She gets the call
From outta nowhere and she
Don't know what to do or think or say.

The job is open.
The old boy's gone and went himself
Right out the window, and she thinks, she thinks, well
I
I deserve this.
I work harder than-
And I
I am worth this.
I'm worth more than-


The porter leads her to a lift which rockets right up to the penthouse where the board have all assembled for the contract signing ceremony. The tech director's wrapped in sigils like a psychopomp and Jenny from HR has donned a diadem of bone.
In the chamber there's a quartet of homonculi in morbid raiments representing sales, legal, finance and PR.
And she's blinded by the light reflecting off the CEO's veneers, which sparkle, hyper-vivid, as he grins and shakes her trembling hand.

Small talk and booze,
Taut smiles and canapés.
Somebody asks her if she's pleased.

She clears her throat,
And says she used to wanna be a vet.
She's kinda shocked to hear the words out loud.

But now,
There's no time left,
No room to hesitate.
Now,
The sanctum's waiting,
It's swinging open.

And the sacrificial altar is a rental from a startup that was made to take our transcendental energies and atomise them, delivered by some harried bastard on ten bucks commission paid for each delivery. Now work you fucker, work.
There's a new and gleaming body, built in Northrop Grumman's basement, decked in clothing stitched by women's bleeding fingers in the East.
And there's a recess in the stone just big enough to put her heart in. Will she miss the way it beats or is the taste of iron sweet enough?

With a steeple at the summit,
And a lever in her hand,
Cutting swaths through untapped markets
All across the blasted land,
She's the Herald and the Hunger
Of a dim and baleful star.
Now she knows her destination
And a beating heart can only go so far.

And you were kinder once.