The 42nd floor of the Burke International Tower was less of an office and more of a glass-and-steel fortress. Outside, a late-autumn storm was colonizing Manhattan, turning the Empire State Building into a grey ghost lost in the mist. Inside, the silence was so thick it felt pressurized, broken only by the hum of the climate-control system that kept the air at a constant, sterile sixty-eight degrees.
Evelyn Lin stood at the end of the long mahogany table, her shadow looking small against the panoramic backdrop of the weeping city. Her palms were damp, and she surreptitiously wiped them on her pencil skirt. In front of her lay the "Azure Wings" project—a physical manifestation of her soul. Three hundred pages of blueprints, environmental impact studies, and hand-sketched renderings of a community center designed to breathe life back into the decaying Bronx.
"It's a masterpiece," one of the junior directors whispered, his eyes lingering on the watercolor sky Evelyn had painted into the 3D model.
"It's a fairy tale," a sharper voice corrected.
Evelyn's heart did a slow, painful somersault. At the head of the table sat Liam Burke. He wasn't looking at her; he was looking at a spreadsheet on his customized tablet, the blue light reflecting in his silver-rimmed glasses like shards of ice. Liam was thirty-two, the youngest CEO in the firm's history, and a man who famously valued the structural integrity of a dollar over the artistic integrity of a building.
"Mr. Burke," Evelyn began, her voice hitching slightly before she found her professional mask. "The Azure Wings isn't just a building. It's a self-sustaining ecosystem. The solar glass alone reduces energy costs by—"
"By zero, Miss Lin. Because it will never be built." Liam finally looked up. His eyes were a piercing, unreadable grey. He didn't look angry; he looked bored, which was far worse. He tossed the tablet onto the table, where it slid across the polished wood, stopping inches from Evelyn's hand. "I've reviewed your material list. You're calling for carbon-sequestering concrete and biophilic green walls. Do you have any idea what the procurement costs are for those in the current market?"
"I've accounted for the long-term ROI—"
"There is no 'long-term' if the developer goes bankrupt in the first quarter of construction," Liam interrupted. He stood up, his six-foot-two frame dominating the room. He moved with the grace of a predator, circling the table until he stood directly in front of her. The scent of sandalwood and expensive gin wafted off him—a scent that promised luxury but delivered coldness.
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper that only she could hear. "You spent six months chasing clouds, Evelyn. You wanted to build a sanctuary for the poor, but you forgot that the rich are the ones who sign the checks. This is a business, not a charity. Your design is a beautiful, expensive, useless daydream."
He reached out and closed her portfolio with a sharp thud. The sound echoed like a gunshot. "The board has decided to move forward with Harrison's proposal. It's a concrete block, but it's a profitable concrete block. You're dismissed."
Evelyn felt a hot sting behind her eyes, but she refused to let a single tear fall in front of him. She gathered her plans—her 'daydreams'—and clutched them to her chest. As she walked toward the door, her heels clicking rhythmically on the marble floor, she could feel his gaze on her back, heavy and judgmental.
The subway ride back to her studio apartment in Brooklyn was a blur of neon lights and tired faces. By the time Evelyn let herself in, her umbrella had given up the ghost, leaving her hair matted and her coat soaked.
Her apartment was the polar opposite of the Burke Tower. It was a fifth-floor walk-up where the radiator hissed like a dying dragon and the walls were thin enough to hear her neighbor's television. She dropped her wet portfolio on the floor and collapsed onto her thrift-store sofa. The silence here was different—it wasn't the pressurized silence of power, but the heavy silence of failure.
She checked her bank account. Two hundred dollars until the end of the month. Harrison, the man who had won the project, was a hack who copied designs from the eighties, but he was a hack who knew how to kiss Liam Burke's boots.
"I hate him," she whispered to the empty room. "I hate every calculated, frozen inch of him."
Desperate for a shred of human connection that didn't involve a balance sheet, she pulled her phone from her pocket. She opened SoulSync.
The app was her secret sanctuary. No photos, no real names, no resumes. Just voices and souls. For four months, she had been talking to a user named [Deep Sea Whale]. He was her rock, the only person who seemed to understand the crushing weight of modern ambition.
She hit the record button, her voice trembling with raw, unfiltered emotion.
[Little Deer]: "Today was the day. I stood in that boardroom and offered them a vision of a better world, and he... he just crushed it. He called it a 'useless daydream.' He's so cold, Whale. It's like he has a clockwork mechanism where a heart should be. I feel like I'm suffocating in this city of concrete. Does anyone actually care about the soul anymore, or is it all just about the profit margins?"
She sent the message and let her phone drop onto the cushion. She didn't expect an immediate reply; Whale was usually busy during the day. She closed her eyes, listening to the rain rattle against her window, feeling the familiar grip of depression tightening.
Ding.
The blue light illuminated the dark room.
[Deep Sea Whale]: "I'm here, Little Deer. I'm listening."
A second later, a longer message followed.
[Deep Sea Whale]: "I know the man you're talking about. Or at least, I know the type. They build walls around themselves because they're afraid that if they let one 'daydream' in, the whole logical world they've built will come crashing down. Don't let his blindness become your darkness. Your 'Azure Wings'... it sounded like something that could have given people a reason to look up. Don't stop drawing just because one man forgot how to dream."
Evelyn felt a lump form in her throat. She picked up the phone, her fingers flying across the screen.
[Little Deer]: "How can you be so different from everyone else? You're just a stranger on an app, but you see me more clearly than my own boss does. I wish... I wish I worked for someone like you. Someone with a soul."
Twelve miles away, in a penthouse where the art on the walls cost more than Evelyn's apartment building, Liam Burke sat on a designer leather stool, a glass of neat bourbon forgotten on the counter.
The only light in the room came from his smartphone.
His face, usually a mask of impenetrable stone, was twisted in an expression of agonizing conflict. He replayed her voice message for the fifth time. He heard the catch in her voice when she said 'useless daydream.' He heard the quiet sob she tried to hide at the end.
Every instinct in his body told him to tell her the truth. To tell her that he had spent the last three nights fighting the board, trying to find a subsidy that would cover her energy-glass costs. To tell her that he had kept her original sketches in his top drawer because they reminded him of why he had wanted to be an architect in the first place—before the banks and the lawyers had bled him dry.
But if he told her, he would lose her. The 'Deep Sea Whale' was the only version of Liam Burke that was allowed to be human. If she knew the man she turned to for comfort was the same man who had humiliated her that afternoon, she would vanish.
He typed with a steady hand, though his heart was racing.
[Deep Sea Whale]: "Maybe he has a soul, Little Deer. Maybe he's just lost it under too much steel and glass. Go to sleep. The world is less cruel in the morning. I'll be here if you need me."
He locked his phone and stared out at the rainy skyline. He was the king of the city, and yet, he had never felt more like a ghost.