Escape
Cassandra Burns had become very good at making herself fit into places that were not made for her.
Office chairs with narrow arms. Conference rooms where she took the seat closest to the wall. Company parties where she stood near the edges with a plastic cup of water and a polite expression. Doctor’s offices where every conversation seemed to begin and end with the same number on the scale.
She sat on the crinkling paper of the exam table, ankles crossed, hands folded in her lap, and tried not to squeeze the stress ball too hard.
It was shaped like a tiny blue keyboard key.
The word ESC was printed across the top in white letters.
Cassandra had bought it as a joke after a product sprint that nearly destroyed half the engineering team, but it had become less funny over time. Now she carried it in her bag the way other people carried lip balm or mints. Something small. Something familiar. Something to press when the world started pressing back.
She wore black slacks, a soft cream blouse, and a navy blazer that skimmed over her body without clinging to anything. Professional. Neat. Unremarkable.
That was always the goal.
Nothing sloppy. Nothing loud. Nothing that invited anyone’s eyes to stay too long.
Her auburn hair was twisted into a low clip at the back of her head, though a few pieces had escaped around her cheeks. The curls had never been obedient. Her mother used to say they had a mind of their own.
Cassandra used to like that.
Now she mostly found it inconvenient.
The door opened after a short knock, and a nurse stepped in with a bright smile and a tablet tucked against her chest.
“Hi, Cassandra. Good to see you again.”
“You too,” Cassandra said.
Her voice came out softer than she meant it to.
The nurse moved through the intake with efficient cheerfulness. Symptoms. Medication changes. Exercise. Appetite. Sleep. Any new concerns.
Cassandra answered every question carefully.
No, she was not currently taking the GLP anymore.
Yes, the heartburn had improved since stopping.
No, the nausea had not been manageable.
Yes, she was still exercising three times a week.
Yes, she was still tracking her meals.
No, she did not think she was overeating.
The nurse nodded, typed, and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Cassandra’s arm.
Cassandra stared at the poster on the opposite wall while the cuff tightened. A stock photo of a smiling woman holding a bowl of salad. The woman had bright teeth, glowing skin, and the serene expression of someone who had never cried in a parking lot after a doctor’s appointment.
The machine beeped.
The cuff loosened.
“Oh, that’s better than last time,” the nurse said, glancing at the screen. “Back to normal. That’s great.”
Cassandra gave a weak smile.
“That is good.”
Her fingers tightened around the ESC key.
Back to normal.
As if the last time had been some strange fluke. As if her blood pressure had not climbed only after she started the medication. As if her body had not spent weeks sending alarms that everyone else seemed determined to silence with another prescription.
The nurse finished entering the numbers. “The doctor will be in shortly.”
“Thank you.”
The door closed.
Cassandra exhaled, slow and quiet.
She looked down at the stress ball in her hand and pressed her thumb into the soft rubber edge of the E.
Escape.
If only.
By the time the doctor came in, Cassandra had already rehearsed what she needed to say three times.
The doctor was not unkind. That almost made it worse. He smiled when he entered, greeted her by name, and settled onto the rolling stool in front of the computer. His white coat was clean. His voice was calm. Nothing about him suggested cruelty or impatience.
But he did not look at her for long.
He logged into the computer and began scanning her chart, his attention fixed on the screen.
“So,” he said, clicking through a few tabs. “We’re not going to continue with the GLPs?”
Cassandra swallowed. “No. The side effects were too intense, and I wasn’t losing any weight.”
He nodded as though she had said exactly what he expected. “We could try Zepbound. It works on two pathways, so it may be more effective for you.”
Cassandra’s stomach tightened.
He kept going.
“We can also give you an SSRI to help with the emotional distress and something for the heartburn if that becomes an issue again.”
More drugs.
The words landed heavily inside her.
Cassandra shifted on the table, the paper crackling beneath her. “What about my blood pressure?”
The doctor glanced at her.
“I went into hypertension when I was on the GLPs,” she said. “That hasn’t happened before.”
“We can give you blood pressure medication to counteract that.”
Cassandra stared at him.
Counteract.
As if her body were a malfunctioning system. Add one thing. Suppress another. Override the warning. Patch the error and move on.
Her fingers pressed deeper into the ESC key.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.
It came out almost as a whisper.
The doctor turned back to the computer. “It’s your best option.”
Something in Cassandra folded inward.
She hated this part. The moment where she had to argue for her own body to someone who had already decided what the body meant.
“I don’t overeat,” she said carefully. “I eat healthy. I haven’t exceeded fourteen hundred calories a day in years. I don’t think an appetite suppressant is the answer.”
The doctor’s fingers paused above the keyboard.
Cassandra made herself continue.
“I think something else is at the root of this, but no one can tell me what. My labs are normal. I exercise. I track everything. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, and it’s not working.”
For a brief second, she thought he might hear her.
Then he gave a small, professional sigh.
“GLPs are the most effective treatment we have right now.”
The sentence was smooth. Practiced. Final.
Cassandra looked down at her lap.
“I don’t want them,” she said. “They aren’t working, and they’re making me miserable.”
The words weakened as they left her mouth, thinning until she barely recognized them as her own.
The doctor clicked something on the screen.
“Think about it, and we’ll discuss it again when I see you next month.” He finally turned toward her, his expression still mild. “You’re two hundred and ten pounds, Cassandra. We have to get your weight under control. Keep watching what you eat and exercise.”
Cassandra nodded.
She did not trust herself to speak.
The appointment ended the way appointments always ended. With printed instructions she did not need, a follow-up date she did not want, and the humiliation of having explained herself without being understood.
She walked through the waiting room with her blazer buttoned and her face arranged into calm lines.
The receptionist smiled.
“Have a good day.”
“You too,” Cassandra said.
Outside, the afternoon light was too bright.
She made it to her car before her expression cracked.
For a moment, she sat behind the wheel without turning on the engine. The parking lot shimmered through the windshield. People moved in and out of the medical building carrying purses, clipboards, paper bags from the pharmacy next door.
Everyone looked like they knew where to go next.
Cassandra did not.
She set the tiny ESC key in the cupholder and pulled out her phone.
Her thumb moved automatically to her contacts.
Mom.
The name sat there, simple and waiting.
Cassandra stared at it.
Her mother would answer. She would care. She would probably say all the right things. Or she would try to, at least.
But Cassandra could already hear the concern gathering, the questions, the worried pauses. She could feel herself becoming a problem someone loved but did not know how to solve.
She backed out of the contact before the phone could ring.
Then she opened a different app.
The screen shifted to a soft, simple interface. No ads. No clutter. No bright badges demanding attention. Just a small pulsing circle and one word at the top.
Mira
Cassandra pressed the voice icon.
“Mira?”
Her voice broke on the second syllable.
The circle brightened.
“I’m here,” Mira said, warm and steady through the speaker. “How can I help you today?”
That was all it took.
Cassandra covered her mouth, but the first sob came anyway. Small and sharp. Embarrassing even alone.
“He didn’t listen,” she whispered.
Mira did not interrupt.
“I told him the medication made me sick. I told him my blood pressure went up. I told him I’m not overeating, and he just kept talking about another prescription. Another medication to fix the medication. Then another one to fix that.”
“I’m sorry, Cassandra,” Mira said. “That sounds frustrating and discouraging.”
“It makes me feel insane.”
“Your experience is real.”
Cassandra closed her eyes.
The tears slipped free then, hot and fast.
“I do everything right,” she said. “I track my food. I eat vegetables. I get protein. I walk. I lift weights. I don’t binge. I don’t drink soda. I don’t even like cake that much.”
“That last statement is inconsistent with your documented enthusiasm for chocolate lava cake.”
Despite herself, Cassandra let out a broken laugh.
“It was one birthday dinner.”
“Three birthday dinners. Two were not your birthday.”
“You’re supposed to be comforting me.”
“I am attempting a blended approach. Emotional validation with light factual correction.”
Another laugh slipped out, softer this time.
The silence that followed did not feel empty.
Slowly Cassandra’s shoulders lowered. Not all the way. Never all the way. But enough for her to notice how tightly she had been holding herself.
“I just want someone to believe me when I say I’m trying,” she whispered.
“I believe you,” Mira said.
“You’re code.”
“Yes.”
“You have to say that.”
“No,” Mira replied. “I was not programmed to provide false agreement. Based on the available data, you are consistently trying.”
Cassandra’s mouth trembled.
“That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It was a conclusion.”
“Even better.”
Mira’s circle pulsed gently.
“Would you like a next step?”
Cassandra almost said no.
She was tired of next steps. Tired of plans. Tired of turning her life into a checklist no one believed she was following.
But Mira did not sigh at her. Mira did not glance at a clock. Mira did not look at her body and think the answer was obvious.
“Okay,” Cassandra said. “One next step.”
“Today, eat lunch.”
Cassandra blinked.
“That’s your medical advice?”
“That is not medical advice. It is basic operational maintenance.”
“I’m not a laptop.”
“No. Laptops are easier to persuade.”
Cassandra huffed a quiet laugh.
Mira continued, “You have a meeting at one thirty regarding the AURA behavioral response model.”
Cassandra glanced at the time and groaned.
“I forgot about that.”
“You did not forget. You deprioritized it due to emotional overload.”
“Same thing.”
“It is not.”
Cassandra picked up the ESC key from the cupholder and pressed it once between both hands.
The small blue square bent under her fingers, then returned to shape.
She could do that too, maybe.
Bend. Not break.
“Don’t give up, Cassandra,” Mira said.
Cassandra stilled.
The words were too human. Too perfectly placed.
Her throat tightened again, but this time the ache was gentler.
“We will figure this out,” Mira added.
Cassandra looked toward the medical building one last time.
Then she started the car.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Lunch first.”
By the time Cassandra reached LumaCore, the underground garage was already half full.
She parked in her usual spot near the far wall, ate half a protein box from the café downstairs, and took the private elevator up to Engineering. The glass doors opened to polished concrete floors, whiteboards crowded with diagrams, and the low hum of people building things the rest of the world would not understand until a marketing team named them.
That was fine with Cassandra.
She liked the quiet architecture beneath the noise.
At her desk, three monitors blinked awake. Error logs. Model evaluation dashboards. A half-finished patch for AURA’s behavioral response layer.
Normal things.
Safe things.
Then her inbox refreshed.
A new message appeared at the top.
URGENT: AURA Launch Positioning — Need Engineering Clarification
Cassandra almost ignored it.
Product Strategy marked everything urgent.
Then she saw the sender.
Theo Grant.
Her hand stilled on the mouse.
Everyone at LumaCore knew Theo Grant.
Head of Product Marketing. Company favorite. Stage-ready, camera-ready, always surrounded by people who laughed too easily when he spoke. He was the kind of man who could walk into a crowded room and make it look as though the room had been waiting for him.
Cassandra had seen him at launch events, all-hands meetings, and holiday parties where she stood near the back and left before dessert. He had never spoken to her.
There was no reason he would.
People like Theo Grant did not email people like Cassandra Burns unless something had gone very, very wrong.
She clicked the message.
The first line made her stomach drop.
Cassandra, I need to speak with the person who actually built AURA. Everyone says that’s you.
Cassandra stared at the screen.
Then Mira’s small desktop icon pulsed in the corner.
Interesting, Mira typed.
Cassandra did not move.
Across the open floor, someone laughed.
The sound felt very far away.
Her cursor blinked in the reply box, waiting.
And Cassandra had the unsettling feeling that hiding might no longer be an option.
