The Daily Grind

By Wednesday, Nora had learned that the apocalypse was surprisingly boring.

The System, for all its terrifying implications, operated much like middle management. It micromanaged her.

**[DAILY QUEST: AVOID EYE CONTACT.]**

**[SIDE QUEST: REFILL PRINTER PAPER (REWARD: +5 XP).]**

She kept her head down, doing her data entry work. The numbers on her screen swirled, but now, with the System overlay, she saw patterns she hadn’t noticed before. The files she was digitizing weren’t just invoices; they were personnel records.

And people were disappearing.

First Jerry. Then Susan from HR. Then the IT guy, Dave.

Each time, an email went out: *So-and-so has pursued other opportunities.*

Each time, the System tagged their desks: **[DECEASED]**.

Nora tried to be invisible. She leaned into her **[TRAIT: PLAIN]**. She wore beige. She didn't speak in meetings. But the System had other plans.

**[ALERT: QUEST INCOMING.]**

**[QUEST: THE OFFERING.]**

**[OBJECTIVE: DELIVER COFFEE TO THE CFO.]**

**[REWARD: +50 XP, SURVIVAL.]**

**[FAILURE CONSEQUENCE: SUSPICION INCREASE.]**

Nora stared at the coffee pot in the breakroom. "I hate this game," she muttered.

She poured the black coffee into a ceramic mug. Her hands were trembling. She walked down the long corridor toward the corner office. The glass walls were frosted, hiding the monster inside.

She knocked.

"Enter," a voice came. It was deep, resonating in her chest like a bass guitar string.

Nora pushed the door open. Adrian Thorne sat behind a desk of black glass. The blinds were drawn tight, blocking out the grey Seattle daylight. He was reading a file—*her* file.

He looked up. His eyes were pale grey, almost silver. Above his head, the red tag pulsed: **[DANGER]**.

"Miss Vance," he said. He didn't blink. "Data Entry. Tenure: four years. Performance: Adequate."

"Here's your coffee, Mr. Thorne," Nora said, setting the mug down. She tried to back away.

**[STEALTH CHECK INITIATED...]**

**[ROLLING...]**

**[RESULT: SUCCESS.]**

Adrian didn’t seem to truly see her. He looked *through* her. "You may go."

Nora turned to flee. But as she reached the door, she saw something on his desk. A stack of personnel files. The top one was Susan's. But the photo wasn't Susan. It was a distorted, blurred image, like a corrupted .jpeg.

**[INTEL DETECTED: THE GLITCH.]**

Nora’s heart skipped a beat. She hurried out, closing the door behind her.

Back at her desk, she opened the digital archives. She triggered her **[SKILL: DATA MINE]**, a new ability she’d unlocked after hitting Level 2 yesterday.

The screen blurred, the code stripping away. She saw the metadata.

The files for the missing employees hadn’t been transferred. They had been *overwritten*.

Someone—or something—was deleting people from the database days before they actually disappeared physically. It was erasing their digital footprint, then consuming the physical body.

And the edit logs showed the changes came from one terminal: The CFO’s office.

Nora stared at the blinking cursor. Adrian Thorne wasn't just a vampire. He was deleting the staff one by one to cover his tracks.

**[QUEST ALERT: THE EXPOSURE.]**

**[OBJECTIVE: OBTAIN THE KILL LIST FROM THE CFO’S TERMINAL.]**

**[TIME LIMIT: 1 HOUR (LUNCH BREAK).]**