“Obviously.” Ember folded her arms.
“Who connected you with these magicals wanting Matthew Thomas to write programs that work with O’gúl tech?”
“My uncle.”
“Your uncle?”
Matthew shrugged. “Yeah. I’m assuming you know about the Fantasy Realm, right?”
Ember snorted. “It’s called Ambar’ogúl.”
“What? No, not that place.” Matthew rubbed his forehead and searched for the words. “The organization. Fantasy Realm on Earth.”
She barked out a bitter laugh. “Matthew, someone’s been feeding you serious misinformation.”
“That’s what my uncle’s been calling it since he introduced me to these other weird-looking guys.”
Cheyenne grimaced. “Are you serious?”
“Look, I said I’d answer your questions, but that one doesn’t feel like a genuine question.”
“Stop talking.” Turning to face Ember, the halfling pressed her lips together and frowned. “He’s talking about the FRoE.”
Ember blinked rapidly and turned her head to shoot Matthew a sidelong glance. “Fantasy Realm on Earth?”
He spread his arms.
“That’s the worst name for any organization.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Well, we already know the FRoE’s pretty lacking in imagination. Their poor choices don’t surprise me anymore.”
“Wait, you know them too?”
“Hey.” Ember thrust a finger at him. “We’re the one asking you questions. Who we know doesn’t matter for this conversation.”
Matthew chuckled nervously. “Don’t you think that’s a little one-sided?”
Cheyenne whirled back toward him. “Yeah, it’s one-sided, ‘cause you fucked up!”
“Whoa.” He lifted his hands again and leaned back against the loveseat.
“Your uncle works for the FRoE, then?”
“No. He’s a private investor.”
“Oh, sure. Naturally.” Cheyenne ran her hands through her white hair, the chains clinking on her wrists. “When did he bring you the magicals?”
“About five years ago.”
Ember grimaced. “Shit, that’s a long time.”
“Yeah.” Cheyenne squinted at their neighbor. And we’re only now just hearing about it and seeing this tech powered up. Someone’s been sitting on this way too long for it to be about me passing the trials. “And you just took their money and said you’d do what you could to help, huh?”
“That’s business, Cheyenne. That’s how I make a living.”
“How wonderful for you. I’d say I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but I’m not.” She pointed at the metal sphere again. “You’re making a living off magicals who are sending tech like that, the tech you wrote programs for, into public spaces and trying to kill people.”
Matthew frowned. “Okay, now I can’t tell the difference between the truth and you trying to intimidate me.”
Ember swallowed with a pained frown. “You think we’d make up something like this for fun?”
“Honestly, I have no idea what you’d do. I have no idea who you are.”
“You tried extra-hard, didn’t you?” Cheyenne raised an eyebrow. “I bet that’s pretty disappointing for you right now.”
“Yeah, a little.”
“Okay, will you two just shut the hell up?” Ember shouted, extending a hand toward each of them. “Please.”
Taking a deep breath, Cheyenne stepped aside to give all three of them a little more space.
“Matthew, we’re not here to judge you as a person.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Speak for yourself.”
Ember gave her friend a long, intense warning stare, and Cheyenne turned away, scratching her nose. “We’re here because that’s exactly what’s happening with all this tech. The magicals controlling them are trying to kill people.”
“That’s insane.”
“And it’s real.” She raised her eyebrows. “Right now, they’re only attacking other magicals as far as we know, but it’s not that far-fetched to think the magicals running those machines will turn on humans eventually too.”
Matthew tried to glaze over his disbelief with a smirk. “I can’t even comprehend what you’re trying to tell me right now.”
Cheyenne scoffed. “You know, for someone who’s supposed to be a genius in cybersecurity and a leader in like four different industries, you’re pretty dumb.”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“Hey! Come on.” Ember pointed at the halfling. “Cut it out. I’m serious. Look, Matthew, we’ve both seen these things in action. That metal ball on your couch came off an O’gúl war tank in action. And yes, it did attack us. I was almost killed in my sleep by a bunch of other machines that looked like beetles and had some nasty features, but this is all the same stuff. All the same technology you’ve been powering or at least connecting your programs to for the last five years.”
“Don’t forget about that thing that tunneled into Peridosh,” Cheyenne muttered.
“Oh, yeah. That one almost got both of us too.”
“And the fly in my classroom.”
Matthew cleared his throat. “What’s Peridosh?”
“Nothing you’re ever gonna get to see.” Cheyenne cocked her head at him. “We’re not making this stuff up. A lot of innocent magicals have been attacked and hurt by these machines. Not just us, and it could’ve been a lot worse for a lot more of us. We can’t hold it off forever, so you need to turn off your system like yesterday.”
“No.” The unsure smile on Matthew’s face disappeared. “I won’t throw away the last five years of highly advanced work successfully completed by my company. I don’t care who you are or what you’re trying to do. I won’t just scrap the whole project.”
“You really are stupid.”
“Sure, maybe.” The man’s voice rose in volume as he tried to keep his composure.
Cheyenne scowled at him. Either his voice is gonna break or he is.
“Do whatever you want to my apartment, Cheyenne. I can replace everything in here.”
When she took a deep breath and opened her mouth to reply, Ember quickly added, “Don’t do anything.”
“How else are we supposed to stop this, huh?”
“Well, it’s not gonna be by tearing down Combined Reality, Inc. and these programs.” Matthew sniffed and crossed one ankle over his knee again, but his casual ease wasn’t convincing. “Besides, these friends of yours already have their own control centers at this point. We just update the system once a month and monitor it for issues. Occasionally, someone has a good idea, and we’ll throw that into the mix.”
“Well, stop doing that.” Cheyenne shook her head. “Don’t give these people anything better to work with. That’s a good start.”
“I can’t make any promises.”
“And I can’t promise I won’t come back here in the middle of the
