Break So Soft: Break So Soft Duet

by Black, Stasia

  I draw back from him. No way perpetual-stick-up-her-ass Marcy can have anything good to say about me.

  “No way.”

  Jackson puts a hand to my cheek to stop me from shaking my head. “Have I ever lied to you?”

  My eyes flare briefly back up to his.

  “She reports that no one cleans code up as quickly as you and that when you discovered Thompson’s bug a few weeks ago—the one that wasn’t just a bug but a logic error—you coded an elegant solution that made the algorithm work three times faster. She said you’re the best on her team.”

  Wow. Marcy paid attention to that? I mean, I included it in my written report, but I didn’t even think she read those things.

  Still. “Then why not promote Marcy herself?” She’s ambitious as hell and would no doubt be pissed if I was promoted ahead of her.

  Jackson smiles at me, head tilted sideways. “A person would think you didn’t want a promotion.” He shakes his head and laughs. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I am in fact promoting Marcy to a top project management position. That’s only coincidental, though. Like you, she’s earned it. All of my employees know that while loyalty is rewarded, skill is what is most highly valued. There’s a reason that we have avenues at CubeThink for bright new talent to rise in the ranks more quickly.”

  Bright new talent? Is that really what he thinks of me?

  This has all got to be a load of bullshit… but his eyes are searching mine earnestly and he looks completely serious.

  And fuck, I hate myself for even thinking it, but this is exactly what I’d need if I was going to go along with Gentry’s plan—an inside track to Jackson’s most exclusive products that he himself is personally developing. Of course, there’s no way in hell I intend on following through and giving into what that bastard wants, but… just in case…

  Can I really refuse a chance to look behind the curtain? To get my hands on the information that Gentry is demanding so I have all the bargaining power?

  Fuck.

  I look into Jackson’s bright blue eyes, lit up instead of dark for once because of the morning light.

  I should continue arguing with him about this ‘promotion.’ It’s too early for such a move. I never wanted special treatment. I was adamant about that from the beginning. And his words might sound pretty, but if he had no personal interest in me, would he really be promoting a college dropout so quickly, even if that college was Stanford? I should shut this down. I swore I’d make my own way in the world.

  But Gentry… and my little boy. And he is promoting Marcy too. I swallow and turn over on the pillow so I don’t have to look Jackson in the face.

  “Okay.” My voice is small. “When do I transition?”

  Jackson’s hands snake around my waist and his chin nuzzles the back of my neck. “Monday. You won’t regret this, Callie. I promise, this is where you belong.”

  I can’t tell if he means in his arms or working with him at his company. Maybe he means both. My chest squeezes hard at the thought. Because what if I can’t find another way out of the bind with Gentry? I think of last night and the intimacy we shared. A deep shudder works its way through my body. I was so upset about him keeping a secret from me but…What if I’m forced to betray him?

  “Are you cold? Come here, baby. I’ll warm you up.” I can hear the smile in his voice as he lifts a powerful leg and wraps it around my body, cocooning me even further.

  Instead of suffocating me like I might have expected, it makes me feel safe. Incredibly safe.

  And the question pings through my head again: oh God, what if I’m forced to betray him?

  Chapter Thirteen

  JACKSON

  Bright and early on Monday morning, I lead Callie down the hallway on the floor below mine to meet the rest of the team. It’s hell not touching her. She left my house Sunday morning even though I could have kept her in bed all day long. And all night. And all this morning.

  But she said she had chores she’d been neglecting and I’m not that dense. She needs space. I might want to go from zero to sixty in zero point three seconds but I need to be happy she’s letting me back into her life at all. And she took the promotion. Take the win, Vale. Take the win.

  Didn’t mean I haven’t been going out of my fucking mind waiting for today so I could see her again. I went jogging yesterday. And had an hour long session on the heavy bag. And went swimming.

  Still I could barely sleep last night for excitement about seeing her again.

  Callie on the other hand? She looks less than delighted to be here. She’s fidgety and her steps are sluggish.

  “Hey, is everything okay?”

  “What?” She startles at my question. “Of course it is. Just had trouble sleeping last night. Nervous before my big day on the new job.”

  She flashes a huge smile.

  A huge, fake smile.

  She nods down the hall before I can question her any more, though. “Come on, I want to see. The sooner you show me what we’re working on, the less anxious I’ll be.”

  What is she not telling me? I frown but follow her. As she pulls open the door to the testing lab, she starts peppering me with questions about the live drone trial today. If she’s trying to distract me, it’s a good technique because I have been excited to show her the new prototype. I can’t really remember the last time I was this excited to show off for someone, actually.

  And Callie’s easy to impress. She looks stunned even stepping inside the state-of-the-art open facility that takes up half the floor of the building. It’s nothing like the floor of cubicles where she’s been working. It’s a sleek white area, well lit, with people buzzing all around as they prepare for the trials.

  “If you don’t close your mouth, a bug’s going to fly inside,” I can’t help whispering, nudging her on the shoulder.

  She snaps her mouth shut and smacks me on the chest. Still, as we enter the space and walk forward, her eyes dart everywhere. We pass several stations with large monitors all scrolling data. In one corner, two quadcopter drones circle one another about a foot from the extra high ceiling.

  Her eyes keep searching until they land on the two techs with tablets who are controlling the drones. In other stations, drones lie in pieces, while elsewhere, complicated programing code fills screens.

  “Holy shit,” she whispers. “This is officially the coolest place ever. I want to see it all at once.”

  I grin and drop a hand to the small of her back, guiding her to the left. Even though it’s the slightest touch, I feel like electricity pings through the pads of my fingertips at the contact. Jesus I can’t get enough of this woman.

  She keeps looking over her shoulder, so much that she almost plows into one of the computing stations.

  “Whoa, look where you’re headed, Miss Cruise.” I jerk her to the side just before she makes impact.

  “Oh!”

  Do I use it as a shameless excuse to hold her even closer to my side? Yes. Yes I do.

  “This place is…” She shakes her head, unable to keep the awe out of her voice, “… amazing.”

  I smile before leaning in. “I kind of think so too.” I pull back but don’t miss her contented little sigh before I do.

  “Let’s go. I want to show you what we’re currently working on.” I feel my mouth flatten into a line as we head forward the last few feet to the current drone. As excited as I am to show her what I’m working on, I know the prototype is still far from perfect. I’m not at all sure how today’s test is going to go.

  I lead Callie to a glassed-in room that runs along the back wall of the entire floor, effectively creating a very long, narrow room. I swipe my ID card and pull open the door. There’s rubber all around the door so that it suctions slightly when it opens and closes.

  The room is full of equipment and my lab techs bustling around making last minute preparations.

  “Mr. Vale,” says Amit, getting up from his computer and hurrying over to greet us. He’s a
middle-aged Pakistani man and one of the best on my team. “Just in time for the nine a.m. prototype test.” Amit looks from me to Callie and I make the introductions.

  “Amit, this is Calliope. She’ll be joining the team to work on Falcon Six.”

  Amit smiles and holds out his hand. “Welcome to the team.” Then his attention turns back to me. “Let’s see if our latest set of calculations made any difference.”

  I nod and we head down the makeshift hallway along the window that separates the room from the rest of the floor. Callie follows as Amit continues running through the drone specifications.

  “If we use a low-pass filter capture, we can catch large objects on a collision course before they hit. But if we try to use any more complex filters, then the amount of data—” Amit shakes his head and Jackson continues where he leaves off.

  “—Becomes too much to calculate for effectiveness in real-time situations,” I finish.

  “Exactly,” Amit responds.

  “How do the computer simulations do with the new algorithm?” I ask.

  Amit waves his hand in a so-so gesture. “Sometimes the drone is able to respond in time.” Then he winces. “Sometimes not.”

  I grimace. “Let’s see how the test goes.” I turn to Callie. “Did you follow that?”

  “Your unmanned drone can’t get out of the way fast enough when things are in its way.”

  I smile and feel some of the tension ebb from my shoulders. “Exactly. At its most basic, that’s our problem. This is why we need some new eyes on the project.”

  She shrugs. “Just calling it like it is.”

  “Yes, well, maybe that will all change today and you’ll get to join in on an already-successful project rather than a struggling one. Take a seat.” I gesture toward several seats that line the wall by the window, then pull out my phone to check the time. 8:57. More and more people file into this side of the long room until a small crowd has gathered. Then Amit begins to lead the meeting.

  “You know we’ve been working on releasing a new and improved version of the Falcon Six BIOS. We’re here today to test what we’ve all been working so hard on over the past month. Hopefully we worked out the bugs and have gotten her up to speed.”

  He lifts a tablet from a nearby table. “Without any further ado. Falcon Six, solo flight directed only by GPS coordinates. Obstacles to encounter will be wind turbulence, a simulated tree branch and a secondary drone that is our stand-in for a bird or other air debris the Falcon might come across in the real world.”

  He looks down at the tablet in his hand, finger hovering over a button. “And go,” his finger descends and presses the screen.

  I look to the opposite end of the room along with everybody else. It’s hard to even make out the drone at first, it’s so far away. But I know what I’m looking for and I quickly catch movement and hear the slightest humming noise.

  There it is—my quadcopter prototype speeding in a fairly quick clip in our direction.

  Then comes the first obstacle, a loud burst of air like the rush of wind turbines sounds in the otherwise quiet room. Callie jumps beside me, she’s so startled by the sudden noise.

  It’s from the large bank of industrial size fans set up about halfway down the long room. They’re stacked three high, five wide, and are each four feet in diameter. We passed by them earlier but Callie must not have been paying attention.

  I lean forward in my chair, watching to see if the Falcon can recover from the simulated wind. The Falcon’s propellers are about a foot in diameter themselves, but the drone is still blown so far off course by the blast of air from the fans that I worry it’s going to slam into the glass wall partitioning the testing room from the rest of the lab.

  Just before copter blades meet glass, though, the drone course-corrects and continues on at a steady pace toward us. The collective gasp of the group around me is audible.

  Everyone wants this test to succeed. If we could create the first self-guided drone on the market, it would be game-changing.

  A lab tech at the halfway mark moves into the Falcon’s path and holds up a giant fake bushy branch. The second obstacle. Again, the drone alters its course, moving out of the branch’s way with plenty of space to spare.

  The people around me clap but I’m shaking my head. The response time was too slow. If these were real life, real time obstacles, those reaction times wouldn’t cut muster.

  The drone is coming closer, probably still about forty or forty-five feet away when one of the other techs in the group uses a tablet to lift a drone off a nearby table.

  Obstacle number three. It rises up in the air with a soft whir and advances toward Falcon Six in a steady path. At first it doesn’t look like the Falcon recognizes it or is going to do anything about it, but when the other drone is still a good four feet away, Falcon Six ducks and flies smoothly underneath.

  Cheers erupt from the people around me, but I’m stiff. The Falcon barely reacted in time.

  I stand up and take the tablet from John, taking control of the secondary drone. I’ve driven these so often it’s nothing to make the drone pull a U-turn and start heading back toward Falcon Six.

  It trails right behind the Falcon with no response at all from the lead drone. Then, with a few flicks of my finger, I loop the follow drone out in front of Falcon Six. I don’t even immediately put it in Falcon Six’s path. I give it about two feet lead space.

  It’s not enough.

  Falcon Six crashes straight into the second drone, sending them both to the floor in a loud, unforgiving clatter of impacting propellers and hard plastic.

  The reaction from the crowd is similarly audible. Gasps and cries of “No!” as well as a general shift of the group forward, like they could have stopped the calamity from happening in its last moments.

  I just stand still, completely unsurprised. But sometimes it’s best to make a clear, visual point. Today was not a success and I didn’t want anyone walking out of here thinking it was.

  “All right team,” I say, raising my voice as I step forward and look around the room. “We have our work cut out for us. Reaction time is still far too slow. We need real-time-response capabilities if we want a truly autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle…”

  I pause and take time to look each member of the team in the face, including Callie. I want her to know I consider her just as much a part of this team even though it’s her first day here. “…which is the entire goal of this product. Anyone can make a drone. Hell, you can look up schematics on the internet, order the parts, and build your own these days.”

  “We’re trying to break boundaries.” I pound my finger on the nearest desk in emphasis. “To do what has never been done before. I should be able to throw this,” I pick up a fist-sized geode paperweight, “at our quadcopter mid-flight,” I mime hurling it at top speed, “and it should be able to recognize, react, and evade it.”

  All around me heads are nodding. Good. I have their attention.

  Because while I don’t want them leaving here thinking this was a success, leaving feeling like failures won’t do anyone any good either. I’ve learned over the years that being a good leader means knowing when to push for more when I know they can give it. And I know the team around me can.

  “So of course it’s going to take us more than a couple of false starts. We’ve already improved reaction time by an incredible amount.”

  I turn and again I make sure to make eye contact with each person on the team. And again my perusal of the group ends up landing on Callie. I can’t help it. She’s like a magnet I can’t stay away from. All roads lead to Callie.

  “But the real world is messy.” I hold Callie’s eyes for a beat before turning to the room at large. “Still, we need our drones to be able to deal with anything life might throw at them. Literally.” I heft the geode in my hand and smile. The energy in the room has shifted. People seem recharged rather than disappointed. Good. That’s where I wanted to get them. There’s clapping and noddin
g.

  “Let’s get to it then,” I say. “Meeting with the software engineering group in ten.” I make a shooing motion and everyone scatters.

  I turn back to Callie. This is going to be some first day. “Hold onto your pants. We’re jumping straight into the deep end.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  CALLIE

  Jackson wasn’t joking. I spent the morning with my new team looking at code and trying to find ways to shave time off the pattern recognition algorithm.

  That’s basically what the problem comes down to. The drone’s taking in too much data at once to process it all fast enough to be able to react in time. To increase the speed, we need more processing power. I think through possible fixes, but each has problems that makes them not viable as real solutions.

  The real world is indeed messy. And why did Jackson look at me when he said that earlier? Does he sense there’s something important I’m not telling him? Does he guess about Gentry? Shit, only a few days of this and I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin with paranoia and anxiety.

  Except for the fact that Jackson’s drone not working is really only good news for me. This hit me about halfway through the day and when it did, the vice around my chest finally loosened so I could breathe easily again. There’s no moral dilemma or Sophie’s choice or whatever the fuck to face anymore. There’s no possibility of me stealing anything and giving it to Gentry because there’s nothing to steal! God, not that I would have done it anyway. Fuck no. But still. Now I don’t even have to stress out about it. Jackson hasn’t figured out the problem any more than Gentry has.

  So when I see Gentry’s burner phone number pop up on my screen while I’m coming back from the bathroom after lunch, I duck into a small alcove.