Joe notices on his first day at Ponos corporation that something is deeply wrong. The vast Canary Wharf office is empty, his line manager is a bundle of paranoid energy, and his work is monitored by a strange AI chatbot, WellBot. Abyss is a surreal and terrifying corporate horror story that will make you question the 9 to 5 grind. In this excerpt, we follow Joe on a strange encounter with the Executive VP of Resourcing, Tordan Llyod.

Abyss
By Nicholas Binge
Published by Tor Nightfire

As he gets to the top of the stairs, facing the door that leads onto the first floor, he stops himself. His body is shaking with nervous energy and he has to put a hand on the wall to slow himself down. 

Stop it, Joe. Stop. You’re being mental. 

Piece by piece, he works through the events that have happened today, trying to imagine telling them to someone else. Most of the office are working from home, of course there’s no printer paper. The support team— or Super Users— probably aren’t even in the building. The AI chatbot is being weird, but since when were any of these LLM- style bots close to being accurate? They malfunction all the time. Nothing sinister is happening. 

He places his back against the wall, really really wanting to flick through some reels or browse Reddit— just for five minutes or something— just to reconnect with reality.  

But the appearance of WellBot on his phone has rattled him, and even though he’s sure it’s nothing and he’s just tired from lack of sleep, he can’t shake the feeling enough to actually take his phone out of his pocket. 

It’s all in your head. 

Somewhere in the back of his brain, he imagines his friends from school— Jason and Seb, wherever they are now— watching him on a collection of screens, able to listen in to his conversations and follow him around. What would they think, seeing him barely able to manage an office job like this? 

Oh, man, Seb mutters, zooming the camera in on his face. He’s a mess. 

Gritting his teeth, he taps the wooden frame of the first floor door seventeen times.  

‘It’s going to be okay,’ he says to himself. ‘It’s going to be okay.’ Taking a deep breath, he straightens his shoulders and pushes it open.  

The first floor corridor is indistinguishable from the others, as if it’s been copy- pasted. He hasn’t really been paying enough attention to be sure, but push come to shove, he’d swear even the corporate posters are in exactly the same position, down to the inch. The only differences are the numbers on the rooms, the sign above that says resources, and the fact that on this floor, all the blinds on the door windows are closed. 

Joe navigates his way to 108, swipes his keycard against the lock, and opens the door. 

He freezes. 

In his head, he expected to find a storage room filled with a range of office stationery: printer paper, files, pens and pencils, that kind of thing. A smallish space, filled to the brim with stuff and empty of people. 

Instead, he is standing at the doorway of a large, mostly empty room with a conference- style table in the middle of it, surrounded by chairs. At its head, there is a silver- haired man in a sharp striped suit and thick- rimmed glasses. He is holding a file.  

‘Mr. Rice,’ he says. ‘Take a seat.’

Joe’s mouth opens, but no words come out. For another few seconds, he just gazes around the room in disbelief. The blinds are half- open. The sun peeking through the continual overcast grey of the last couple of days bathes the room in muted light. There is nothing on the blank white walls. The other chairs are untouched. There is only Joe, and this man, who looks like he’s been waiting for him. 

‘Wh— I . . .’ he stutters. In front of the man, there is a metal table sign that says  

Tordan Llyod, Executive VP of Resourcing 

The man gives a tight smile, all lips and no teeth. ‘A seat, please.’ 

Unable to do anything else, Joe walks into the room and sits down at the opposite end of the table, almost ten feet of polished wood separating the two of them. He leaves the door deliberately open. 

‘I’m sorry, what am I doing here? I thought that this was— ‘  

‘My name is Tordan Llyod,’ he says, tapping the name sign in front of him. Joe can’t avoid the thought that his name sounds made up, even though really all names are made up. Still, it reads more like a typo of a real name than something culturally distinct. ‘I’m here to discuss your induction and your first two days.’

‘I wasn’t aware that— ‘ 

Tordan raps his knuckles on the table hard enough that Joe falls silent, the crack darting through the room like lightning. ‘I have concerns about the way you have been behaving yourself.’  

Why are you in a room I’ve been sent to for printer paper? Joe wants to scream. What the fuck is going on? 

 ‘This meeting is a bit of a surprise,’ he manages. 

‘Your conduct has been . . .’ Tordan pauses for emphasis. ‘A bit of a surprise.’  

Joe frowns. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t— ‘ 

Tordan raps his knuckle again and then opens the file in front of him, all in a single swift movement. ‘Yesterday, you left work an hour before contracted. Correct?’

‘I . . .’ Joe stumbles. ‘I didn’t realise that— ‘ 

‘Today, you have been wandering the building on some bizarre task that was not on your DailyPlan, meaning you are already woefully behind on your targets.’ 

Joe feels his cheeks go hot, a sick twist in his belly. ‘No, I mean, come on! I was given a task by my line manager.’ His voice is louder than it should be, but he can’t do anything about it. ‘You can’t seriously blame me for trying to find some printer paper!’  

Tordan raises his eyebrows. ‘Printer paper?’ 

‘Yes! Virgil Stanforth came in and— ‘ 

Joe’s sentence is severed by the door closing behind him. He jerks round to see Virgil, who enters the room and stands to Joe’s left. 

‘That’s quite enough of that,’ Virgil says. 

Joe stares up at him. ‘Can you please tell this man . . .’ He points at Tordan, but once again, his sentence goes nowhere. Tordan is staring at Virgil like he’s an anomaly in space and time. He cocks his head to one side, his entire face twisted in confusion, as if he can’t work out what the hell he’s doing here, or how such a thing would even be possible. 

‘How . . .’ Tordan says. He looks at his file, then back up. ‘There isn’t . . . I’m not . . .’

Virgil reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a thick angular pistol, its metallic surface almost gleaming in the growing sunlight. 

‘What the fuck?’ is all Joe manages, before Virgil levels the gun at Tordan and fires. 

His head snaps back as a bullet slams into his temple, blood splattering the wall behind, and he goes limp. 

Virgil tucks the weapon back into his jacket pocket and turns to a horrified Joe with a grim expression. 

‘You need to come with me. Now.’ 

Abyss is published by Tor Nightfire and will be released 13 May, priced at £14.94.