Lena's mouth opened. No sound came out. She looked at her screen.

"Lena," he said. "Great news. The rebrand is done. The portal is live. The data is migrated. We're all going home early. Don't come back until Monday."

The screen flashed white. The office sounds—the HVAC hum, the clack of Karen from accounting's mechanical keyboard—vanished. For one terrible second, there was nothing. No sound. No light. No Lena.

Because sometimes, when you mark something as complete, you become complete right along with it.

She refreshed. The tasks reorganized themselves into a new column labeled:

Her heart pounded. She tried to search for her old tasks. Nothing. She tried Tab + F to filter by "unassigned." The filter returned a single result: User: Lena. Status: Resolved. That was when she noticed her hands. They were transparent. She could see the keyboard through her fingers.

Lena felt the familiar surge of cortisol. She needed order. She needed structure. She opened Asana, created a new project called "Project Phoenix," and began.