The precision instruments on the bottom three rows of shelving were completely submerged. Every last one of them, destroyed.
"Hope Fox!! Where the HELL are you, Hope Fox!!"
1:00 p.m.
Mr. Greyson sat behind a battered desk that had been dragged into the lobby, soaked head to toe, caked in grime.
Ruined cardboard boxes still leaking water littered the floor around his feet. On the desk lay the final tally: $80,000 worth of inventory, every cent of it gone.
His eyes were hollow and bloodshot. He was firing messages into the hundred-person company group chat like a man unhinged.
"@Hope Fox! @Hope Fox! Where the HELL did you go?!!"
"The warehouse was flooded for TWO HOURS! You were the on-duty employee. Why weren't you at your post!"
"Do you have any idea you just cost this company almost eighty thousand dollars! I will have you ARRESTED!"
The group chat went dead silent.
Thousands of miles away in Miami, Hope had just finished rinsing the sand off her feet at the shoreline. She was humming to herself, fishing her phone out of the waterproof pouch, ready to pick her best beach photos for a grid post.
The instant she unlocked the screen, the app froze.