Day 481

Your colleague had died yesterday sometime during the night, or so the email from HR said.
Last you saw of him he was at one of the courtyard meetings that are usually strictly for directors.
Nobody mentioned them, there was never any email about the courtyard's use.
The only time it had ever been mentioned to you was during your initial training.
You'd been told it was strictly off limits and to not linger by the surrounding windows for long.

Initially you'd assumed it was for privacy (though the location was strange at best) but as time
progressed you began to notice discrepancies in their meetings.
For starters there were no secretaries present to write the minutes, surely any meeting of the top
company members requires some form of note taking yet there was never any paper around.
That soon became minor compared to the rest, namely the missing people.

Their only connection was that they had all been seen in a courtyard meeting beforehand.
They were never found in the same place or even the same country.
Any connection to the company was minimalised by the media and the emails sent out were
professional and cold, nobody complained though.
We were just thankful we hadn't been called in yet.

The meetings happen more and more often now.
We see them held daily, each time a new employee is seated at the head of the table.
Their faces are always blank and their clothes are streaked with ink.
We can't train new staff fast enough, at this rate there'll be nobody left.
The news are calling it terrorism but they're looking to the outside when the killers are all here.