In Too Deep

Scared to the bone

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way..." A man the size and height of a pillar sighed. His voice and his expression were that of a child being scolded, which was what was currently happening.

"Oh, you think?" the pillar's boss replied.

"I'm sorry." The pillar looked everywhere else, but at his boss. "I will check with the team on what went wrong and see that such breach never happens again."

His boss sighed in exasperation. "But it has already happened. Hasn't it? I don't know who she is or why she's here, but what I know is that the little she has seen is enough to shut us down. Do you understand that? We'll lose everything."

The 'she' who was being referred to opened her eyes, although she could barely see a thing. Her memory was as foggy as her sight, and also revealed nothing. She patted around at what felt like a mattress, and the smell of chemicals told her that she was likely in a lab. Her left arm was hurting, but besides that, she seemed okay physically.

Within seconds, her vision stabilized and three men peered at her. She squinted, trying to recognize who they were, so that she would be able to get an idea of where she was or what had happened. Then it suddenly came back to her...

The new job she had just started as Group HR in a leading meat processing and packaging company, the on-boarding sessions, the free lunch of pasta and minced meat sauce she had eaten, the meeting with the company's MD and his deputy, getting lost in the company's fifteen-story building that somehow led her to the parking lot where she saw the armed men, the trucks with the supplies... then the cadavers.

She had almost puked when she saw the discolored flesh, and remembering it now, she almost puked again. Finally, she remembered turning around to sneak away, but bumping into the MD and his deputy. She figured that her stomach turning and the shock of being discovered had probably made her pass out. It was the only explanation for her hurting left arm. Now, standing in front of her was the same MD, his deputy and another man, as tall as a house. The tag on his safety vest read 'Head Security' and she didn't doubt that he was one.

Without giving her the opportunity to speak or sit up, the MD started, "Why are you really here?"

She frowned in confusion, then replied, "To work."

"Really? Because it looks like you were snooping around." The giant fumed.

"I wan't snooping around. I was lost."

"You were lost long enough to wait for our delivery trucks to enter the building and begin offloading, before trying to sneak off," the deputy countered.

"That's not what happened," she replied, but was promptly ignored.

"Did you get all the information you needed?" the deputy continued.

"I'm not the one who is wrong here. I was lost, and that is the truth. I only came here for work. You, on the other hand, are processing human and animal cadavers as meat." She stopped when she realized that she was saying too much. She would even be lucky if she was allowed to leave there alive with what she had seen. She calmed down, then added, "Look, I'm not here to judge, and I regret obviously trespassing, although it wasn't intentional. It's just my first day here, so I don't have to come back."

No one said a word.

"If you are worried about what I saw, I would never say a thing to anyone. Everything I saw in the parking lot, stays in the parking lot."

Still not a word.

She didn't know what to do. They clearly didn't believe her. She, too, didn't believe herself, but she knew for sure that she was never going to eat anything that came out from the company or use any of their brands. However, she still owed it to her family, her friends and basically everyone else, to let them know the truth. She feared she might even have to go to the authorities. She exhaled, then cleared her throat...