BETRAYED BY MY DOOMED MATE

The guys from the second division of the New Shadow advertising company could not stay more than two weeks away from appearing in the CEO's office. Whether it was for a failure to deliver a job, or something similar. The fact was that there was always something to be solved, especially since they had a rival company called Lightning. Both companies were always competing with each other since they were in the same department and the same building. Unfortunately, something happened that drastically changed the future of both companies.

It was at a get-together between the two, that a crime changed everything.

When everyone at NS learned about the party to unite the companies, they decided that it would not be just any party, but an opportunity to put hatred aside and create strong and successful alliances.

Cassie was able to convince her boss to have the party, although no one knew how she had done it, and they ruled out any sexual way since she had one of the most beautiful faces in the neighborhood, a model, by her side. All the employees were euphoric. Walking down the halls with a giant megaphone, she was shouting for the company and announcing the date of the party and the beginning of the decorations. On that day, nobody cared to finish the work, not even the managers and directors, who by then were already receiving numerous requests for help with colors and party materials. The management even tried to calm the situation down, but as soon as they saw Cassie walking around the company with everyone's support, they gave up. The best thing would be to celebrate the whole thing. Cassie was practically the right-hand man of the head of NS, so she had strong opinions on the final decisions.

The NS marketing team consisted of about ten members, half of whom just wandered around and did little. The five official members consisted of two twenty-four-year-old men, two twenty-nine-year-old men, and one twenty-six-year-old woman. Jack was responsible for writing, producing about fifteen articles a day, on average. Kurt, his main partner, and his friend were responsible for photographing almost all the events that were published. Both boys worked hard, but they were the kind of employees who could never please their boss. Josh was responsible for them, so much of the work was supervised by him afterward, sometimes even during the process. If the content was too simple, it would go to the back pages or not be published at all, as a good fan of reporting he liked bullshit, which meant he was always after it. The other members took care of proofreading what Jack wrote and what Kurt photographed.

“I need that crap for today, Jack”, exclaimed Josh, sitting in his favorite chair, at his favorite desk, in his favorite room. “I would rather not sit here and hear that you don't have time to write, it's your job.”

“You should remunerate me for every time you cuss me out, you know,” Jack retorted, expression indifferent. “I don't give a damn about your rush on this one, all the others are already in the revision, but this one will have to wait, do I have to remind you about it every week?” he asked.

The leader then questioned him, in an arrogant tone, saying, “Okay, Jack. Every week you show up out of the blue saying you don't have time to finish the job, do you have something more important to do?”

The other boy then replied sarcastically, “That's none of your business, man. This conversation is useless, you should be thankful that I still warn you, I could just leave without saying anything, you know that”.

“I should kick you out,” Josh retorted, in a tone that he would indeed be thinking of kicking him out.

“You need me,” Jack said, laughing at the situation. “I'm going, see you tomorrow,” and withdrew from the room.

“Damn kid, I hate this guy, every week it's the same thing, what a drag,” he huffed aloud as he got up from his chair, heading off towards the review room, which was next to the red room and the club's exclusive computer room.

Their sector had only one girl. She had a good resume, which caught the company's attention when she was hired for the proofreading team, which she accepted immediately. Her work partner and she got along so well that within two weeks they had already been caught kissing by their colleagues. During work, no one would say that these two could even be close. Work for them was work.

“Sasha, how's that project Jack left you?” the supervisor asked, walking into the room.

“He didn't leave me anything today, this right here is yesterday's material,” she replied. “And Nate is also reviewing yesterday's material, it's pretty extensive, we had to divide it up. Kurt took so many pictures that he spent the whole day editing them to put in the article,” explained the girl. Next to her, at another computer, was Nate, who nodded in agreement with everything she had said.

“Right. Where's Kurt now?” he asked.

“He just left with Jack about three minutes ago,” she stated. Nate agreed again. Josh made a serious, yet angry face and walked out of the room, slamming the door.

“He hates them!” laughed Nate, returning to work with Sasha.

The New Shadow company was open almost all day. The employees spent a lot of time there, due to the demand. In addition, there were about two cafeterias and bars in and around the building, which resulted in the staff often gathering at one of the locations for after-hours entertainment. However, the security there was not the best. For some reason, the cameras always stopped working or started to mysteriously fail and nobody knew why, and the security guards didn't seem to be interested in their work.

The map of the building was almost everywhere, as every day someone would show up asking for information. The marketing people worked together with people from other sectors, like administration and accounting. Josh made the partnership right from the start. After Sasha and Nate delivered the revised material and Kurt delivered the edited photos, everything was then reviewed one last time and then published.