Work Your Fingers to the Bone

An ambitious hedge fund employee takes increasingly extreme steps to climb the corporate ladder in this chilling workplace horror novel set in the eldritch Manchester of The Magnus Protocol.

When back-office analyst Theodore Baker breaks into the safe of a recently deceased and notoriously “lucky” senior associate, he expects to find something that will give him an advantage at the fund. Blackmail. Insider records. He’d even take a rabbit’s foot. Whatever secret leverage helped a man who couldn’t remember his own PIN make millions off apparently instinctual short sells.

Instead, he finds a Gotcha: a digital-pet pedometer toy from a simpler time, when kids still played outside and a career in finance meant stability instead of ever-imminent corporate restructuring. Between an office in turmoil, an exec determined to see Theo fired, and a Gotcha hungry for a few thousand steps a day, Theo’s priorities are clear.

A nice, long walk sounds like exactly what he needs.

And with each step he’s willing to take, the grass around Theo seems to get a little greener. His hit rate is impeccable. His arbitrages, pure. His number goes up, and up, and up. Sure, tragedy seems to pop up in his path, but the world has always had its nightmares. The only difference is that now Theo can use them to his advantage.

What could be the harm in that?