There are twenty heralds working tonight’s shift. Everything moved fast in July. It had to since the company was essentially announced overnight. In under forty-eight hours, Joaquin built his core team, all people he’s known for years and would trust with his life. Then came time to find the first wave of heralds. After extensive background checks, candidates had to go through three sessions before being hired. The first was a phone call with Death-Cast’s HR manager, who disregarded any candidate asking about the company’s secret, seeing it as a red flag that they were more interested in solving the mystery than how best to perform the job at hand. The second session was a ten-minute meeting with Naya, where she asked them about their lives, later ranking them on how compassionate they seemed in a short window. Having had her own difficult experiences with doctors over the years, she’s aware that someone in an industry that prioritizes one’s well-being doesn’t necessarily make them a good person. The final session was a series of practice calls, all observed by Joaquin personally, to see if the candidate was empathetic and patient, though not too patient at the risk of other Deckers not receiving their alert because the herald is tied up on another line.

And now, Joaquin is seeing his employees in action, moving around the call center like a teacher in their classroom while the students take an exam. How the heralds do tonight will determine their future in this company.

The stakes are too high to be bad at this job.