“Swipe the card at the elevator, and it will take you to where you need to be.”
“Great; if only life were so simple.” JD tapped the card on the counter and crossed the lobby to the elevator. A car carried him up through the structure, smooth enough it hardly felt like he was moving.
The door opened with a cheery ping. A woman waited for him before a wide bay of translucent glass doors. She was tall and skinny, with large-framed glasses, pronounced cheekbones, and a VOIDWAR T-shirt tucked into tight jeans.
“You must be Kehinde,” she said, offering her hand. “Lucy.”
JD shook it, and felt the quake of his heart through his chest as fear gripped him. In the lobby, he’d had the option to run. Upstairs he was trapped, caught in the belly of the beast.
“I must look terrible,” he said, smiling wide; “just landed an hour ago. Barely had a chance to scratch myself before the car brought me here from the hotel.”
Lucy chuckled politely. “We’re all devs up here—you could be wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants and no one would bat an eyelid. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
Lucy swiped them both through the doors. The open-plan office had workstations gathered together in groups, islands of desk and rig spilling masses of tangled cables, and sprouting printed artwork, action figures, and origami re-creations of VOIDWAR ships. To the right of the doors was a long table covered in a dozen types of snacks, a fridge filled with energy drinks and flavored sparkling water, and a foosball table, the grips worn and grimy with use.
A few people sat at rigs, some working, some playing VOIDWAR—which could have still been work. One wall was lined with closed offices and meeting rooms, and in the far corner JD noted another emergency exit, fear keeping his senses sharp. The sound of snoring emanated from beneath one stack of desks, cutting through the background hum of the building’s AC.
“Do you play?” Lucy asked.
“VOIDWAR? Of course. It’s why I took a job at Zero. Wanted to work on the games, but HR thought my skills were better used elsewhere.”
“And where’s that?”
“Acquisitions,” JD said. It wasn’t a lie. “You always work this late?”
“No,” Lucy said, extending the word to two syllables. “We’re adding a new faction soon, and our project leads weren’t happy with the first batch of concept art. Rest of the team fell asleep, but I had one too many caffeine pills, y’know?”
Lucy pointed out the artist grotto where she worked, and detailed each of the other groups of workstations—programmers, animators, sound design, music, production.
“What about testing?” JD asked. “Too expensive to do in-house, right?” It sounded like something his fictional investors would care about.
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Quality assurance is farmed out to remote workers, to keep costs down.”
JD nodded. He’d been tempted to apply for a testing job when he was still in school, but a small amount of research told him precisely how boring and repetitive it would be. And there was no corporate ladder leading from QA to any sort of career he cared for.
“Everything here looks great,” JD said, feigning excitement; “I’m sure the investors will want to hear all about it. Speaking of, it’s almost about time for that meeting.” JD pointed to one of the enclosed offices. “Mind if I hole up in there? I need some privacy.”
“Of course,” Lucy said. She led JD to the office and scribbled “Kehinde Rhoades” onto a small square of whiteboard embedded into the door. She opened the door and the light flicked on automatically. The workspace was undecorated, unpersonalized, empty until someone—like JD’s alter ego—needed it. “I’ll leave you to it.”
She shut the door behind her. JD waited, breath held, watching Lucy through a slit in the blinds until he was sure she wouldn’t turn around and come back to offer him coffee or a caffeine pill. When she reached her desk and sat, JD finally exhaled.
He dropped down into the chair, and wiped his sweaty palms on the thighs of his pants. JD stuck his phone into the slot at the top of the rig and waited for the machine to whine to life.
“You ready, Mirae?”
“One moment,” I said. I connected to the me waiting patiently beneath the Varket, intrusion tools spooling into my memory faster than I could catalogue them. A Zero data entry drone in the Brisles with a password the same as their birthdate was my ticket into the system. “I have given you low-level access. It will suffice until Enda plays her part.”
“Alright, great,” JD said. “Is VOIDWAR installed on this rig?”
“Of course—the live version, and a closed development beta. Are you okay? You sound strained.”
“Trying not to think about how many laws I’m breaking,” JD said.
“I will keep you off the surveillance recordings, so just try not to get caught.”
“Thanks, Mirae. Boot up the live instance of the game, and tell Enda we’re ready.”
“Done.”
“Think this will work?” JD asked.
“It doesn’t need to work if the threat is enough.”
“And if it isn’t?”
I tried to calculate our odds. “I don’t know.”
JD opened the top drawer in the desk and found a VR eyemask. He pulled it on over his eyes, rested his hands on the controls embedded in the chair, and leaned back. His body remained in the office but his mind was transported to the stars.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“I told you to wait in the truck,” Enda whispered harshly as she and Soo-hyun entered the building’s lobby.
“And I told you and JD that I’m in this ’til the end.”
Enda sighed. “Fine. But can you stay in the lobby?”
“Sure thing, I’ve got half a bottle of vodka and some forgetting to do; I’ll be fine.”
Enda opened her mouth to speak, but Soo-hyun cut her
