The Dismissal Letter Without a Signature #2
The woman didn’t look at her name. She looked at the file folder like it might bite. Her gaze slid over Sami’s documents with a kind of practiced distaste. “We’ve received your file,” she said. “There’s a discrepancy.”
“The memo said - ”
“Yes.” The woman cut her off. She turned a page, then paused. “The memo requests the original confirmation from the legal change process.”
Sami swallowed. “I can provide the copies.”
“The copies are not the original.” The woman’s voice stayed flat. “The original is required.”
Sami’s heart beat against her ribs so hard it made her fingertips feel numb. “I don’t have - ”
“You don’t have it,” the woman repeated, as if Sami had confessed to a crime. “Then you cannot be verified. Your employment status will be terminated pending review results.”
Terminated. The word landed like a door slamming. Her mind tried to retreat, to find a loophole, to find the signature that would make it deniable. But the memo’s lack of signature echoed in the room, the way unanswered questions did: it left space for everyone to pretend they hadn’t decided.
Sami leaned forward until the counter’s edge pressed into her palms. “Is there an appeal? A process? Someone I can speak to?”
The woman’s eyes flicked toward the plain-jacket man in the doorway. Sami followed the glance and saw him watching with the patient stillness of someone who didn’t need to raise his voice. He was there to make the building’s answer feel inevitable.
“There is a procedure,” the woman said, and her tone implied it was a myth people told themselves to keep breathing. “But it takes time. And you’re already outside the review window.”
Sami’s mouth went dry. “Outside because of what?”
The woman’s pen tapped the paper. “Because you’re late.”
Late. Sami had been running since the street video, since the officers in plain coats moved through the neighborhood like they owned the air. Late because her life had been made into a chase. Late because the building wanted her to run until she failed.
Sami straightened slowly. The room felt too bright, the walls too close. She thought of her pay slipping away, of how her rent - her small patch of normal - would vanish with it. She thought of Liana’s hidden room, of how long it could stay hidden if Sami had no income to barter for safety.
“Then give me the reason in writing,” Sami said, surprising herself with the sharpness in her own voice. “If it’s a memo without a signature, write what department decided it.”
The woman hesitated. That hesitation was small, but Sami felt it like a crack in ice.
“I can’t - ” the woman began.
The plain-jacket man stepped forward. “She can’t,” he corrected, gentle as a correction in school. “It’s already documented.”
“It’s documented as a question,” Sami said. “Without a signature. Without a person.”
His eyes stayed on her, flat now. “You’re asking for a person where there isn’t one.”
Sami stared at him, understanding arriving too fast and too late.
The memo without a signature wasn’t an oversight.
It was a method. A way to make decisions untraceable and appeals pointless.
Termination could be blamed on “the system,” on “department review,” on anything but the hands that made it happen.
She gathered her papers, her fingers clumsy. The woman didn’t stop her. The plain-jacket man didn’t either. There was no need; the damage had already been done.
Sami walked out into the corridor and felt the building’s air press against her skin like damp cloth. Her phone buzzed again. She pulled it out with a sudden, desperate movement and saw a notification from the employment office’s internal system - automated, cold.
Status: terminated.
Last payment: withheld pending final review.
There was no explanation beyond those words. No signature to chase. No route to follow that didn’t circle back to a locked door.
Sami stood by the glass wall where the corridor opened toward the waiting area and tried to breathe around the panic.
Sound came in layers: the scrape of chairs, a distant printer, the low murmur of other people trying to sound calm while their lives were handled by strangers.
She could smell the coffee again, bitter and reheated, and it made her stomach twist.
Her thoughts flicked to Aram - his caution, his habit of counting risks twice. She imagined him hearing this news, the way his face would tighten before he said anything. She imagined him trying to reach her, and her being too late again.
She didn’t have time to fall apart. Not here. Not with eyes on her.
Sami typed a message to Aram with hands that didn’t feel like hers.
Then she stopped, because her thumb hovered over the send button and the question rose like bile: sending anything meant leaving a trace. In a building full of deniable decisions, even a message could become evidence.
She lowered the phone, the screen dimming to a mirror.
In the glass, her reflection looked both familiar and wrong - her face still hers, but her name in the system suddenly treated like a mistake.
She saw herself as the memo had likely framed her: a discrepancy.
A pending review. A person whose income could be cut off without anyone ever having to sign their name.
A door at the far end of the corridor opened with a crisp click.
A plain-coated officer stepped out, speaking to someone in grey.
Their voices were muffled by distance, but Sami heard enough to understand the building’s mood had shifted again.
The atmosphere in the hall tightened, as if the air itself had become a rule.
Sami tucked her phone away and walked, not toward the exit, not yet. She moved toward a stairwell she’d noticed on her way in, keeping her pace steady, her shoulders squared the way Lina had taught her - through necessity, not pride.
Her job was gone. Her last paycheck was withheld.
But she still had her body, her name in her own mouth, and the thin, stubborn thread of hope that there could be a different kind of answer than the one the office had offered. She just didn’t know how much longer she’d be allowed to keep asking.