The next morning, I got another text from the same number: “Can you get into the building before 8?” I stared at it for a long time because my badge had never been something anyone outside the company should have known about. I asked who was texting me, but no answer came. Instead, a second message arrived with the name of a department I had never worked in. I put the badge in my purse and drove to the office, mostly because I needed to understand what was happening. When I arrived, the security guard looked at me strangely and asked why I was there after being terminated.
I told him I wasn’t there to work, and he lowered his voice before saying, “Good, because someone used your badge at 6:14 this morning.” My stomach dropped. I had been home at 6:14, and the badge was in my coat pocket beside my bed. He pulled up the access log and showed me the entry. Then he showed me three more entries from the previous week, all during hours when I had been in meetings with the director. I suddenly understood why someone had asked whether I still had the badge.
I called the number back, and this time a man answered. He said he worked in internal security and had been trying to reach me because my badge was connected to something much bigger than my termination. Someone had been using former employees’ credentials to access archived files, and my name was one of several attached to the activity. He told me not to return to the building and not to hand the badge to anyone who asked for it. Then he said, “You were supposed to be the easiest person to blame.” I looked at the badge sitting in my hand and realized being fired at fifty-seven might have been the reason they needed me out before anyone noticed what was happening.
