Glass Shards and Holly

My desk was a battlefield of tinsel and corporate propaganda. "Joyful Junction Presents: A Festive Future!" screamed the holo-advert from a half-broken projector, casting sickly green and red light over a stack of vendor quotes. The annual OmniCorp holiday party. My personal hell. My name’s Desmond. And I was in charge of making sure three hundred jaded, over-caffeinated tech drones pretended to enjoy recycled synthetic turkey and lukewarm synth-egg nog, all while under the watchful eye of a dozen corporate security cameras.

"Desmond? You got those drone caroller bids yet?" That was Meagan. Her voice, thin and reedy, sliced through the already buzzing air of the office bullpen. Meagan, the perpetually anxious junior assistant, clung to her datapad like a lifeline. She never looked up, always focused on the pixels.

"Almost. The Mark-XII units from CyberHarmonies are cheaper, but their vox-modulators keep glitching out, apparently singing 'Deck the Halls' with random excerpts from corporate policy manuals." I rubbed my temples, the faint scar from my last neural upgrade itching. "We really can't stretch for the Mark-XV, the ones that actually *sound* human?"

"Budget. You know OmniCorp's Q4. And the executive decision was firm on 'cost-effective yet festive'. Emphasis on cost-effective, Desmond," Meagan mumbled, her fingers flying across her screen, probably cross-referencing my very legitimate concern with some obscure policy guideline.

"Right. Cost-effective. Like the 'repurposed' decor from last year's dismal Halloween bash." I gestured vaguely at a box spilling out silver streamers, still with faint cobweb patterns. "This is going to be a disaster. Another one."

The elevator doors chimed, a brief moment of silence before the low thrum of the building's infrastructure reasserted itself. Our floor, 47, was a hive of controlled chaos. Data analysts hummed, their brain-ports glowing faintly. Coders clacked, fingers blurring over holographic keyboards. Overhead, maintenance drones zipped silently, occasionally sparking.

The Glaze on the Machine

Later that afternoon, the delivery arrived. Not the catering drone I’d been expecting, but a smaller, unmarked utility bot, pushing a single, heavy crate. "For Desmond," a monotone voice chirped from its speaker. "From Procurement. Urgent, personal."

My brow furrowed. Procurement didn't send personal, urgent deliveries via unmarked bots. Not to me, the lowly party planner. I signed off on the digital manifest, the bot whirring away with an almost suspicious haste. The crate itself was plain, grey composite, sealed with industrial-grade polymer tape. No return address, no product number. Just my name, stencilled crudely.

"What's that, boss?" said Sid, a lanky coder from the adjacent cube, peering over his partition. His face was pale, lit by the blue glow of his multiple screens, eyes augmented with cheap, blinking optics.

"No idea. Supposedly a party favour? Feels a bit heavy for a novelty ice sculpture." I knelt, prying at the seals with my multi-tool. The tape gave with a sickly rip. Inside, nestled in dense foam, was a sleek, black briefcase. Not just any briefcase. This one was all angles and brushed obsidian, with no visible seams or locks. Corporate-issue. Top tier. The kind the higher-ups carried, filled with secrets and stock options. Not for me.

My fingers traced a subtle pressure plate on the side. With a soft hiss, the case sprung open. Not data chips, not corporate files. Inside, resting on a bed of crimson velvet, was a single, perfect glass orb. It glowed faintly, a pulse of deep, unnatural violet light from within. It hummed, a low vibration that I could feel in my teeth. It wasn't a party favour. It wasn't even from Procurement.

A note, thin and translucent, fluttered out. Just three words, in elegant, archaic script: "Handle with care."

"Woah," Sid breathed, his augmented eyes wide. "What... what *is* that?"

I shook my head, my mind racing. This was beyond the purview of synthetic turkey and caroling drones. This was something else. Something dangerous. The faint hum of the orb grew louder, a deep, resonant frequency that seemed to vibrate not just the air, but the very steel structure of OmniCorp itself. A sharp, almost painful throb started behind my eye.

The office buzz felt distant, muted. The colours of the holo-adverts seemed to bleed into the grey, sterile walls. The violet light from the orb pulsed, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the stale, recycled air. It felt… hungry. Or perhaps, just aware. Aware of me.

My datapad buzzed. A message. Encrypted. From an unknown source. "They know you have it. Don't engage. Wait for further instructions. Do NOT let it leave your possession. Your life depends on it." The message vanished, leaving no trace.

My hand instinctively closed over the orb, the cool glass surprisingly smooth, almost liquid against my palm. The violet light intensified, casting my cubicle in an eerie glow. I glanced around. No one else seemed to notice. They were all still lost in their data streams, their corporate-mandated routines. Sheep. And I was now holding… what? A bomb? A key? A highly illegal, super-advanced paperweight?

The door to the executive lounge, usually sealed, slid open with a soft sigh. From within, I caught a glimpse of polished chrome and the hushed, almost reverent tones of OmniCorp's upper echelons. One of them, a gaunt woman named Professor Yumi, with her signature stark white hair and a cybernetic eye that glowed faintly, emerged. Her gaze, or rather, the gaze of her augmented eye, swept the bullpen. It lingered, for just a fraction of a second, on my cubicle. A flicker of something in her expression, something predatory, before she moved on, disappearing into the main corridor.

My throat felt tight. The orb pulsed in my hand, a silent, powerful heartbeat. She knew. Or suspected. This wasn't just about party planning anymore. This was a game, and I had just been handed the most dangerous piece. The faint scent of pine had vanished, replaced by something acrid and electric. The winter outside felt less cold, and more like a heavy, suffocating blanket. My hands, clammy and cold, gripped the edge of the conference table.

The Festive Fuse

I needed to move, but where? I couldn't just walk out with this thing. And the message, "Don't engage. Wait for instructions." Who sent it? And why?

Meagan called my internal comms. "Desmond? You're still on for the holographic snow globe vendor. They're waiting."

"Right. Snow globes." My voice sounded rough, strained. "Be there in a minute." I carefully closed the briefcase, the orb's light still faintly visible through the composite material. I slid it under my desk, partially hidden by a stack of "Festive Future" brochures.

I got up, my movements stiff. The chill of the office air seemed to bite deeper now, or maybe it was just the adrenaline. The vendor was in meeting room B, a glass-walled box overlooking a particularly dismal stretch of the city where the smog hung heavy.

As I walked, I kept an eye out. Every flicker of an augmented eye, every drone that zipped by, felt like a potential threat. OmniCorp was a surveillance state, masked by a veneer of corporate professionalism. The Christmas decorations, once a source of mild irritation, now felt like a cynical mockery, a brightly coloured shroud over something rotten.

The vendor, a nervous-looking man named Pieter, was already projecting samples of his holographic snow globes. Tiny, perfect storms swirling within the air of the room. "We can do custom logos, Mr. Desmond," he chirped, oblivious. "Imagine, OmniCorp's emblem, suspended in a blizzard! A truly unique party favour."

"Unique," I echoed, my mind elsewhere. The orb beneath my desk. The woman, Professor Yumi. What was OmniCorp really celebrating? A profitable year, or a successful acquisition of something far more valuable, far more dangerous, than market share?

Pieter droned on about projection capabilities and energy consumption. I nodded, feigning interest, my hand twitching for my datapad, wanting to check for new messages, new instructions. But I couldn't risk it. Not yet. Not with Yumi possibly watching.

"And for a special touch," Pieter continued, a manic grin on his face, "we have the 'Arctic Heart' model. It doesn't just project, it radiates. A subtle, internal resonance. Clients tell us it adds a certain *je ne sais quoi* to the atmosphere."

I froze. "Radiates? Resonance?"

Pieter beamed. "Precisely! A low-frequency hum, completely harmless, of course. Creates a feeling of… presence. Of depth."

My heart hammered against my ribs. "Show me. The Arctic Heart model."

Pieter eagerly pulled up a new projection. A single, crystalline orb, identical to the one in my briefcase, appeared in the air. As it spun, it pulsed with a faint violet light, and I felt the familiar hum, a phantom vibration in my teeth. It was the same. The exact same. But how? And why was Pieter selling it as a party favour?

"It's a marvel of bio-luminescent synthetics and resonant frequency emitters," Pieter explained, oblivious to my growing horror. "We've got a whole crate ready for delivery, just awaiting your final approval."

A whole crate. The one that bot delivered to me had only *one* of these. And the note: "Handle with care." This was more than a party favour. This was a distribution method. A cover. OmniCorp was planning to hand these out. To everyone at the party.

The implications hit me like a cyber-truck. Whatever that orb was, whatever it did, OmniCorp was using its annual Christmas bash to distribute it. And I, Desmond, the unwitting party planner, was somehow at the epicentre of it all.

My comms buzzed again, a different channel this time. My secure, personal channel. "Desmond. Don't look around. You're being watched. Yumi's team. They're looking for the others. Don't let her get her hands on it. The orb… it’s a key. A very unstable one. And OmniCorp wants to open a door."

The voice was distorted, synthesised, but urgent. "The party isn't just a celebration, it's a deployment. Get out. Now. Before it's too late. Before they all become part of the system."

I stared at the holographic orb, then at Pieter, who was still enthusiastically detailing the merits of its "subtle resonance." The festive future. It felt less like a future, and more like an abyss. The snow outside the meeting room window began to fall faster, blurring the neon lights of the city into streaks of colour, a distorted reflection of the danger I now held. My hands, clammy and cold, gripped the edge of the conference table. The cold, mechanical hum of the building seemed to deepen, reverberating with the silent, pulsing violet heart of the device I was meant to distribute as a "gift."