Chapter 4.Cracks in the Foundation

Elara thought the second morning would be easier.

It was not.

The building felt smaller somehow, like the glass had closed in a little more. People who had nodded politely before now gave curt smiles, or none at all. The energy in the halls was thinner, watchful.

She arrived early, determined to prove she belonged. Her badge worked this time, the green light greeting her with a polite beep that felt like a small victory. She smiled to herself, an absurd private triumph, and walked to her desk.

Someone had left a stack of papers on her chair.

There was no note. No explanation. Just the papers, neatly clipped, waiting like a test.

Elara sat down slowly and flipped through them. Mostly routine documents. Foundation event schedules. Vendor contracts. Nothing that mattered, except for one envelope tucked at the bottom with her name on it in neat block letters.

Her fingers hovered. Then she opened it.

Inside was a single business card. No message. No phone number. Just a small logo she did not recognize and the words: Watch the third floor.

Elara’s stomach tightened. It should have been nothing. A prank, perhaps. A misguided help. But it dug under her skin.

She stood and carried the envelope to the reception desk. “Did someone leave this for me?” she asked.

The receptionist glanced at the card, then at her, and shook her head. “No. I would have signed for it if someone had left it with us.”

Elara nodded and put the card in her pocket. She tried to focus on the work Ethan had told her to sort first. Files needed labeling, meeting notes transferred, schedules updated.

By midmorning a coworker, a slim man named Henry who handled logistics, stopped by her desk. He did not smile.

“You don’t belong here,” he said quietly, the words clipped enough that she heard them as an accusation, not advice.

Elara blinked. “Excuse me?”

He leaned a little too close. “Everyone here came through other doors. Not the ballroom. Not the gala. Not everyone gets fast-tracked.” His eyes were cold. “Just a tip. Stay careful.”

He walked off before she could answer.

She pressed her palms to her temples and breathed through the sudden heat in her cheeks. Was it jealousy? A test? Or something else entirely?

She had just enough time to wonder when Ethan appeared at her desk with a coffee in each hand, as if he knew chaos could be softened by caffeine.

“Keep this,” he said, placing a cup in front of her. “You look like you need it.”

“Thank you,” Elara managed. His presence calmed something she had not expected.

Ethan did not smile. He watched the room with a trained stillness and moved with economy, the kind of man who never wasted motion. “People will talk. Ignore them.” His voice was low, not unkind but unreadable.

“Why are they—Why is Henry—?”

“Politics,” Ethan said simply. “It happens.”

She wanted to ask more. Instead she nodded and poured coffee she barely tasted.

The morning blurred into small tasks. Adrian spoke to her only in passing, a curt instruction here, a quick correction there. He seemed distracted, glancing often at his phone. Once his jaw tightened when someone mentioned a board member’s name. The warmth that had softened his gaze yesterday was rarer now, like a light behind glass.

At noon, she heard a raised voice out in the corridor. Voices echoed down the glass-paneled hall: professional, high-volume, urgent. People clustered near the doors, craning to hear the exchange. Elara walked closer, curiosity and a sense of dread pulling her forward.

A man from the Finance Office was arguing with someone from Archives. The conversation was sharp. “You can’t take that file out without authorization,” the archivist said. “It’s locked.”

“It’s needed,” the finance man snapped. “We asked for it this morning.”

Elara’s pulse quickened when she heard the word file. It was a small word in a big building, but her imagination supplied meaning. What file? For what?

Adrian appeared beside her without warning. He moved like a silent tide, beside her in a single step, his presence suddenly enormous.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

The finance man straightened. “We were told to pull an archival copy.”

Adrian’s voice was careful. “By whom?”

The man glanced at his tablet. “It shows an internal request. Supervisor unknown.”

Adrian’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t ask further. He turned and walked away, leaving a quiet command in his wake that made people step back.

Elara felt small in the sudden hush. Ethan placed a hand lightly at her elbow. “Stay where you are,” he whispered. “Don’t—”

He didn’t finish. He never had to.

Later that afternoon, Adrian cancelled a scheduled meeting. He sent a single message to Elara: We will reschedule. He did not offer an explanation.

She stood at her desk, reading the line over and over, as if the words themselves might change if she stared long enough. She tried to call him, and the Operations Desk responded automatically: ‘Mr. Valcourt is unavailable at the moment: He is tied up. No further details.

The small incidents were piling into a pattern. People no longer made space for her the same way. Doors that had been open yesterday clicked closed. Her badge, which had worked, now sometimes lagged at a reader like a secret questioning whether she belonged.

She found the locked drawer again when she reached for a pen. She had not tried the drawer earlier since Ethan had said he would fix access. Now, involuntarily, she tried again. Locked. The keyhole stared back at her like a challenge.

She set her palm flat on the wood and whispered under her breath,“New-employee glitches… that’s all.”

But reasons multiplied: Henry’s glare, the mysterious card, the archived file argument, Adrian’s sudden distance. The Foundation felt slippery, like a place where the floor could shift underfoot without warning.

Just before she left, she went to the small kitchenette to grab water. The office murmurs swelled around her. Ethan was already there, speaking quietly to a man Elara recognized as the Archivist.

The Archivist’s expression was grim. “Someone accessed a restricted folder,” he said. “Archive Room C. Timestamp an hour ago.”

Ethan’s jaw tightened. He glanced at Elara, then away. “Which folder?”

The Archivist hesitated. “I can’t confirm without clearance.”

Ethan’s eyes met Elara’s for the briefest instant. There was a shift in his expression unreadable — concern, maybe, or calculation.

Elara’s palms went cold.

“Was it—was anything taken?” she asked, even though she did not know why she asked.

The Archivist rubbed his temple. “We haven’t completed the checks. But the logs show a human operator left with a file bag.”

Ethan’s voice was controlled when he replied. “Notify Security. Quietly. No alarms.”

The Archivist nodded and moved off like a man walking through fog.

Elara stepped into the break area to breathe. A moment later, Ethan appeared in the doorway, as if he’d been waiting for her to be alone,posture tense, like he wanted to say more but stopped himself. “Go home,” he said quietly. “Keep your phone close. We’ll update you.”

“Why?” Her voice came out small.

“Precautions,” he said. “We don’t know anything yet.”

In the elevator, the lights dimmed slightly for a moment. Elara’s reflection looked thin and foreign. Her phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number: Watch the third floor.

She swallowed.

Outside, the city moved on. Inside, something had moved in the Foundation. It wasn’t a crash. It wasn’t an attack. It was a small theft, a paper in a bag, a log that glitched. A shuffle that suggested people who should have known better had missed something.

Up in the control room, a man watched a surveillance feed. His fingers hovered over the zoom. On the screen, a shadowed figure turned away from a shelf, a brown folder clutched at the hip.

He blin

ked at the file label.

His jaw went tight.

He reached for the phone.

“No,” he said into the receiver. “Not that folder.”