THE LAST FILE · EPISODE 13

The Day the Team Felt Watched

Alex posted one line about monitoring work laptops. Fourteen minutes later, nobody had replied, and Maya was asking if it was about her.

10:06 AM. Thursday.

The message had been sitting in the team chat for fourteen minutes.

Nobody had replied. Nobody had reacted. On a normal morning, Northstar Studio's chat was never this quiet.

Alex had typed it at 9:52, between two calls, still thinking about the file map the team had drawn the week before. All those copies. All those places a client file could end up.

It had felt like the obvious next step.

Priya read it twice. Then she noticed that Maya, two desks away, had stopped working. Her hands were in her lap.

A minute later, a private message arrived.

"Priya, can I ask something? Is this because of me? Because I asked about the folders?"

Before Priya could answer, a second message came in. This one was from Daniel.

"Is this about the file?"