A tall man casts a long shadow

It was October when everything crumbled around him. 

Andrew, who was splitting his time between his new project, trying to contact his girlfriend, and Maxwell, so it came as quite a shock when a company wide email was sent out. 

He had been right. Someone had hacked into the system, but what they had done was far worse than anything he could have imagined. 

They had stolen information on several secret projects and had sold that information to their competitors. Andrew had been floored something like this had happened. They hadn't listed the projects, but instead listed the departments that had been affected. Andrew had been horrified to find his girlfriend's department listed. 

No wonder she hadn't had time for him. She'd been dealing with a bomb going off in the company. 

Andrew headed into work, knowing that they had no doubt been working on the investigation into who or whom had done it, and attended the company-wide meeting with deep concern for those involved. He even spoke with his coworkers about his concern for the others. 

Until he was called into his boss' office. 

Thinking it was about his project, or to ask if he'd seen anything strange when he was with his girlfriend, Andrew was blindsided by the harsh vibe he could feel when he entered the room. That, and the company president was there as well as his girlfriend and the head of her department. 

Confused, Andrew stopped in his tracks, unsure what was going on. He was surprised when a guard pushed him into the room and closed the door behind him, forcing Andrew further inside. The guard then stood by the door, arms crossed, clearly trying to intimidate him. 

His girlfriend was crying, while everyone else had a tense expression on their faces. 

"What is going on here?" Andrew asked, confused. His hand fell to his side, the papers he held there rustling as he looked around the room. His boss, who he had been joking with only yesterday, had a rather serious, and angry expression. 

"You know exactly what is going on. Don't play dumb, Knox." Andrew frowned. His Boss wasn't the kind of guy to insult a man by not calling him by his title. In fact, he was the one who started calling him Andy around the office. Why was he calling him by just his last name?

"No, I actually have no idea what is happening. This feels serious, but I don't know why. Is this…related to the data breach?" He asked, and his girlfriend started sobbing. 

"You know what you did Andrew! I can't believe I trusted you!" Andrew was baffled, and his expression showed so. His expression had a few of the others in the room hesitating. 

"What are you talking about? Why would you regret trusting me?" Something clicked, and Andrew's eyes widened. An awful, horrible feeling filled his chest. "No way. You don't think I had a part to play in this, do you?" From the stern looks on everyone's face, that appeared to be what everyone was thinking. Andrew was stunned. "What the hell would I gain if I did any of the things mentioned in the email? I'm in environmental science. I have no clue what's going on in the other departments." A firm lipped higher up shifted in their seat, and Andrew glanced in her direction. 

Andrew recognised her. He'd seen her a few times when his girlfriend had been coming out of her security clearance to have lunch with him. She scowled at him, her arms crossed, and Andrew wondered what her problem was. 

"I've seen you around the entrance to our department several times over the years. Why were you there?" Andrew glanced at his girlfriend, who was clearly throwing him to the wolves. His heart twisted as if a knife had been stabbed into his chest. 

"Why was I-did she not tell anyone about me? Did she tell you where she was going for lunch?" Blank, angry looks around and Andrew let out a harsh laugh, He ran his hand through his hair, before he glanced at his soon to be ex girlfriend. "We're dating. Or, I guess, I thought we were dating. But since she didn't tell her coworkers, clearly I was wrong." She sniffed, wiping her eyes.

 "We only had lunch a few times. That's not a relationship." Andrew was flabbergasted at her behaviour. Just a few lunches? She was the one who said she never had time after work because she had to look after her parents! It wasn't his choice to not hang out with her, she was the one who kept putting up walls. 

And a few lunches? They had been having lunch almost every day together for nearly two years. It wasn't until recently that she started avoiding him. 

Wait. 

"Have you been setting me up this whole time?" He asked her, point blank, and she went white. "Was this always your plan? Make me look like the bad guy so that you could throw everything on me?" He asked her. He wanted to move towards her, ask her to her face, but knew that everyone in the room would tense. He was a big man. It would be viewed as a threat. 

She started sobbing again. 

"How could you say that? I was seriously considering a relationship with you! How could you steal my keycard to get into my department and steal my research?" Andrew laughed. 

"I don't even know what you're working on. I never asked. I knew better than to pry into your projects. The same way you never asked about mine, even though mine are public." Andrew could tell that a few of the higher ups in the room were wilting, listening to Andrew defend himself. "Do you have evidence that it was me? Besides it being her keycard that was used to access the department?" Andrew asked, and there was some awkward shuffling. Andrew was ready to go off on them until they pulled up some still photos taken from the security camera.

"You were spotted around the department entrance, and they also spotted someone else in the department around your height. The omegas and alphas in the area also said they smelt a strange scent." Andrew furrowed his brows, glancing at the people in the room who didn't know him. 

"Uh, I don't have pheromones." Andrew said, and the woman who seemed to think Andrew was guilty the most snorted. 

"What do you mean you don't have pheromones? Of course you do." Andrew pointed at his chest. 

"I'm a beta. Through both of my checks when I was a kid. I'm beta through and through. Yes, I get my height from my alpha father, but that's it. I am not an alpha." He sighed, looking over the photos that were handed to him since it was clear no one wanted him to approach them. "While I am tall, and I understand that I am probably one of the taller men on staff, who says it was someone from our company? We could have a mole, or we could have someone pretending to be an employee, like me, who is easy to blame because they stand out?" Andrew swore he saw his soon to be ex-girlfriend make a face in the face of Andrew's logic. 

The higher ups were crumbling fast, but there were a few that remained staunch in their beliefs. 

"While that might be an option, since there were several breaches, we cannot rule out that you might have been involved. Thus, until we have finished the investigation, you are being laid off. Without pay. Until we have finished our investigation you are not to work on any of your projects, and everything you were working on is on an indefinite hiatus until this is sorted." The woman who spoke was the one who didn't like him, and it was clear she had greater authority then he thought.

Andrew felt his jaw drop. All of his projects were time sensitive, and his Boss knew that. When Andrew looked at him, he wouldn't meet his gaze. 

"You are also banned from the premises and we are going to ask you to leave after this meeting. You may come back tomorrow morning to gather your personal effects." They were basically firing him. Andrew laughed. 

"So you aren't going to fire me outright, but string me along so that I can't work in my field, is that right? Am I understanding this correctly?" No one said anything and Andrew's laughter was slightly maniacal. "So you want to chase me out of the industry? Because you aren't certain I did something? And all you have is testimony from one person and grainy security camera footage that you can't prove is me?" Andrew was honestly disgusted with every last one of them. 

He threw the papers down on the ground.

"Now Mr. Knox, that is-"

"Mr. Knox? Are you now going to disrespect me by trying to take away my Doctorate too? Or was that just a petty slight because you don't like me?" Andrew's words were harsh, which took many in the room by surprise. As most had seen the easy, carefree Andrew most of the time he had worked here, which had been over 5 years, they were stunned at the sudden hostility coming from him. 

"I can't fucking believe that I give you five years of my life and this is how you repay me? Fuck you. You can damn well expect that I will not be coming back to work at this company once this investigation is concluded." Andrew chuckled, shaking his head. "But I can guess, from how petty you're already being, that this investigation will never be concluded." A few of the higher ups tensed, and that only made Andrew's jaw harden. 

Andrew felt delirious. He felt hurt. He felt betrayed. 

He cast a dirty, hurt look towards the woman who he had thought he might eventually marry one day. 

"Suffice to say, whatever we were, is now over. I do not need help seeing myself out." Andrew spun, and when the security guard didn't move fast enough for him, he simply picked him up and moved him to the side.

Stunned, the room watched him leave, as Andrew fought the angry tears that wanted to spill from his eyes. 

Rushing from the office of his Boss, his coworkers watched him, confused, as Andrew tossed his clearance badge and everything else involving the company onto his desk. He even sat down and pulled all of his own research from the work laptop that they had paid for. There was no doubt in his mind that they would demand for it back, and shoved the zip drives into his pocket, furious, and fighting tears. 

"Andy? What's going on?" His youngest coworker, one of the last people he had trained, asked him tentatively. Andrew turned to the young, freckle-faced girl and laughed. 

"If you know what's best for you, I wouldn't remain at this company. Apparently, they don't value loyalty. As soon as someone comes to them with shoddy evidence, despite everything you've done for the company, they will believe them over you." That caused a stir amongst his peers. Andrew sighed, shaking his head. "Anyway, good luck everyone." They stood in shocked silence as Andrew dropped a bomb in the office.

He waved at them, before letting the smile fall from his face as he grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. He hadn't left anything in his cubicle that he would care about, so he didn't need to come back at a later date to grab anything. He would have liked the laptop, but he could eventually afford another. 

Fuck. 

If they chased him out of his field, he might have to go back to school. He'd gotten partway through a medical degree, but he was pretty sure that you couldn't just pick that up again. He just couldn't imagine himself in any other field. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.