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At NCA, the consulting firm that handles the most sensitive secrets and pulls the strings of power, personal relationships between employees are strictly prohibited. The rule is clear: work comes first, and any ties that jeopardize the operation must be eradicated. Lucía Vega and Bruno Ortega live trapped in this cold and calculating world, where every move is watched and loyalty is not questioned, but demanded. Experts in their fields, they are fundamental pieces of the system... but outside the corporation, they have nothing and no one. They are completely alone. When the attraction they feel begins to break down their walls, they face a decision that could change everything: follow the rules and live in the void, or risk everything for a love that could be their salvation... or their downfall.
Contents
Chapter 1 First day of work
The elevator ascended without a sound. The polished steel walls reflected Lucía's image with almost insulting precision: her carelessly tied hair, the gray suit she'd been told was "neutral," and that expression that attempted to be firm, but was actually charged with something closer to vertigo.
When the doors opened on the 47th floor, she was greeted by a completely silent hallway. There were no signs, no windows, no distractions. Just beige carpet, opaque walls, and an air conditioner that made it impossible to distinguish the passage of time. In that artificially clean environment, even her heartbeat seemed like a system error.
NCA, the company that had recruited Lucía three weeks earlier, didn't appear on search engines. It had no social media or logos. It was a corporation that operated from the shadows, offering "reputation management" at the highest levels. Translated: they cleaned up messes, erased traces, protected those who could pay for the most convenient truth. Lucía walked with measured steps until she reached an unmarked door. She knocked once. A dry, male voice authorized her entry.
The office was half-hidden by frosted glass. There, a man with a pale face and dark circles under his eyes handed her a tablet without looking at it.
"Confidentiality agreement. Level zero. From now on, you remember nothing of what you were before."
She signed.
There was no turning back.
Lucía Vega was a brilliant and cold-blooded organizational psychologist, trained to be the best in her field. Her life revolved exclusively around work; she had no ties outside the corporation or a defined personal life. Her past was marked by sacrifice and discipline, with no room for error or affection. Although she seemed impenetrable, she carried a deep loneliness that manifested itself in moments of vulnerability.
The induction lasted less than ten minutes. They gave her a biometric pass, a code, and a command: "Never talk about yourself. No one here is a person, we are all a function."
Her office was at the end of the east wing, a windowless cubicle facing a wall of screens. Around her, the other employees tapped away at the type of work. There were no murmurs or coffee breaks. Only efficiency. Lucía observed those around her: men and women with neutral expressions, dressed in dull colors. None of them looked up from the screen, as if life were contained exclusively within the monitor.
On the main monitor, her first task appeared:
Content review: case G41-R. Client: confidential. Objective: remove emotional traces from the records.
Remove emotions? she thought. But she didn't ask.
Hours passed. Documents, videos, audio recordings. Distorted stories. The job was to polish the official version of reality, make it digestible, justifiable, "normal." The traces of harm had to be erased, the guilt diluted. The process was methodical: analyzing the recordings, detecting words or gestures that were too human, cutting them, editing them, replacing them with controlled expressions. Precise. Cold. No anesthesia.
At noon, no one moved. Lucía went out into the hallway in search of a bathroom and noticed all the doors were closed. She found a discreet sign at the end. As she returned, she saw for the first time the man from the internal compliance floor: tall, in a dark suit, walking with a folder under his arm and a heavy gaze. His eyes met hers for less than a second, but it was enough for her to feel like she'd been scanned. It was a look laden with judgment, but also with something Lucía couldn't immediately identify.
Bruno Ortega. In-house lawyer. Enforcer within NCA. His job was to handle the most sensitive crises and secrets. He had no "outside," no family or friends that mattered; his life was reduced to work and survival within a system he knew all too well. Cynical, controlled. His gestures were precise, measured. Everything about him seemed trained not to fail.
That he was there that day was no coincidence. Bruno was leading surprise internal audits. His mere presence was enough to keep the employees standing tall, barely blinking. Behind his neutral expression lay a deep fatigue. He was trapped in the machinery he powered.
When he returned to his post, a new notification appeared:
"Do not leave your station without express authorization. First warning."
The afternoon passed uneventfully. No one spoke. No one breathed more than necessary. Lucía felt time inside the building slipping away like a thick liquid, shapeless, rhythmless. The lack of reference points disoriented her. Even the passing of the hours became blurred. Sometimes she thought she had just arrived; other times, that she had been there for weeks.
At the end of the shift, the screen turned off by itself. Lucía stood up and followed two other employees walking silently toward the elevators. The same elevator that had brought her that morning took her back to the ground floor. The silence was as thick as the one she'd felt when she'd first arrived, but now it weighed differently, as if she were wearing an invisible cloak she couldn't remove.
That night, in the apartment she'd rented weeks ago, she went through her things. There were no photos. No memories. She'd left everything behind with the promise of starting over. But this... this wasn't a new beginning. It was a systematic erasure. There was a cruel neatness to everything around her. Every object had been placed with intention, but without soul. Like a stage set for someone pretending to live.
She turned on the shower and stood there for a long time, waiting for the water to wash away something she couldn't yet name. A suspicion, a feeling. As if by signing that contract, she'd given away something much more than privacy. The image of Bruno suddenly returned to her: that intense, almost inquisitive gaze. There was something about him that didn't fit in with the rest.
Before going to sleep, she opened her notebook. The only thing she kept from her previous life. She wrote a single line:
"Today I entered a place where everything feels real and dead at the same time."
She turned off the light. She didn't dream.
And the next day, the system started again.
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