The heavy steel door slammed shut behind me, the sound echoing through the cavernous space like a gunshot. It was followed by a click, the final, definitive note in a symphony of silence. I was standing on the factory floor of Nexus Tech, and every single person had stopped working.
Dozens of them. Line workers, engineers, foremen. They stood like statues amidst the hulking machinery, their faces smudged with grease, their eyes turned toward me. It wasn't a hostile stare. It was worse. It was the flat, dead-eyed gaze of people who had already accepted their own execution, and were merely curious to see the face of the man sent to pull the lever.
