HARDBALL
by Stephen Schlich
Synopsis

On his first day at work, ALEX NORMAN discovers that physical pain is company policy and murder an approved business transaction. In this workplace, survival of the fittest is law. Everyone plays hardball. Management pits Alex against fellow new hire LARS PARKER -- and both of them against everyone else. The President's brutal assassination at a company-wide meeting pushes Alex and Lars to the center of a violent power struggle between corporate lackeys and a terrorist Underground.

Who can survive in a culture where termination means death and the "winner" of a meeting is literally, the last man standing? Where the Employee Union tattoos its members and the Underground lives in the spaces between the walls?

Alex joins the Underground, led by his new lover Maya, to fight Lars and the Establishment. But they are all pawns in a mysterious game of political genetics.

In a surreal odyssey to the heart of the corporate complex, Alex discovers the company's ugly open secret: lower-level employees are not hired -- they are genetically engineered.

The company really does own you.

Betrayed by allies and hunted by company-bred thugs, Alex learns of his own genetic heritage -- and childhood indoctrination. His greatest enemy may be ...himself.

The climax forces Alex and Lars to fight as modern gladiators -- using common office supplies as weapons. Where? In the company auditorium, transformed into a shrieking, bloodthirsty Coliseum.

If Alex loses, he dies. But if he wins... will absolute power consume him?

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