▪️ I made it to work, struggling but in a hurry.
I work somewhere that deals with cybersecurity.
Everyone I know does their job really enthusiastically. My job is different though, I have to track down people who steal from our company's partners. Some of them just steal data, but some want to steal money.
When I took the elevator up to the 10th floor and the doors opened, my boss was standing right there.
My boss is a middle-aged man, around 6'5" tall, already has a wife and kids.
When I saw him, I got a little scared that he'd definitely say something about me not coming in
to work the day before.
"Good morning, Mr . Fisher!" I greeted him first.
"Ahh, good morning, Emily, feeling better today?" he asked.
"Yes, thank you, sorry for not coming in to work yesterday ," I said.
"No worries, I'm glad you're doing okay. Well, today you can make up for missing yesterday, since
today you're going to help me," he said.
I'd never had to help the boss before, so I figured this would be a good chance to move up the
ladder a bit.
After that Mr. Fisher led me into his office, where it was just the two of us. He flipped open his
laptop and showed me that someone was trying to steal 100k from one of our clients, but he
couldn't figure out where it was coming from.
Once I'd pulled out my own laptop too, we got to work figuring out what had happened.
A few hours later it finally became clear what had actually happened.
"Got it!" I shouted.
"What do you mean, got it?" Mr. Fisher asked.
"Look, this guy created a new program that hides his IP address, so we can't track him, I
figured. But I found a loophole so I could hack into the machine. Unfortunately even this way we can't tell who it was, only where he was when he did it," I said.
"Wow, you're a genius, Emily! The police can work with this," Mr. Fisher said.
"Thanks, so with your permission I'll head off now, I've still got an hour left of my shift,"
I said.
"Sure, go ahead. Really, thank you so much for your help."
After that I went back to doing my regular work. While I was finishing up, I noticed a lot of time
had passed, and I'd already worked 2 hours extra. There was almost no one left at work by
then. I quickly wrapped up what I was doing and headed home. When I got in the elevator, the
doors were already almost closed when I heard a voice.
"Hold it, please!" someone shouted.
It was Mr. Fisher, it looked like he was also just heading home. After he got in the elevator, he
spoke to me.
"I thought you'd head home right at the end of your shift," Mr. Fisher said.
"Yeah, that was the plan, but unfortunately time got away from me," I answered.
Then Mr. Fisher's phone rang. After he picked up, I could hear it was his wife.
They were talking about how they'd unfortunately have to cancel dinner tonight, since his
wife was being held up at the office. Mr. Fisher didn't seem too thrilled about having to
cancel, but he still told his wife he would.
After he hung up, Mr. Fisher looked at me and asked:
"Emily, would you like to have dinner with me?"
For a second I didn't know what to say, and he could tell I didn't get what he meant.
"Oh, I don't mean it like that. It's just, you know, every week my wife and I go out to dinner, and it's already paid for either way," Mr. Fisher said.
"I don't know... I don't think it's such a good idea to have dinner with my boss, and besides I'm not dressed for it anyway ," I answered.
"Come on, I have to repay you somehow for all your help today, and it's not fancy enough a place that you'd need to change," Mr. Fisher said.
I thought about what he said for a moment, and also, my parents used to tell me it's not a bad
thing to try to build connections sometimes, because if I don't, I won't have any friends, and
in the end they turned out to be right.
So I decided I'd go for it.
When we got to the restaurant, I could see it was a five-star place, which to me counted as
very fancy. Once we went inside, it counted as even more so.
"Mr . Fisher , didn't you say this wasn't a fancy place?" I asked.
"Ohh... my apologies, you know, my wife and I come here a lot, so I feel pretty at home here," he answered.
Once the waiters spotted Mr. Fisher, they led us to a table, where we ate the food we'd ordered and talked over what we'd worked on that day.
After we finished dinner, Mr. Fisher asked, "So, can I drive you home?"
"Actually , I live pretty close to this restaurant, so I'd rather walk. Thanks for the invite," I said.
"Come on, I'm happy to drive you home, or if not, at least let me walk with you for a bit, I wouldn't want anything to happen to a young girl like you," he said.
His wife is lucky to have such a kind, caring husband, I thought to myself.
"Alright, you can walk with me for a bit,"
I said.
So we headed off toward home. The way home cuts through a park, which is dark, but there are lamps that light it up.
As we were about halfway through the park, there was a rock in front of me that I kicked, and I fell to my hands and knees.
Mr. Fisher immediately helped me up, and when he did, he stood closer to me than before.
When I noticed he was holding my hand, I still wanted to pull it away suddenly, but he held it tight, and smiled at me with an unsettling smile.
As he smiled, I noticed his head kept getting closer and closer to mine. I knew right away he
wanted to kiss me. So I pulled my head back. But Mr. Fisher still kept trying, pulled me closer
to him, and kept trying to kiss me, like someone else had taken over his body.
"Mr . Fisher , stop it, I don't want this!" I said.
"Yes you do, we both know you want someone to do this to you," Mr. Fisher said, perverted.
I tried to break free, but I simply couldn't, I felt like a snake had coiled around me, choking me while just toying with its prey.
By the time I was crying out for help with my eyes shut, all I could think to myself was:
Someone, someone please save me, anyone.
Then suddenly I felt Mr. Fisher pulling away from me. When I opened my eyes I saw Mr. Fisher
sitting on the ground, and Nicolas standing in front of him.
"Maybe you don't understand that she doesn't want this?" Nicolas said calmly, but with a
terrifyingly intense look in his eyes.
In that moment all I could feel was gratitude for Nicolas. I finally felt like someone had saved
me.▪️