Chapter 2 - The Audit of Room 402
Samuel Wilson was sitting at his cluttered metal desk in the back of the technical workshop, halfway through a lukewarm cup of cafeteria coffee, when the door to his office swung open without a knock.
Samuel started to look up, ready to chew out whichever junior tech thought it was a good idea to barge in unannounced, but the words died in his throat when he saw who was standing in the doorway.
The silver-rimmed glasses, the sharp bespoke charcoal suit, and the unmistakable, razor-sharp presence of Jonathan Bennett.
Samuel scrambled out of his chair so fast his plastic coffee cup nearly tipped over onto the keyboard.
“Mr... Mr. Bennett!” Samuel stammered, smoothing down his wrinkled shirt. “I—we weren't told you were inspecting the Charlotte branch today. If we had known, we would have prepped the executive briefing packet—”
“Save it, Samuel,” Jonathan interrupted, walking into the office and closing the door behind him with a quiet, heavy click.
Samuel’s face turned pale. In the corporate hierarchy of Bennett Medical, a visit from the founder outside of an official scheduled audit usually meant heads were about to roll.
“I was just walking the floor,” Jonathan continued, his voice dangerously even as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Observing the machinery. Observing the personnel.”
“Of course, sir. Everything here is running at peak efficiency. Our turnaround time on repairs is down four percent from last quarter—”
“Is it?” Jonathan cut him off. He reached out and tapped his index finger against Samuel’s performance review printout lying on the desk. “Tell me, Samuel. What is your definition of an employee who meets minimum expectations?”
Samuel blinked, caught completely off guard by the abrupt shift in topic. “Um. Well. That’s standard HR phrasing, sir. It means... reliable, shows up on time, completes assigned ticketing quotas without major errors.”
“Does it include wearing equipment that belongs in a museum?” Jonathan asked.
Samuel froze. A bead of sweat formed near the technical manager's temple. “Sir?”
“Annie Carter,” Jonathan said, spelling out the name as if it were a legal charge. “Out there in the service pool. Eighteen years old. Working forty hours a week, paying for her own engineering classes at night, handling customer crises with more grace than my entire corporate PR team—and she’s walking around on a discontinued Model 4-A with a frayed leather strap and a slipping locking pin.”
Samuel let out a long, ragged sigh, his shoulders slumping in defeat. He sank back down into his office chair.
“Ah,” Samuel murmured. “So you saw that.”
“Explain it to me,” Jonathan commanded, leaning over the desk until his face was inches from Samuel’s. “Why is an intern at a multibillion-dollar biomechanics firm wearing a prosthetic that’s older than she is? Did HR deny her medical equipment requisition?”
“No, Mr. Bennett. HR approved her standard medical package on day one,” Samuel said quietly, looking down at his desk. “She turned it down.”
Jonathan frowned, his aggressive posture faltering for a fraction of a second. “Turned it down? Why would anyone turn down a state-of-the-art Series-7 neural-link prosthetic?”
“Because she couldn't afford the deductible copay, even with the corporate discount,” Samuel said, his voice thick with a mixture of frustration and deep respect. “Her mother has been undergoing treatments for chronic kidney disease at Mercy General across town for the last two years. Every single dollar Annie makes goes toward medical bills, rent, and her community college tuition. When she onboarded here six months ago, she told me straight-faced that her old Model 4-A—which she scavenged from a local clinic’s donation bin when she was twelve—still had a few good miles left in it.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
The hum of the HVAC system overhead sounded deafening in the small office.
Jonathan straightened up slowly. The anger in his chest didn't vanish; it shifted, boiling down into a cold, hard realization about the massive, yawning chasm between the ivory towers of corporate headquarters and the actual human beings who kept the machinery running.
“A donation bin,” Jonathan murmured, testing the words on his tongue.
“Yes, sir,” Samuel said softly. “She told me she didn't want charity. She said if she earned her place here, she wanted to earn it on her own two feet—literally.”
Jonathan turned away from the desk, walking over to the small window that looked out over the service floor. Down below, through the glass, he could see Annie helping another customer, her smile bright and unforced, completely unaware that the billionaire founder of the company was currently standing three rooms away discussing her entire life.
Jonathan reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a gold-plated fountain pen, and tapped it lightly against his palm.
“Samuel,” Jonathan said without turning around.
“Yes, Mr. Bennett?”
“Get me the complete manufacturing blueprints for our experimental Series-9 neural-adaptive prototype.”
Samuel’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “The Series-9? Sir, that’s still locked in R&D in Seattle! We aren't scheduled for clinical trials until next fiscal year—it’s worth half a million dollars per unit!”
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Jonathan turned back around, his eyes flashing with a sudden, unyielding fire.
“Then I suppose,” Jonathan said, a faint, dangerous smirk touching the corner of his mouth, “it’s time we ran an unscheduled field test right here in Charlotte.”
