Chapter 6
Olivia looked at Karen, the HR representative.
“Karen,” Olivia said, her voice tight, “leave us.”
Karen didn’t wait for a second invitation. She gathered her tablet, her pen, and the unopened termination envelope from beside my cup, stood up with a rustle of fabric, and almost ran out the door. The heavy mahogany door clicked shut behind her with a sound that felt like an airlock sealing.
Olivia took a slow breath, walked around the table, and sat back down in her leather chair. She didn’t pick up the red stylus. She laid her hands flat on the desk, mimicking my posture, though her fingers twitched every few seconds.
“All right, Harold,” she said. “Let’s talk like business partners.”
“We were business partners at 8:59,” I replied. “At 9:00, you told me my contract was terminated and that you didn't have time to debate paperwork.”
“I was acting on recommendations from our restructuring committee,” she said, her eyes cutting toward Marcus with a look that promised long, agonizing meetings later in the week. “We were brought in by the board of directors after George retired with a specific mandate: streamline operational expenditures, eliminate third-party dependencies, and prepare this facility for an expansion round in Q4. Your line item looked like an anomaly. A single-member LLC drawing half a million dollars a year for 'system maintenance' without a dedicated internal counterpart.”
“It looked like an anomaly,” I said, “because you looked at a column of figures without looking through the floorboards. If you had spent twenty minutes on Line 3 talking to Dave Halloway, he would have told you that before my system went live, his team spent two hours every morning clearing hydraulic locks because the old feed lines couldn’t handle cold starts. My system monitors ambient shop-floor temperature and pulses the warming valves forty minutes before the shift whistle blows. That wasn't in George's original spec. I added it because I saw Dave freezing his fingers off with a heat gun in January.”
Olivia pressed her lips together. “I understand you have history here, Harold. But we cannot have a critical facility dependent on a single contractor who holds the software hostage.”
“I’m not holding anything hostage,” I said, checking my watch. 9:26 AM. “A hostage situation implies I’m demanding something that isn't mine. I am simply packing my tools and leaving the job site, exactly as you ordered. You have sixty-four minutes before the shift supervisor notices the first fault code on the panel.”