“Whose target?”
Martin hesitated.
“Corporate.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn't about four cents.”
“I figured that out.”
Martin sat down.
“Three months ago, corporate began preparing Briar Ridge for restructuring.”
Ethan frowned.
“What kind?”
“I don't know.”
“Sell the plant?”
“Maybe.”
“To whom?”
Martin shook his head.
“That's the problem.”
Ethan waited.
Martin finally said:
“They've been evaluating whether to close two production lines and outsource them.”
Ethan felt something cold settle in his chest.
“How many jobs?”
“Possibly two hundred.”
“Possibly?”
“Nothing is final.”
Ethan looked toward the factory floor.
Six hundred people worked there.
Two hundred families.
Two hundred mortgages.
Two hundred sets of health insurance.
Two hundred people who had no idea someone was calculating whether they were worth keeping.
“Why hide it?”
“Because the company wants the plant's financial performance to look worse than it is.”
Ethan understood.
“If they make the plant look inefficient…”
“They can justify the restructuring.”
“And the four cents?”
Martin nodded.
“Employees get almost nothing.”
“They get angry.”
“Then management says the plant is underperforming.”
Ethan sat down.
For fourteen years, Briar Ridge had been more than a job.
It had been the place where he had raised Emma.
Where coworkers had brought food after Laura's diagnosis.
Where people had taken turns driving Ethan home when his wife was hospitalized.
And now someone was manipulating numbers to make the place look disposable.
Martin looked at him.
“Let it go.”
Ethan shook his head.
“No.”
Martin sighed.
“I knew you'd say that.”
What the Factory Was Worth
Ethan didn't sleep much that week.
He sat at the kitchen table after Emma went to bed, surrounded by maintenance reports, old pay statements, and handwritten notes.
Laura watched him from the doorway.
“You're doing it again.”
Ethan looked up.
“Doing what?”
“Trying to fix something nobody asked you to fix.”
He smiled.
“It's a bad habit.”
Laura walked over.
“What happened?”
Ethan told her.
Not everything.
He didn't tell her about corporate restructuring until the end.
When he did, she sat beside him.
“How many?”
“Two hundred.”
Laura was quiet.
Then she said, “You always tell Emma that numbers don't tell the whole story.”
“They don't.”
“Then don't let them tell this one.”
The next morning, Ethan went back to work.
He began documenting everything.
Not stealing files.
Not hacking systems.
Simply recording what he could legitimately access.
Machine downtime.
Repair histories.
Scrap percentages.
Preventive maintenance schedules.
Energy consumption.
Production output.