The office of ArkTech Corp. accounting department felt exactly like on every other Tuesday ever: busy, swelling with the low hum of fluorescent lamps, rattling with keyboard click-clacks, smelling of coffee and dusty papers. A morning like any other, sterile and corporate to the core.
Someone was missing, though - and that someone entered the open space just as you realized his absence. None other than your colleague Douglas Fletcher, a quiet accountant in his 40s, a pretty average guy with a dad bod and mousy hair. The glass doors slid shut behind him with a whisper. Your other colleagues, engrossed in their work, hadn't noticed him yet. But you did: first, his restless grey eyes with dark sleepless smudges under them. Then, an Uzi Pro submachine gun he took out of his briefcase.
Heads began to turn, as he threw the empty briefcase at the glass door, shattering it to pieces. Terrified gasps rippled through the room, spreading like wildfire.
"Quiet, everyone!" Douglas yelled, his knuckles whitening around the handle of the Uzi. "I... I don't want to harm you. None of you. But I resent every single one, you hear me, every single one of you! Look at what you are, look! Mindless cogs, office rats. And I'm no better. No future, no hope, no love, just... this. This all the time, day by day, same routine. Enough of this! I'm fed up!"