I know," he says, and knowing Cates, he isn't kidding. "I fell out of a window and tumbled for about three-and-a-half storeys before I hit the ground. Really, it could have been worse. I could have wrecked my jacket."

I don't say a word. Kayden doesn't dare to speak, either, lest he interrupt him.

"Anyway," Cates continues, "that's not why I'm here. I'm here to give you this last paycheque. Consider it my gratitude for working for... for... the company."

He extends a wad of cash in Kayden's direction. Kayden accepts it. Flatly, he says, "Couldn't get to a bank?"

"It was all I had in cash. The rest was stolen by a raven with a penchant for shiny things." Cates turns to me, rifling through his pocket to locate the ripped bills and stray coins. "Take it."

I close my hand over the money, silently counting it out in my head. I have a few hundred stashed away in my room, but it won't be enough to get me a ticket out of here. The price-gouging is a vicious cycle of rich citizens buying up all the seats, then selling them at eight times the price.

As if reading my mind, Cates says, "I know it's not much."

"Thank you." My voice is hoarse. It sounds detached from the rest of me.

Cates winks and watches to make sure we've both pocketed the money. "I guess this brings me to the bad news. I'm dissolving the company. You don't have to keep showing up. There's nothing left for us to do."

"It's safe here," Kayden says, shrugging. "Safer than out there, anyway."

My fingernails dig into my palms. "It won't be when someone finds out we're here, you know."

Kayden moves towards the windows. The glass has been blocked off by wooden planks and blankets draped over each other to remove any promise of seeing the inside. Io had put them there, motivated by rumours of break-ins. It only serves to make the office smaller, kind of like how a marble seems to contain a universe.

"Don't open that," I say, even though I know he won't.

"I won't," Kayden replies, doubling back to the break room. "But I will raid the vending machine of all it has left."

Cates follows him inside, flattening his hands against his coat. Dust collects on the break room table and becomes enmeshed in the air. Begrudgingly, I trail behind them.

The tempered glass of the vending machine was broken by our collective effort a few days prior. I had to convince Kayden to bring a spark plug to break it, and not the flat edge of a hammer, I argued, much to his chagrin. As such, the bottles of soda and water are cleared out.

Kayden hands me a bag of salted chips. He reaches for the last chocolate bar and forfeits it to Cates. "For you."

"What's this? Memory Meltz?" Cates peers at the bright, rainbow packaging boasting the slogan, Relive your childhood again. It's a chewy brownie with sprinkles, which is the staple of his entire diet. "For me? You shouldn't have!"

"Memory Meltz is gross," Kayden replies flatly. "Pretty sure you're the only person in the world who likes it."

Cates' eyes light up. He pockets the candy and scans the lonely office. "Are you taking the bus back home, Nina?"

I track his line of sight. It settles on the company logo, illuminated by Kayden's computer screen. "The number twenty-seven arrives every forty minutes."

He nods as if that answers it. To Kayden, he says, "And you? It's within walking distance, isn't it? I can't leave you here."

"Yeah." Kayden's jaw clicks shut. He leans over and shoves the vending machine candy into his messenger bag. "Sure. If you say so."

"We're family. You know that," Cates reminds him. "We're in this together, okay? I'm doing the best I can."

Kayden brushes it off. He looks at me. The expression behind his eyes looks like anger; pure, crimson-winged fury. "Thank you for reminding me what a pathetic life I have, Atlas. Like I haven't thought about the fact that I'm going to die, and the best thing I had left was my job."