『 CORPORATE LIFE-DRAIN NETWORK 』 Status: PARTIAL SYSTEM FAILURE Affected Floors: B1-7 Extraction Efficiency: 67% (DEGRADED) Emergency Containment: ACTIVE
The lights didn't explode.
Dave had been bracing for some kind of catastrophic system meltdown, but instead, the server room's emergency lighting flickered once, steadied, then continued humming with the same mechanical indifference as before. His stress reading on the monitor had peaked at 227/100 before suddenly dropping back to a more manageable 189/100.
"What happened?" Dave whispered, staring at the still-functional displays around them.
Jeremy frowned at his tablet, scrolling through system diagnostics. "Looks like the network has some kind of... failsafe. When your stress levels hit critical, it automatically isolated this section to prevent cascade failures." He looked disappointed. "Building's still running normally above floor seven."
The heavy footsteps in the corridor had stopped just outside their door. Through the reinforced steel, Dave could hear muffled voices discussing "containment protocols" and "minimal collateral damage."
"Employees Chen and Johnson," the voice called again, carrying the polished authority of someone who'd attended too many corporate leadership seminars. "This is Director Harrison from Executive Response. You have thirty seconds to comply with evacuation procedures before we implement alternative solutions."
Jeremy's fingers flew across his tablet. "There's got to be another way out of here. Maintenance tunnels, service corridors, something..."
Dave's stress levels ticked back up to 195 as the reality of their situation settled in. They were trapped in a basement server room by corporate security who specialized in handling employees who'd learned too much about stress harvesting. This was not covered in the employee handbook.
"Found something," Jeremy muttered. "Old steam tunnel system from when this building was used for actual manufacturing. Pre-corporate conversion." He gestured to a section of wall behind the largest server rack. "If we can move that equipment..."
"Twenty seconds, gentlemen."
Dave and Jeremy exchanged a look, then began pushing the server rack away from the wall. The metal frame was heavier than it looked, but desperation provided excellent motivation. Behind it, a small access panel revealed a narrow tunnel that disappeared into darkness.
"This leads to the old boiler room," Jeremy explained, already crawling into the opening. "From there we can access the main building's service levels."
Dave followed, his stress levels climbing again as claustrophobia joined the party. The tunnel was barely wide enough for his shoulders, and the air smelled like rust and decades of accumulated dust. Behind them, the sound of electronic locks disengaging echoed through Server Room C.
"Movement detected in restricted area," came the professional voice of Director Harrison. "Initiating search protocols."
They crawled through the tunnel as quickly as possible, emergency lighting from Jeremy's phone casting strange shadows on the corroded walls. After what felt like an eternity but was probably only two minutes, they emerged into a larger space that looked like it hadn't been updated since the 1980s.
The old boiler room was a maze of pipes and abandoned machinery, lit by a few flickering fluorescent bulbs that had somehow survived the building's corporate renovation. Jeremy consulted his tablet, pulling up building schematics that looked considerably older than the ones Dave had seen upstairs.
"Okay, we can take this maintenance corridor up to the main floor," Jeremy said, pointing to a door marked "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" in faded paint. "But we need to be smart about this. They'll be monitoring all employee movements now."
Dave's stress reading had stabilized around 178/100—high enough to feel like his heart might explode, but apparently not high enough to crash any more systems. "What do we do when we get back upstairs? Pretend this never happened?"
"Absolutely not." Jeremy's expression was grim. "You've seen too much, and they know it. Director Harrison and his team don't just give warnings and let people go back to their cubicles. Once you're flagged by Executive Response, you're either recruited or..."
"Or?"
"Remember my girlfriend? The one who died from 'natural causes'?"
Dave felt his stress spike again. "So what are our options?"
"We need to get you out of the building. Away from the extraction network, somewhere they can't monitor your biometrics." Jeremy checked his tablet. "I know some people. Resistance members who've been working to document the stress harvesting operation."
"There's a resistance?"
"Sort of. More like a support group for people who've figured out what's really going on." Jeremy started walking toward the maintenance door. "Most of them are former corporate employees who got too close to the truth. A few are family members of people who died from 'stress-related incidents.'"
They climbed a narrow staircase that felt like it belonged in a completely different building. The corporate aesthetic of glass and chrome gave way to industrial functionality—exposed pipes, concrete walls, and the kind of honest construction that prioritized function over form.
"Where do they meet?"
"Coffee shop called 'The Daily Grind' about six blocks from here. Ironic name, considering." Jeremy paused at a door marked "SUBLEVEL 1" and listened carefully. "The owner, Marcus, used to work for Anxiety Analytics before he figured out what they were doing to their employees."
Dave's mind was reeling. "How many people know about this?"
"More than you'd think, fewer than there should be." Jeremy cracked the door open and peered into what looked like a storage area filled with cleaning supplies. "The problem is that most people who figure it out either get recruited by the corporations or they... don't make it long enough to tell anyone else."
They slipped through the storage area and into a service corridor that connected to the main building. Dave could hear the familiar sounds of corporate life above them—phones ringing, keyboards clicking, the distant hum of productivity being extracted from human misery.
"Jeremy, when you said I might be able to overload the entire network... what did you mean exactly?"
Jeremy stopped walking and turned to face him. "The system specs I've seen suggest that Employee Zero—someone whose stress response exceeds the equipment's design parameters—could theoretically cause cascading failures throughout the network. But it's never happened before, so nobody knows what the actual effects would be."
"But you think it's possible?"
"I think you already proved it's possible. You crashed seven floors worth of extraction equipment just by getting really anxious in a basement." Jeremy's eyes gleamed with something between hope and terror. "The question is whether you could do it deliberately, and whether you could scale it up."
Dave considered this as they climbed another staircase. The idea that his chronic anxiety—the thing that had made his life miserable for years—might actually be a weapon against the system that had been exploiting it was almost too ironic to believe.
"What would happen to all the employees if the network crashed?"
"Best case? They'd suddenly stop being emotionally dampened by their workstations. All that suppressed awareness, all that natural stress response that's been artificially amplified and harvested—it would come flooding back at once."
"And worst case?"
Jeremy paused. "Forty-seven floors worth of people suddenly realizing they've been turned into human batteries might cause some... civil unrest."
They reached a door marked "GROUND LEVEL ACCESS" and Jeremy checked his tablet one more time.
"Okay, according to the building's security system, Executive Response is still searching the basement levels. But they've also posted guards at all main exits and elevated the building's threat level to Code Orange."
"What's Code Orange?"
"Enhanced employee monitoring. Every access card swipe, every biometric reading, every movement through the building gets flagged and analyzed." Jeremy looked at Dave's stress reading on his tablet—still hovering around 182/100. "Your levels are still elevated enough to trigger alerts if you go anywhere near the extraction network."
"So how do we get out?"
Jeremy smiled for the first time since they'd met in the server room. "We don't use the main exits. And we definitely don't use your access card."
He pulled a maintenance keycard from his pocket—the kind used by cleaning crews and building engineers. "Perks of being the IT guy. I have access to all kinds of interesting systems."
They emerged into a ground-floor corridor that Dave had never seen before, despite four years of working in the building. This area was clearly off-limits to regular employees—no corporate motivational posters, no ergonomic furniture, just functional space designed for people who actually worked rather than people who were harvested.
"Where are we going?"
"Loading dock. Delivery trucks use a separate entrance that's not connected to the main security grid." Jeremy led them through a maze of corridors that seemed designed to confuse anyone who didn't belong there. "From there, we can get to the street without triggering any biometric scanners."
As they walked, Dave became aware of a strange sensation. His chronic background anxiety—the constant low-level stress that had become so familiar he barely noticed it anymore—was gradually fading. For the first time in months, maybe years, he felt like he could breathe properly.
"Jeremy, is it normal to feel... better when you're away from the extraction equipment?"
"Oh yeah. That's how I first figured out something was wrong. I started taking my lunch breaks outside the building and noticed I felt human again for about an hour every day." Jeremy's expression darkened. "Then I'd come back to my desk and the anxiety would slam back into me like a truck."
They reached the loading dock, where the familiar corporate atmosphere gave way to something that felt more like the real world. Natural light streamed through large windows, and the air didn't carry that subtle electrical charge Dave had grown accustomed to.
His stress levels dropped to 156/100—still elevated, but closer to what might actually be appropriate for someone who'd just escaped corporate security.
"Feel that?" Jeremy asked, noticing Dave's obvious relief.
"It's like someone turned down the volume on my panic response."
"That's because they literally did. The extraction network doesn't just harvest stress—it amplifies it. Keeps employees in a constant state of controlled anxiety that's optimal for energy production." Jeremy checked his tablet. "Your biometrics are already stabilizing. Give it another hour away from the network and you'll probably feel better than you have in years."
They approached the loading dock's exterior door, which opened onto a side street Dave had never noticed despite walking past the building countless times. The world outside looked exactly the same as it had that morning—cars, pedestrians, the usual urban landscape of modern life.
But Dave's perception had fundamentally changed. Now he knew that every office building might be a stress farm, every corporate campus a human battery operation. The cheerful corporate wellness programs, the ergonomic furniture, the productivity monitoring—all of it designed to optimize suffering for energy production.
"Jeremy, how many other people are like me? People whose stress levels might be high enough to break the system?"
"Unknown. The corporate records I've accessed suggest Employee Zero status is supposed to be a one-in-ten-million occurrence. But..." Jeremy paused, looking thoughtful. "But those same records show that stress-related deaths have been increasing every year since the system was implemented. Maybe some of those weren't really deaths. Maybe some of them were people who got too close to overloading the network."
They stepped outside, and Dave immediately felt his stress levels drop another ten points. The fresh air, the natural light, the absence of that subtle electrical humming he'd grown so used to—it was like stepping out of a pressure chamber he hadn't realized he was in.
"Where's this coffee shop?"
"Six blocks north. We should probably stick to side streets, avoid any areas with heavy corporate surveillance." Jeremy looked at his tablet. "I'm sending a message to Marcus now, letting him know we're coming. He'll want to hear about what happened in the server room."
As they walked through the city streets, Dave found himself looking at the corporate towers around them with new eyes. SoulCorp Industries was just one building in a forest of glass and steel, each one potentially housing thousands of employees whose misery was being harvested for energy.
"Jeremy, you said the other stress kingdoms have different specialties. What makes SoulCorp's approach unique?"
"Traditional bureaucratic stress. Meetings, deadlines, performance reviews, endless paperwork—classic corporate anxiety that's been refined over decades." Jeremy pointed to a sleek building across the street. "That's a Deadline Dynamics satellite office. They specialize in algorithm-driven panic. Their employees get constant notifications, impossible deadlines, and workflow software designed to induce maximum psychological pressure."
Dave shuddered, imagining his current stress levels being amplified by algorithmic precision.
"And the other kingdoms?"
"Anxiety Analytics focuses on data-driven optimization—they monitor everything and use predictive models to maintain perfect stress levels. Burnout & Associates handles legal and financial stress, which apparently produces premium-grade energy. And PanicTech..." Jeremy's expression darkened. "Social media anxiety. They've figured out how to harvest stress remotely through smartphone apps."
"Remotely?"
"Your phone's biometric sensors can monitor stress levels, heart rate, even micro-expressions through the front camera. Every social media notification, every news alert, every dating app rejection—it's all calibrated to generate anxiety that gets harvested through the device."
Dave reflexively reached for his phone, then stopped. "Are they monitoring us right now?"
"Probably. But being outside the direct extraction network limits their capabilities. Plus, I've got some countermeasures running." Jeremy held up his tablet, which was displaying what looked like signal jamming software. "Not perfect, but it should keep us under the radar long enough to reach Marcus."
They turned onto a quieter street lined with small businesses that had somehow survived the corporate consolidation of the past few years. The Daily Grind sat between a used bookstore and a repair shop that advertised "Pre-Corporate Electronics Fixed Here."
The coffee shop looked aggressively normal—the kind of place that served actual coffee instead of productivity-enhancing energy supplements. Through the windows, Dave could see a handful of customers who looked like they were having genuine conversations rather than optimized networking interactions.
"This is it," Jeremy said, pausing at the door. "Once we go in there, you're officially part of the resistance. No going back to pretending everything is normal."
Dave looked back toward SoulCorp Tower, visible in the distance like a monument to systematic human suffering. His stress levels had dropped to 134/100—still elevated, but feeling almost manageable for the first time in months.
"Jeremy, what happens if we can't stop this? What if the stress kingdoms are too powerful, too entrenched?"
Jeremy followed his gaze toward the corporate district. "Then we document everything, help as many people as we can escape, and hope that someday there are enough Employee Zeros to bring the whole system down."
He opened the door to The Daily Grind, and the smell of real coffee—not the productivity-optimized synthetic blends served in corporate break rooms—washed over them.
"But today," Jeremy said with a grim smile, "we start with trying to keep you alive long enough to figure out what your stress levels can really do."
As they walked into the coffee shop, Dave's tablet vibrated with a notification from the SoulCorp employee portal:
『 EMPLOYEE ALERT 』 D.CHEN - ABSENCE FROM WORKSTATION NOTED PRODUCTIVITY REPORT STATUS: OVERDUE MEETING WITH K.BLACKTHORNE SCHEDULED: 4:00 PM LOCATION: CONFERENCE ROOM 47-A
FAILURE TO ATTEND WILL RESULT IN DISCIPLINARY ACTION REMEMBER: YOUR SUCCESS IS OUR SUCCESS
Dave showed the message to Jeremy, who read it and shook his head.
"Conference Room 47-A. That's on the executive floor—the one that's not supposed to exist." Jeremy's expression was grim. "Dave, I don't think Karen Blackthorne wants to discuss your career trajectory."
"What do you think she wants?"
"I think," Jeremy said quietly, "she wants to find out exactly what kind of Employee Zero you are. And whether you're going to be an asset or a threat to the Blackthorne dynasty."
Through the coffee shop window, the corporate towers of the Eastern Anxiety Empire stretched toward the sky, their glass facades reflecting nothing but blue sky and carefully maintained corporate illusions.
But somewhere in those buildings, Dave realized, other people were probably discovering the same terrible truth he'd stumbled onto that morning.
The question was whether any of them would be lucky enough to escape their workstations before the Executive Response Teams found them.
『 EXECUTIVE ALERT 』 EMPLOYEE D.CHEN STATUS: FUGITIVE CURRENT LOCATION: UNKNOWN STRESS PROFILE: UNPRECEDENTED BLACKTHORNE DYNASTY PRIORITY: MAXIMUM
SHADOW BOARD NOTIFICATION: EMPLOYEE ZERO CONFIRMED ALL KINGDOMS ADVISED: MONITOR FOR SIMILAR ANOMALIES BURNOUT PROTOCOL: STAGE 1 ACTIVATED
To be continued...
Author's Note: Dave and Jeremy have escaped SoulCorp Tower, but they're far from safe! Now we're getting a glimpse of the broader resistance movement and the true scope of the stress kingdoms. Dave's stress levels are stabilizing outside the extraction network, but Karen Blackthorne is still expecting him for that mysterious meeting on the non-existent 47th floor.
What do you think is waiting for Dave in Conference Room 47-A? And how many other Employee Zeros might be out there, hidden among the corporate drones of the five stress kingdoms?
Next Chapter: "The Daily Grind" Coming Tomorrow!
Reader Question: Which stress kingdom's specialty sounds the most terrifying? Algorithm-driven panic, data-optimized anxiety, legal stress, or social media harvesting?