by M. J. Scott
"Thanks, Cat." He held the door open.
"Food?" I asked.
He nodded and ushered me in. "Ellen said you should eat something."
So she had. But I doubt she'd envisioned the small mountain of food that waited for us inside. Nor did I know when exactly Damon had the time to request it, because he hadn't left my side since the doctor had examined me. Maybe Dr. Chen had contacted Cat?
I eyed the groaning table. Platters of sandwiches, sushi, cold cuts, fruit, and a cheese board were crowded in with donuts and pastries and bowls of chips and pretzels. Aligned along one end were several bottles of water, a pitcher of orange juice, and one of what looked like iced tea. On the other end there was an actual teapot—china, the kind Gran used. The steam wafting up from it had a familiar scent.
I hadn't pictured Damon Riley as an Earl Grey enthusiast.
"How many people are you expecting?"
"I didn't know what you'd feel like. The leftovers can go back to the kitchens. They'll use them in one of the cafeterias."
"One of? How many are there?"
"Four," he said. "Plus snacks-only kiosks in each building."
"The Riley army marches on its stomach, I gather."
I took a seat, gazing at the food. Despite the good doctor's recommendation, I wasn't sure I could actually stomach eating anything. In fact, now that whatever she had given me was really kicking in, what I mostly felt was sleepy.
I reached for the jug of orange juice, figuring if I could keep that down, I could risk eating something.
Damon waited until I'd poured myself a glass, then poured himself iced tea.
I sipped cautiously. Luckily my stomach didn't rebel. In fact, the tart flavor and sugar had the opposite effect and I suddenly wanted to devour everything on the table.
"You said something about conditions?" I reached for half a Reuben.
"After you eat." He pointed at my plate.
I waved the sandwich. "I'm not going to faint or anything. I'm a big girl."
"Tough talk from someone who passed out less than an hour ago. Eat. You still look pale."
"I'm always pale. Blame my Irish ancestors." At least the ancestors I knew about were Irish. Sara had the full package: red hair, milky skin, and green eyes. I got her eyes, but my skin was just pale rather than glowing cream, and my hair was medium brown and half-assed wavy. Sara had always been amused by the fact that she looked like a fairy-tale version of a witch disguised to lure men to their doom. Truth in advertising, she'd called it.
I was normal. So maybe it was just as well I looked it.
"Maybe so. You still need to eat. I'm not going to be the one who has to explain to Ellen why you didn't follow orders." He grabbed a donut, studied it, then shrugged and took a bite.
Setting a good example perhaps. Or just making it clear that I wouldn't be getting anything else out of him until I'd obeyed orders and eaten something.
Either way, it would be quicker not to argue. I turned my attention to my plate and obediently worked my way through the sandwich. It wasn't difficult. The food was wonderful. I stopped after the other half of the Reuben and a handful of potato chips. No point pushing it.
"Satisfied?" I asked, pushing my plate away.
Damon nodded, blue eyes steady on my face. He hadn't said a word while I ate. "You look better."
I felt better. Less shaky. I smoothed a hand over my hair, trying to see if the headset had mussed it, then wondered why I cared how I looked in front of him. "Good. Then let's talk business. What are your conditions?"
"You've seen the game now. Or part of it."
"Yes." Tension fluttered through my stomach. I didn't remember exactly what had happened in the game, but my body knew the ending hadn't been good. Before that though, it had been astonishing.
"What did you think?"
No point lying. "It was amazing. I've never seen—or felt—anything that realistic before."
Satisfaction warmed his expression. "Yes. This is the future for gaming. I need it to work. I need you to help find out if there's a problem. And I need for there to be no leaks."
Maybe the drugs were making me fuzzy. None of this was exactly news. "I already signed your confidentiality agreement. I'm not in the habit of revealing information about my clients." I wouldn't have many clients if I did.
"Yes. But I need more than that," he said.
"Like what?"
"I need you to stay here."
"Excuse me?"
"While you're working on this, I want you to stay at Riley Arts. I don't want you going anywhere without me knowing about it."
I blinked. "Stay here?" I repeated blankly. "Stay where, exactly?"
"We have accommodation for visitors or staff who need to work crazy hours occasionally. The rooms are very comfortable."
Sure they were. And probably monitored to the eyeballs. The thought of Damon knowing everything I did was not appealing.
I toyed with my napkin, stalling so I could figure out how to say “not going to happen” without losing the job. "I have a roommate. I have a life. I can't just drop off the face of the earth for a few weeks."
"I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking you to tell them that you have an assignment out of the city." He smiled suddenly. "Tell them New Zealand, even."
"Won't they get suspicious if I don't come back with pictures of . . . ." I paused, trying to remember anything about the country. I knew it was a hub for the special effects industry and had earthquakes, but anything else was coming up blank. "You know, New Zealand stuff?"
"I can provide pictures. And souvenirs, if necessary. And we can fool any comm systems into thinking you're in New Zealand too."
"Isn't this a little extreme?" Extreme was diplomatic. It was completely paranoid.
"We have a lot riding on this."
"I understand that, believe me, but you can trust me. If you hire me, then I’ll comply with whatever security measures you want, but I'm not going to give up my entire life for a job."
"It wouldn't be for that long."
"How do you know?" I countered. I could only imagine how many miles of code were involved in producing an illusion as realistic as the one I'd just been shown. This wasn't your standard assignment.
"It’ll be more convenient if you're working long hours."
"Maybe. And I'll be happy to accept a room for any nights where that's the reality, but I'm not going to agree to live here. You either trust me or you don't. If you don't, then I'm sorry, but you've wasted your time today."
His mouth twisted. "I—"
I held up a hand. "Take it or leave it. I'll sign in and out. You can scan me. I won't take anything off the premises. Whatever you like. But I'm not going to sign my life over to you."
I could almost see him ticking off mental pros and cons as he watched me. Or maybe he was trying to come up with another angle. If he was, he was wasting his time. I wasn't going to let him virtually lock me away. I'd spent my childhood under my mother’s control. Since I'd been free of her, I'd made sure I did things on my own terms.
Even when sticking to my own terms sometimes meant shooting myself in the foot professionally or personally.
Fortunately Damon decided not to push it. "You'd better be worth the money," he muttered eventually.
"I'll do my best," I said. " I'm told that's pretty good."
His eyes went a deeper shade of blue for a second. "Confidence. I like that in an employee—"
"Contractor," I corrected.
"Consultant," he amended smoothly. "A consultant who needs a chip to do her job. Let's take care of that first, and then we can discuss the security requirements in more detail."
By the time I left Righteous—after several hours of wrangling with Damon about how to do my job, the completion of my aborted tour of the facilities, and my introduction to most of the programmers I'd be working with—my brain was overstuffed with new information.
I had an appointment for chip surgery on Friday morning an
d a lingering feeling that I was going to have to either kiss or kill Damon Riley before the assignment was over. The man was bad for my peace of mind.
But maybe that effect would lessen with prolonged exposure.
My trip back to SoMa didn't take too long. It wasn't really a long way from the edges of the former Financial District where Righteous had built their campus. But Damon had insisted on calling a driver to take me home anyway.
The luxurious ride didn't distract me from the day. It just gave me time to think. And, apparently, time to get hungry all over again. Food. Then sleep. That was about all I could deal with tonight. I'd worry about rearranging my life for this new assignment in the morning.
Luckily, Nat was cooking. She almost always did when we were both home. I didn’t mind doing the dishes, and she got sick of my variations on chicken in a wok with veggies. It was about the one decent dish I knew how to cook from scratch. Sara never bothered to teach me anything beyond nuking or pouring boiling water in packets, and I guess Gran figured I was a lost cause by the time I got to her.
I'd learned the wok thing in a Chinese cooking class Nat had dragged me to once. Once was enough. So she cooked, I cleaned up. It worked for us.
When I opened the front door to the apartment, the air was already fragrant with garlic and herbs and other good things. Nat had her favorite vintage Sinatra playing full blast. For a techno geek, she had distinctly low-tech tastes in music. Her heart belonged way back in the twentieth century.
I hit the volume button on the house comp panel near the door and the blare dimmed to a pleasant level. It took about five seconds for Nat to emerge from the kitchen, drying her hands on a blue-and-white checked dishcloth.
"Hey, you're home early. How were the salt mines today?" She flapped the cloth in my direction with a grin.
"Good." I dumped my bag on my favorite chair, hiding a smile. I hadn't told Nat about meeting Riley at Decker’s yet—trying to avoid the inevitable “are you crazy?” I'd have received if I'd turn down the job. But now that I'd taken it, I was bursting to tell someone the small amount I was allowed to tell. And Nat, more than anyone else in my life, would appreciate what a coup this job was. "Got a new client."
"Anyone interesting?" She dropped the cloth on a side table, picked up the bottle of wine—a nice Napa red—sitting on the dining table, and poured a glass.
"Nah, just Damon Riley." I had timed it perfectly. She spat the mouthful of wine back into her glass as her eyes went huge.
"Damon Riley? Seriously? Shit, how did that happen?" she managed when she'd stopped gaping at me.
I rescued the wineglass, which was tilting at a dangerous angle. "It seems squillionaires can use search engines just like mere mortals." Given I had no idea who had actually recommended me to Damon, it was as good a story as any.
Nat's eyes were still wide and shocked. Then she suddenly grinned. "This is too great." She grabbed the cloth and mopped the few drops of wine that hadn't quite made it back into her glass off her tee shirt. It was old and black and advertised a band long consigned to history. "What did he want?"
"I could tell you, but you'd just tell everyone you know, and then I'd have to beat you up."
She looked hurt. "What, you think I can't keep a secret?"
"I know you can't, so don't bother arguing." I loved her, but Nat was never going to land a job at a Swiss bank or the FBI or really anywhere that required discretion and confidentiality. Lucky for her she had a trust fund that meant she didn't have to worry about earning a salary from the kind of company where that mattered. I'd chosen to tell her about Riley because she was my best friend, but I wasn't going to breach the agreement I'd signed.
She pouted some more, sipping wine in silence. I headed to my room to change into jeans and a college tee almost as elderly as Nat's. When I reemerged, she had finished the wine and was pouring another.
"Want some?" she asked. I took that to mean she'd decided to stop sulking, for now at least. There was no doubt she would try to pump me for information about her idol at some point.
I shook my head. "It's been a long day." I wasn't sure whether alcohol was a good idea on top of whatever it was that Dr. Chen had dosed me with. Aiming for a subject change, I sniffed the air. "What smells so good?"
"Dinner. Shit." She jumped up from the couch and rushed for the kitchen. Various clatters and thuds made me hopeful that she'd rescued whatever it was from a near-death experience. I should’ve saved the news about Riley until after our food was safely on the table.
I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a soda from the fridge. "Can I help with anything?"
Nat eyed the can in my hand with distaste. "You can set the table. And stop drinking that crap."
"Stop being the food police. I like it, and I need the syncaf. Like I said, long day." I popped the top and took a long swig, just to annoy her. Sometimes I wondered how I managed to end up living with the only health-freak geek on the planet. All Nat's friends seemed to live on soda and chips. Throw in some chocolate and I could relate to that as a dietary plan.
But not Nat. The sight of her munching on carrot sticks and tofu spread, plugged into her console in the middle of a sea of junk food–eating gamer buddies, had to be seen to be believed.
"Don't blame me when you can't sleep tonight. Or whine when we work out in the morning."
I stuck out my tongue and saluted. With Nat nagging me, I actually managed to stay mostly in shape despite what she regarded as horrendous eating habits.
Nat menaced me with a wooden spoon. "Can the attitude and make with the silverware. Dinner will only be a couple more minutes."
I obeyed. I was hungry.
An hour later, I lay on the sofa, stuffed with pasta and cake and happy in the knowledge that it had all been relatively good for me. Nat could've earned a fortune as a chef at one of the many spas that operated around town to cater to the rich and weak-willed. Of course, she would have to work regular hours and give up some precious gaming time, which explained why I was still the main beneficiary of her culinary skills.
"So can you at least tell me what he's like?" Nat said from her perch on the arm of the chair nearest me.
I smiled. I'd been about right in my estimation of how long Nat would be able to contain her curiosity—which was not that long at all. I scooted up on the sofa until I was semi-upright, propped on a pile of cushions.
"He looks like he does in photos." I half closed my eyes, trying to pull together my jumbled impressions of Damon Riley.
"That tells me nothing. What else?"
"He's . . . ." I searched for the right word. "Kind of intense. Focused." Drop-dead sexy was what I wanted to say. But I'd never hear the end of that. "A take-no-prisoners type. Focused on what he wants. I don't know what else to say."
"And you're not going to tell me what this is about?"
I shook my head, suddenly glad of Damon's draconian security arrangements, insisting I only work at the Righteous campus. Nat was a tech-head, after all. And I wouldn't totally put it past her to succumb to temptation and snoop a little if she thought I had info about Riley Arts on our home system.
She flashed her best “I'm cute and your best friend” smile at me "Not even—"
"No. Think of it this way. Suppose I told you what was going on. Suppose you, for some unimaginable reason, happened to tell someone else. And then Riley finds out. What do you think would happen?"
Nat opened her mouth to protest, but I continued. "I'd get fired, that's what. And we'd be lucky if firing was all he did. Believe me, the NDA I signed was not messing around."
Nat looked mutinous. Obviously I hadn't made the consequences dire enough. I permitted myself some poetic license. "Now, also suppose that he worked out exactly who I told and who had spread the information. And you end up banned from Righteous games."
I grinned as her expression turned thoughtful. "Or"—my mind was working overtime now—"Riley is beyond seriously pissed off and develops the next console and all th
e other consoles after it so it recognizes Natalia Marcos brain waves or whatever and they just won't work for you. No more gaming. Ever."
"He couldn't do that," Nat said with a frown.
"Couldn't he?" I shrugged one shoulder, tried to look serious. "I guess you would know better than me. But think about it. Do you want to take that risk?"
She slid backward into the chair, legs dangling over the arm, looking more alarmed than thoughtful.
Good. She believed me. Or at least a part of her did. Enough to worry her. Hopefully the specter of a life ban from gaming would be enough to keep her off my back.
"Noooo," she said at last.
"Then we have an understanding?"
"Yes. Fine. I'll leave you alone. Doesn't mean I have to like it though."
"No telling your friends who my client is either," I warned.
Her head slumped against the chair. "Man, you really are no fun."
"So you keep telling me. I can tell you one thing."
Nat straightened, face eager. "Yes?"
"He's springing for chip surgery." The thought made my stomach twist, and I suddenly regretted the second piece of cake.
"Really? About time."
Nat had been trying to talk me into a chip ever since she got hers. "I haven't needed one until now," I said a little defensively.
"Everybody needs one. They're going to drive everything soon. We'll just have to think at things and they'll turn on or off or whatever."
"Yeah, there's no way that can go wrong. And it's not like saying 'TV on' takes very long."
In response to my command, the wall screen turned on in the background. It was, as usual, showing a game-streaming channel. One of Nat's favorites. She swung her legs down, leaning forward to watch. "Oooh, this should be good."
Apparently the chip discussion was shelved for now. Good.
I pushed myself off the sofa. "I'm going to get a glass of water and turn in. Do you want anything?"
Nat slanted her eyes at me but quickly focused back on the screen. "Don't forget the dishes."
I groaned.
"Make sure you load them—"
"I know, I know." I didn't want a lecture. The other side of Nat the health geek was Nat the enviro-conscious geek. Most of the world had wised up and tightened their environmental regulations after the bad years where temperature spikes and quakes and rising seas rewrote landscapes and most people die their bit to help halt the damage but Nat took it to the next level. Maybe she was making up for the industrial rape and pillage her family had indulged in for the last century or so. Didn’t stop her enjoying the family fortunes earned from said pillaging though.
