Page 37 of The Authenticity Clause
“I was going to quit,” he insisted, his voice cracking. “I swear. The plan was always to finish the Northwind project and just… disappear. I never wanted to take the permanent job. That’s why I was so weird when you offered it to me. I knew it was a trap. I knew I couldn’t…”
He trailed off, the words catching in his throat. He looked at Julian, searching his face for any flicker of emotion, any sign that he was being heard. There was nothing. Just that cold, still emptiness.
“But then there was you,” Leo whispered, the confession now shifting from the lie of his job to the truth of his heart. “I didn't plan on you. I didn’t plan on falling for you. None of that was fake. Please, you have to believe me. Everything I felt, everything we had… the arcade, the storm, your apartment… that was real. That was the only part of any of this that was real.”
He was pleading now, tears blurring his vision, his voice thick with a desperate, aching sincerity.
“I know I lied,” he said, his voice breaking completely. “And I know how much you value honesty. I know I destroyed everything. But the man you were falling for… that was me. The real me. The artist, the guy who loves bad movies and gets competitive about air hockey. The professional, the Creative Concept Lead, that was the character. But the person who fell in love with you… that was me, Julian. That was the only true thing in all of this.”
He finished, his chest heaving with silent sobs, his confession laid bare in the quiet, sterile room. He had said it all. He had nothing left.
He waited for the explosion. For the yelling. For the anger.
What came was infinitely worse.
Julian finally moved. He unfolded his hands and placed them flat on his desk. He looked at Leo, his eyes as cold and gray as a winter sky. When he spoke, his voice was calm, measured, and completely devoid of any emotion. It was the voice he used when dissecting a failed project in a post-mortem meeting.
“The fundamental flaw in your argument,” Julian began, his tone clinical, “is the premise that the two can be separated. You believe your feelings were real, and the professional deception was a separate entity.”
He paused, letting the silence hang. “But that is an incorrect assessment. The two are intrinsically linked. The man I came to know, the man I… developed feelings for… was a variable in a controlled environment. That variable was ‘Leo Hayes, Creative Concept Lead.’ A competent, if eccentric, professional. A manwho, despite his chaotic methods, was my peer. A man I could respect.”
Each logical, precise word was a razor blade, slicing Leo to ribbons.
“The data I gathered on that variable,” Julian continued, his gaze unwavering, “was overwhelmingly positive. The synergy in the escape room. The collaboration on the Northwind project. The shared passion for art and design. All of this data pointed to a single, conclusive hypothesis: that we were compatible.”
He leaned forward slightly, his eyes narrowing. “But my hypothesis was based on incomplete and deliberately falsified data. You weren't my peer. You were a stranger performing a role. Every moment of our relationship, every conversation, every shared success, every kiss… it was all predicated on a lie. It wasn't real. It was a brilliantly executed user experience, and I was the user you were deceiving.”
“No,” Leo whispered, shaking his head. “No, it wasn't like that.”
“Wasn’t it?” Julian’s voice was still unnervingly calm. “You lied to get a job. You continued to lie to keep it. You accepted praise for skills you do not possess. You allowed me to build a professional and personal future around a person who does not exist. These are not feelings. These are facts.”
He leaned back in his chair, the finality of his judgment absolute. The scientist had reviewed the data, and the experiment was a failure. His core wound, his fear of betrayal, had been proven correct in the most devastating way imaginable. The walls were back up, higher and thicker than ever before.
“I trusted you,” Julian said, and for the first time, a flicker of raw, unfiltered pain broke through the icy composure. It was there for only a second, a deep, ragged wound, before it wascovered again by the cold, hard logic. “That was my error. An error I will not be repeating.”
He stood up, the movement signaling the end of the conversation. The end of everything.
“Please clear your personal belongings from your desk,” he said, his voice once again a flat, empty monotone. “HR will be in contact regarding your final paycheck and the necessary paperwork. You have thirty minutes.”
It was a professional execution. An employee being terminated for cause. It was clean, efficient, and the most brutal, soul-crushing thing Leo had ever experienced.
He couldn’t move. He just stared at Julian, at the stranger standing behind the desk, his heart shattering into a million irreparable pieces. This was it. This was the end he had been dreading, a thousand times worse than he had ever imagined.
“Julian, please,” he choked out, one last, desperate plea.
Julian looked at him, his face a perfect, blank mask.
“Goodbye, Mr. Hayes,” he said.
And then he turned his back, facing the window, and closed the blinds.
Chapter 26: The Fall
He didn’t know how he got back to his desk. His legs must have moved, but he had no memory of the journey. One moment he was standing in the tomb of Julian’s office, the next he was standing by his own chair, the ghost of Julian’s final words—Goodbye, Mr. Hayes—still echoing in the ringing silence of his mind.
The office was a soundstage where the play had gone horribly wrong. Everyone was pretending to work, their faces turned towards their monitors, the clatter of keyboards unnaturally loud. But he could feel their eyes on him, the peripheral, pitying, and perhaps scornful glances. He was no longer Leo, the disruptive visionary. He was a spectacle. A cautionary tale. The con artist who had flown too close to the sun.
Thirty minutes.
