4

The sensation of equatorial sun shining on her face, her shoulders, her chest. A gentle breeze cooling her skin and bringing the scent of tropical flowers to her nose. The sound of a 25-foot tall waterfall rushing tumbling falling down down down into a natural sinkhole. The sinkhole filled with groundwater the impossibly bright turquoise of a dream, or a child's conception of how pure and blue and cool and clean water should be. The ruins of a cliffhouse, adobe and sandstone, with rough uneven doorways and windows. Animar stood in the doorway of the ruins, her eyes shut, and basked in the perfection. Then she stepped forward and dove into the water. 25 feet straight down, her hands parting the air like a knife, her hair trailing behind her, the dark jade of an evergreen forest, fluorescent particles trailing in its wake like sparks rising from a campfire. She slid silently into the depths of the water, rolled head over heels, kicked her way up, and broke the surface. She rolled over onto her back and floated in the water, her eyes shut, her dark hair spreading out around her.

RoboCorp gave its employees one day a week of their choice off, and Animar was going to spend hers swimming, hiking snow-capped mountains, meditating in the shadow of red-faced cliffs in the desert. When she was done swimming, she'd go to a Schengenese cafe for breakfast, coffee and a pastry and a cigarette. She'd skip lunch and walk through the Museum of Human History, marveling at the artifacts that had survived the Seymour Incident. And for dinner, she'd have sushi on a veranda overlooking the ocean. Tuna, maybe. Different cuts, even. Some meatier, some more tender and fatty, all of it untouched by heavy metals or chemical run-off or the guilt of an unsustainable harvest.

She pulled herself out of the water and into a walk-in closet, her skin instantly dry and a plush robe wrapped around her body. The closet extended back a good 20 feet, a room in and of itself, complete with frosted skylights to let in diffuse natural light. There were pants, shirts, blouses, dresses of every style imaginable. Leather jackets, winter coats, string bikinis, even a wedding dress. She could wear whatever she wanted, but for breakfast along the Seine, something a bit more traditional felt appropriate. She pointed at a red halter dress with a white floral print, natural leather kitten heels, and a black cardigan with matching black purse. Perfect.

Animar turned around and sat on a metal bistro seat outside of Café Des Jeux. The waiter, a thin middle-aged man in dark pants, a white shirt, and a dark waistcoat walked up to her with a smile.

"Bonjour, mademoiselle!" he said. "Vous avez choisi?"

"Bonjour! Je voudrais un café et un croissant, s'il vous plaît."

The waiter's eyes lit up and a faint smile played across his lips. "Ah, mais vous parlez très bien français, mademoiselle! Vous êtes d'ici?"

Animar allowed herself the slightest blush and her own faint smile. She looked down at the tabletop for just a moment, then back up into her waiter's eyes. "Non, mais merci! Je viens de Cyber City. Je me suis simplement beaucoup entrainé."

"Très bien, très bien. Pour le café, avec sucré, crème, ou seul?"

"Hm… Proposez-vous du lait d'avoine, par hasard?"

"Oui, mais vous devez aller au travail, Ayaka."

Animar blinked in surprise. "I'm sorry, what?" she asked, her command of Französisch momentarily forgotten.

The waiter's charming Parisian accent vanished, replaced by her manager Rishab's nasally voice. Animar winced, her heart sinking as she realized what that meant. "Sorry, Ayaka! I know it's your day off, but we've got a worm that's wreaking havoc on our systems. I need you to come pitch in. The night team got it cornered, but it keeps juking their kill codes and nearly breaking containment. It's all hands on deck until we squash this thing."

"But… my day off…"

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. If we can wrap this up fast enough, I'll give you a half-day and you can take tomorrow off instead. Does that work?"

Ayaka groaned. She was grateful for her job, really. A job at RoboCorp meant a corporate apartment stocked with corporate gear, but that gear came with inescapable backdoors that meant her boss could literally inject himself into her days off. There was nothing to do but log out and head in. "Yeah, okay. Be there soon."

"Great! Thanks, Ayaka!"

The Café Des Jeux, the charming waiter dissolved into pixelated particle effects, and the world went black. Ayaka opened her eyes and found herself alone on her unmade bed in her studio apartment. The air was stale and smelled of old takeout boxes, of dirty laundry, of trash that needed to be taken out. The room was dark, both because the lights were off and because her building was surrounded by even taller skyscrapers that blocked the Cyber City sun's light from reaching her windows save for a few months each year. The complex had no Schengenese citizens in it, just RoboCorp employees working staggered schedules so there was seemingly no rhyme or reason to when you might see another person outside of the office. And the closest thing there was to natural beauty was a small enclosed courtyard with upcycled artificial turf.

Ayaka sat up, looked around, shook her head, and stood up on unsteady feet. There would be a corpo cab waiting for her outside the apartment, but it could wait until she'd showered.

***

RoboCorp One stretched 70 stories into the air, a citadel of commerce and technology and composite materials designed to withstand both corporate espionage and the encroaching saltwater of the bay. Great conduits of air and water and electricity ran through the heart of the building, supporting the RoboCorp servers in the bottom floors and the secret servers beneath hardened concrete in the basements.

Plus, it kind of looked like the old RoboPal Model 1 that Thaddeus Biggins had designed and built in his family's 10-car garage, and Ayaka thought that was neat.

Ayaka held her palm against the facade of the building and a near-seamless door scanned her embedded company security chip and opened up, admitting her access to the lobby. Inside, some executives she didn't recognize from one of the higher stories were having a loud conversation about their upcoming vacation plans, and Ayaka tried not to listen in. It was rude to eavesdrop, and she didn't like the feeling of jealousy that began pulsing behind her eyes at the thought of having two consecutive days off. Or maybe even three, if she were with the company for long enough. Instead, she scurried past the executives with her eyes down and her shoulders drawn up. Probably they didn't even see her since she was in faded blue jeans and the first clean-smelling t-shirt she'd pulled off her floor and they were in suits.

Past the executives, Don the security guard sat at his desk surrounded by monitors. Live video feeds were on most of them, but she could hear the sounds of metal-on-metal that meant he had at least one smashball match going, too.

"Good morning, Ms. Kaneko!" he said, waving as he noticed her come in.

One of the executives glanced in her direction for a moment, and Ayaka tried to ignore the feeling of the woman's eyes barely registering her. Instead, she gave a small wave to Don and focused on the interaction. "Good morning, Don. How are you doing today?"

"Oh, you know. Another beautiful day working for the best company in the best city in the world!"

Ayaka smiled and nodded. She quite liked working for RoboCorp, and as far as living in Cyber City went, she knew she had it good with her corporate salary and her corporate housing, but Don meant that with complete sincerity.

"Say," he continued. "Isn't today your day off?"

Ayaka frowned, then forced a neutral expression onto her face. Better not to let it show how unhappy she was about the disruption to her plans. "It was supposed to be, yes, but I got called in to assist with a security threat. Some kind of worm so nasty that the night team couldn't handle it."

"Ah, maybe that's what's going on," Don said. He pointed past her. "The elevators have been acting kind of screwy all morning."

Ayaka followed his finger and nodded. "I'd better get to it, then. Have a good day, Don!"

"You too, Ms. Kaneko!"

Ayaka made her way over to the elevators, smiling a little to herself. Don was a sweet old man, and talking to him helped her approach each new work day with a little bit of positivity, even if she hadn't felt it when she'd gotten out of bed. The more she thought about it, the more she thought Don was probably too sweet and too old to be a very effective deterrent if someone with ill-intent were trying to get into the building, but then, that was why there was an M-47 Eurytus security bot behind him.

Ayaka sighed and waved away the thought of a would-be corporate saboteur getting trampled to paste beneath the M-47's legs. She began planning out her day instead. She'd grab a quick bite in the company cafeteria, stop at Rishab's desk to check in, jack into the PlayLand terminal at her own desk, and then–

"Hold the elevator!" someone shouted, and Ayaka jumped. Without thinking, she stuck her hand out, and put pressure on the elevator's door. The heavy sound of dress shoes slapping against the marble floor of the lobby filled the air, and a besuited man slipped in alongside her. Ayaka looked up at him, realized who he was, and looked away with a blush.

Chad Biggins. He was over six feet tall, tastefully augmented, and had a full head of luscious blonde hair, soulful blue eyes. Evidently, his cologne smelled like citrus and smoke.

He must have had allergies, too, because his eyes were a touch red and he kept sniffling and wiping at his nose and clenching his jaw (probably to suppress some sneezes).

"Thanks!" he said, and he fell into place next to her, the sleeve of his shoulder brushing her arm, his eyes locked firmly ahead on the elevator's numbers as they passed each floor.

Ayaka stared. She knew she was staring, knew it was rude, knew that it was frankly kind of embarrassing, but she couldn't help herself. Being in the same elevator as Chad Biggins was like being close to a celebrity.

He even had the look of one. He stood a full head taller than her. His clothes had the understated lustre of natural fabrics. There was real muscle on his frame, the kind that came from a life where he could afford proper exercise and real food and medical care from licensed professionals and not just algorithmically trained doctorbs.

He was so hot.

Ayaka realized she was staring and that her mouth was filling with saliva, and then she swallowed, but she swallowed weirdly and she had to cough but she tried to suppress it, and then that made her let out a little squeak somehow and she died a little inside. Then Chad grunted, "Hm?" and turned her way, and Ayaka died a little more. Oh, God, he'd caught her staring. Ayaka felt her cheeks turn red from embarrassment. And now he was staring at her. Probably getting ready to chew her out. Probably getting ready to fire her for being a weird little creep.

Instead, he just stared at her for a moment, taking her in, almost as if he were a robot scanning her. "You're… Ayaka Kaneko, right? Junior Cybersecurity Expert? Been with the company nine months, two weeks, four days?"

"I…" Ayaka did the math in her head. Wow, that was right. Oh, my God, Chad didn't just know who she was, he knew who she was. "Yup. I am. That's me. Junior Cybersecurity Expert all the way."

He nodded. "Cool. How do you like it so far?"

Ayaka's first instinct was to tell him that she loved it, that the job was perfect and the people were wonderful and that she liked being called in on her day off. But he was talking to her. He was asking questions. What if he really wanted to hear what she thought and not just be buttered up? "I… I like it a lot. This is my first job and I've never worked anywhere else, but I feel really grateful to be part of the RoboCorp family."

Chad's eyes went wide. "This is your first job? You mean you started as an intern?"

Ayaka shook her head. "No, Sir." Oh, God, why'd she call him Sir? How cringey could she be? "I mean, I had internships in school, but at other companies. Here I was hired specifically for the Junior Cybersecurity Expert role."

Chad gave her a look that she thought meant he was impressed with her. He crossed his arms and gave her a half-smile. "We don't generally hire people fresh out of school for full-time roles. Dad's all about giving interns experience and promoting internally. You must have been real smart in school."

"I was," she said, staring into his blue blue blue eyes for just a minute, then blushing and looking down at the floor, unable to stop a small smile from coming to her lips. "I still am, too."

Chad grinned. "Very cool." The elevator dinged when they hit the 30th floor, the transfer point between the employee amenities and the elevators for the rest of the building. "Well, I've got to get up to the executive levels. It was a pleasure meeting you, Ayaka. I hope we get to chat more soon."

Ayaka grinned back. "Thanks, Mr. Biggins!" Her grin faltered. Was she smiling too much? Would he think she was nervous? Crazy? Relentlessly optimistic? She cleared her throat and adopted a more neutral expression, stuck out her hand for him to shake. "It was nice cheeting you, too."

Ayaka winced. Her stupid mouth couldn't decide between chatting and meeting and that was what had come out?

Chad chuckled, but just a little bit. Thankfully. "Tell you what," he said as they stepped out onto the floor and he turned towards the executive elevators. "Do you know about the secret menu at the cafeteria?"

Ayaka shook her head.

"Well. Go get yourself some breakfast and tell 'em Chad said to give you the executive special. They only make so many a day, and I'm not hungry for mine."

Ayaka's eyes went wide. "Are you sure?"

Chad nodded. "Absolutely. My treat."

Ayaka grinned again. "Wow! Thank you, Mr. Biggins."

Chad smiled and shook his head. He gently set his hand on her shoulder and she had to make a conscious effort not to squeak again. "Just Chad. Save the 'Mr. Biggins' stuff for my dad."

***

Ayaka stepped out of the elevator on the 40th floor, a cup of real coffee in one hand and a croissant in the other. Her eyes had gone wide when the cafeteria staff had disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the custom order, and she'd blushed when she heard whispering from some of the other employees, but dammit, she was entitled to a treat every now and then. Chad Biggins himself had said so. She was going to sit at her desk, eat her breakfast proudly, and only then would she go find Rishab and see what was up with the worm and the data breach.

Of course, as soon as the door opened, Rishab stood there, his eyes dark and his posture sagging from what she guessed was over 24 hours awake. He wasn't always the warmest man, but she could tell that his nerves were especially frayed today. "Oh! Um. Good morning, Sir."

"Ayaka," he said, giving her a curt nod. "Good. You're here. Come on." He spun on his heels and began leading her towards the PlayLand terminals where the rest of the team sat in reclining chairs wearing productivity-focusing gear.

The working floors of RoboCorp One were all identical: dark carpet, some impossible shade of charcoal and grey and navy blue. A white-tiled drop ceiling to hide the copious wires and cables and conduit that snaked through the building and provided power and air and water to its machines and its inhabitants. The air smelled stale by the elevator and animalistic by the terminals, the product of 24 hours of increasingly agitated and desperate unwashed nerds working feverishly to contain a threat they didn't understand. At least there was plenty of natural light streaming in from the one-way floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the exterior wall of the building; Thaddeus Biggins was a big believer in the power of nature to produce a happier, more effective employee.

Rishab gestured at the terminal. "Go ahead and eat while I catch you up. Then I need you to fill in for me."

"Are you feeling okay, Sir?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was just plugged in for too long. I needed to take a break before I got sick."

Ayaka looked past Rishab. Most of her coworkers were dripping sweat and twitching in their chairs. Even beneath the sensory deprivation and privacy gear they wore, Ayaka could see the muscles in their necks taut, the thin trickle of blood running from their noses, each of their mouths locked in a corpse's rictus. Most people could only stand PlayTime for a few hours before the insistent needs of the body overrode the sensations of Play and forced them to take a break. Pushing past one's natural limits was widely agreed to be "not healthy."

"Wow," she said softly. "Have you all been plugged in all morning?"

Rishab nodded gravely. "All night, really. Sit, sit."

Ayaka sat and sipped her coffee. It tasted so good, bright and almost fruity, that she gasped and stared into the cup, unable to believe it. She'd have to update her Café Des Jeux program, because what she'd imagined good coffee tasted like wasn't right at all.

Rishab cleared his throat and Ayaka jumped. She cleared her throat, too, sat up straighter. "So," she said, taking another sip and holding eye contact with Rishab to show he had her full attention. "What's the worm doing?"

"Mostly just making us look like amateurs and pissing off the execs," he said with a frown. "We can't figure out how the damn thing got into our systems or what it's up to. Honestly, it seems like its current goal is just to make a big damn mess."

"Any unusual traffic?"

"Nothing in or out. It was rooting around the executive servers, but it didn't upload or download anything. Just jumped from exec to exec until it was detected, then it started running wild, messing with internal systems. The doors, the lights, the elevators."

"Got it," Ayaka said with a nod. "Okay. I'll see what I can do." She took a bite of her croissant, and her eyes went wide. That was going to need updating, too. Honestly, she might have to rethink the whole Café Des Jeux program. She looked up to see Rishab staring at her with his brow knit in frustration and a frown forming at the corners of his mouth. After a moment's consideration, she decided she'd rather wolf down the croissant and be unable to savor it than to let it get stale and hard in case dealing with the worm took hours and hours.

Ayaka had a pretty good PlayLand setup at home, but the ones at RoboCorp were top of the line. Recliners comfortable enough to fall asleep in, sensory-blocking ear and eye coverage (that doubled to hide the jerky, twitching eye movements and tics that came with neural PlayLand integration), and enough data throughput that each terminal could serve as a miniature communications hub for a city block. Ayaka took one last sip of her coffee, set it into a cupholder, and sat back to log into the terminal.

As an academically trained cybersecurity expert, Animar's parents had paid for a full suite of neural augmentations as a graduation present, so she was able to interface directly with the terminal. She shut her eyes, and the featureless void gave way to the RoboCorp network's loading screen, and then she popped into the verdant wide open fields of RoboCorp's PlayLand instance.

***

Her coworkers were already there, their avatars betraying the exhaustion their physical bodies felt: there was a sagging superhero, a knight kneeling and propping herself up with her sword in weariness, a burned out bodybuilder. Animar looked down and saw she was still in her dress from her early Schengenese sojourn. She brushed some dust off the front, admired the floral pattern for a moment, and then stepped forward.

Before them, furniture flew out the window of a stately manor house, priceless antiques smashing to the ground and disappearing in a spray of pixels. Some kind of imp-like creature, its skin a sickly mottled green, could be seen flitting about through the manor's windows, cackling wildly as it destroyed the interior.

Animar watched its joyous destruction and wondered if the thing's appearance was a product of an unconscious collective agreement by her coworkers to see it that way, or if it had been designed to convey an aura of gleeful malevolence. Most hackers wouldn't bother to inject so much personality into their code. But then, most hackers wouldn't be competent enough to create something that could evade the best efforts of a corporate cybersecurity team.

"So," she asked. "That's the worm?"

"Yep," Lady_Mearas grunted as she panted and rested her head on her gauntleted hands.

C4PT41NM1R4CU10U5, complete with a skintight outfit that highlighted every muscle (and then some) and a flowing cape gave her a nod. "Heya, Annie. Welcome to the party."

"Animar," she corrected. "Annie's infantilizing."

C4PT41NM1R4CU10U5 just sighed, too tired to protest.

"Is that Ms. Fox's server?" Animar asked, pointing at the building.

"It is," BrutusMaximus replied. "We cornered the accursed thing about an hour ago, but it evaded every attempt to delete it. Or outright threw it back at us. The Captain's been booted off five times since last night."

"I wasn't 'booted off,' I was finding a clever justification to take a break," C4PT41NM1R4CU10U5 grumbled.

"And it's just… letting itself be contained?"

"It seems to understand that it's safe there," Lady_Mearas said, pushing herself to her feet. "When we ease up the pressure, it starts messing with the office systems, but it seems to be aware that we won't just nuke an executive's server to kill it."

Animar blinked in confusion then turned to the others. "Why not?"

***

Hours previously, when the cybersecurity team first cornered the worm in the executive servers, they considered creating a decoy that they could lure the worm into and manually delete. The discussion only took five minutes because the likeliest outcome, everyone agreed, was that the worm would simply evade their efforts to contain and neutralize it. If the team made a mistake during containment, the worm could get wider access to their systems, or even escape from RoboCorp's PlayLand instance to the larger network. So the other members of the cybersecurity team considered it a last-ditch effort, one that carried such catastrophic consequences if they failed that it would likely be better to burn the whole network and rebuild it from scratch if their efforts to contain the worm bore no fruit. Unfortunately, the longer they went without beginning the process, the more the worm would be ready to foil their efforts when they began. It would be the work of a day, maybe two, to repurpose an outdated server into a faux private one suitable for an executive. There was data to clear, permissions to obtain, testing to be done, firewalls to erect, all with no guarantee that the damn thing would even take the bait.

Animar created the decoy server in an hour and a half.

To be fair, she had her coworkers helping her. But C4PT41NM1R4CU10U5, Lady_Mearas, and BrutusMaximus were exhausted, and her process had them less as a team of equals working towards a common goal and more like apprentice craftspeople serving as extensions of their mistress's will. They worked as long as they were able, and as they vanished from the server, Animar was dimly aware of the sound and smell of her coworkers vomiting in the real world, but she paid it no mind. She was nearly done and she couldn't afford to get distracted.

Animar stood before the manor house, waiting for a sign that the beast had become particularly engrossed in some task, and then she willed another wing of the edifice into existence. She could see the thing snap to attention through a window, sniffing the air suspiciously. A new environment was available to it, one seeded with traces of files from every executive at the company. Nothing serious, mostly expense reports, but the ownership was clear and the secrecy surely meant something good lay inside.

The worm inched its way forward, not quite committed to leaving behind Ms. Fox's server. "Come on," Animar muttered to herself. "Take the bait."

It stopped. It turned. It saw her. Animar froze and wondered if it had truly detected her or if was simply performing a scan. Then the thing's cheeks swelled, its jaw distended, and a stream of fluorescent green vomit spewed forth, soaking Animar from head to toe.

It hurt. Somewhere far away, genuine physical pain wracked Animar's body, tightening her neck muscles, pulsing at her temples, burning behind her eyes. The world split in two as Ayaka's eyes were forced open and her brain struggled to reconcile the competing stimuli, an office building overlaying a manor house, a garden of forgettable carpet, a blue sky of white ceiling tiles. The worm howled with laughter.

"You arrogant, vile thing!" Animar hissed through clenched teeth. She thought she could hear Rishab's voice somewhere above her shouting her name and ordering her coworkers to get her disconnected before she suffered serious neurological damage, her coworkers asking how the hell she was resisting the killcode. "Don't!" she shouted, and her voice echoed in her ears twice.

"It's not safe!" Rishab said from all around her. "We're pulling you out!"

"I am fine!" Animar roared, and the world came back into focus. The pain was still there, but distant, like music heard through a wall. The worm's mischievous expression changed to confusion and then fear. It looked around uncertainly, then scurried over to the new wing and fell silent.

"Big mistake," Animar muttered. She raised her hand to the air, clenched her fist, and brought it down violently. A giant security shutter fell from the sky, severing the new wing of the manor from the rest of Ms. Fox's estate. Inside, the worm screeched in confusion, a horrible noise followed by the sound of it throwing itself against the heavy metal door. Animar smiled and raised her other hand, held it at arms length, and waved it across the manor wing. Steel bars sprung into existence across the building's windows and doors. Animar thought about it for a moment, then did it again and again. Security cameras. Razor wire. Guard towers. A minefield surrounding the building. This thing was not getting out.

Within moments, it seemed to realize its predicament. It wrapped its hands around the iron bars of the nearest window and howled in frustration. Its face twisted in rage, and Animar watched with growing concern as the thing began to swell in size, slamming its new more dangerous frame against the bars of its prison.

Animar heard the groan of metal, the cracking of cement. There was no time to hesitate. She pointed at the building and snapped her fingers.

The wing disappeared in a flash of light and a blast of air. A thick column of black smoke rose into the air, curling and twisting around itself like a crazed serpent, just the way she imagined such destruction would unfold. Animar let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, then laughed. The smoke wasn't very realistic at all, but Animar was alone on the network, and she was going to enjoy this moment since she hadn't been able to properly enjoy her coffee and croissant.

In fact…

"Votre café, mademoiselle," the waiter from Café Des Jeux said as he appeared behind her, a steaming delicate porcelain cup balanced on a plate.

She accepted the cup gratefully. "Merci!" Strictly speaking, running personal programs on the company network was forbidden without prior written permission, but she didn't think anyone would complain at this point. She studied the waiter as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching her expectantly. "Hm. Il vous faut un nom. Que pensez-vous de Charles?"

He smiled. "Je pense que c'est un très beau nom."

Animar smiled back. "Je suis ravi que vous l'aimez, Charles."

***

As she logged out of PlayLand, Ayaka returned to two things: her coworkers' cheers, and Rishab telling her that he couldn't give her a half-day because she needed to write up an after-action report. She didn't even bother to push back against Rishab; she didn't feel right about leaving the task for her exhausted coworkers, and they hadn't even been there for the most exciting parts, so they'd have to debrief her on how it had gone anyway.

Still, writing the report took longer than creating and destroying the server had. And her coffee was nowhere near as good reheated as it had been fresh.

It was late afternoon by the time Ayaka finished her report, but in her defense, word of what she'd done had spread through the company and she'd found herself distracted by the congratulations that had poured into her inbox. To her delight, she even had a message from Chad: "Hi, Ayaka! Heard you blew up Cathryn's server. Awesome! I hope you enjoyed the croissant!"

But as rewarding and novel as the praise was, she was still going to be glad to get out of the building and get back to her apartment. She sent the message to Rishab and began the formal workday termination procedure when Rishab's voice rang through her ears again. "Hi, Ayaka! Good job today. In fact, it looks like you did so good that the big boss wants to talk to you. He asked me to let you know when you were done with the day’s tasks. You've got temporary clearance to head up to the 69th floor. Congrats!"

Ayaka sat in silence. Thaddeus Biggins wanted to talk to her? The CEO? The founder? Why?

"Did he say what about?"

"He did not, and I didn't ask."

"Can… can you come with me? Please?"

"Afraid not. He asked to see you alone, kiddo."

"Am… am I in trouble? The program I ran earlier was just a digital assistant, I swear!"

"What? No one cares about that. Ayaka, just go see what Thad wants. He's probably just going to tell you you did a good job today, which you did, and then give you a bonus or a lunch invitation or a shoutout in the weekly win recap."

Ayaka sat in silence for a moment as she considered what to do. If only Rishab had sent her a message instead of reaching out directly, she could have pretended not to notice it and simply gone home. Now she was getting called into the CEO's office, and if this went poorly, it was going to utterly ruin her day off. What if he yelled at her for creating an unauthorized executive server? What if the worm destroyed something and she'd missed it? What if she was about to get fired because she'd had Charles serve her coffee?

Okay, she told herself. Think rationally about this. If anyone were going to fire her, Rishab would have done it already. So maybe Thaddeus really did just have good news for her. But regardless, what if she embarrassed herself? She'd already said "nice to cheet you" in front of one Biggins today. It could happen again.

A soft melodic chime snapped Ayaka from her thoughts and she looked around in confusion at where she was. Evidently her feet had taken her to the elevators while her mind had been completely distracted, and she hadn't even realized it.

It shocked Ayaka how much nicer the executive elevator was than the main ones. Not that there was anything wrong with the main ones. They were perfectly fine. Functional. Serviceable. But the executive elevator was an unexpected work of art, with pearlescent buttons and soft lighting and warm metal accents throughout. There was something beautiful just in its existence, so much effort and attention invested in a space people spent so little time in. Ayaka got the sense that that was just the way Thaddeus was, that he appreciated finer things, handmade items, good craftsmanship, art for art's sake.

She expected to see more of the same in Thaddeus's office. Polished wood, precious metals, pre-Seymour styling. Instead, it was a dozen different shades of green.

At first she thought they were artificial or holograms or something. She'd only ever seen so much plant life in photos of people and places 100 years gone. But the air smelled vibrant. The temperature was cool. And Thaddeus Biggins stood in dress pants and shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. He held a brass watering can, carefully pouring its contents into the pot of some great arboreal monstrosity that reached to the ceiling and had ominous slits in its wide leaves.

She'd never seen the CEO of RoboCorp in person before, and she was struck by how much he looked like an older, more distinguished version of Chad with silver hair and a neatly maintained salt-and-pepper beard. He hummed to himself as he moved from one plant to the next, some tune she didn't recognize. Ayaka stood in silence for the better part of a minute before she realized that Thaddeus was either too engrossed in his work to notice her or else waiting for her to take the initiative and speak first.

"Um. Mr. Biggins, Sir? You asked to see me?"

"Hm?" Thaddeus grunted. He turned his head towards her and gave her a warm smile. Instantly, she felt some of the tension leave her shoulders and she stood up a bit straighter. "Ah! Ms. Kaneko. I'm so glad we could speak before you left for the day. Please, sit. I'll be just a moment."

He gestured towards his desk, a plush seat already pushed aside in anticipation of her arrival. She went and sat down, watching him as he finished his watering, then came to sit across from her. "Now then. I imagine you're feeling a little anxious about being called into the CEO's office, yes? Particularly on such short notice?" Ayaka said nothing, and Thaddeus chuckled softly. "I prefer receiving answers to my questions, even if they seem rhetorical."

"Oh! Um, yes. The invitation was very… unexpected?"

Thaddeus nodded. "I imagine so. Well! Let me assure you, this meeting is a good thing. I want to offer you some praise for your efforts today and extend an invitation to you."

Ayaka felt herself blushing, and looked away. "Thank you, Mr. Biggins. I'm just happy to do my work and do it well."

Thaddeus smirked. "How modest! Ms. Kaneko, you're either practicing false humility or else selling yourself short. Which is it?"

Ayaka's eyes went wide. "I… what?"

Thaddeus nodded. "'Selling yourself short.' Got it." Thaddeus turned towards the screen on his desk and Ayaka realized with shock that he didn't simply have a screen: he had a mouse and keyboard, which meant that those things were connected to an ancient computer cleverly hidden somewhere in the office. She didn't think his setup could even connect to PlayLand, let alone properly interface with it. As the older man's eyes scanned the screen, he continued. "Ms. Kaneko, would you like to know what I see when I look at you?"

"I–"

"Over 225 completed cybersecurity requests in nine months' time."

"...is that bad?"

Thaddeus glanced at Ayaka and arched an eyebrow. "Adjusting for how long you've been with us, it's the highest in the company."

"Oh!"

"By a factor of two."

"...really?"

"Really," Thaddeus said. He went on. "I had my accountants run the numbers. By their estimates, you're directly responsible for saving the company tens of millions of bits in ransom fees, frivolous lawsuits, and wages we would have had to spend on multiple specialists to do the work you've done alone." Thaddeus went silent for a moment, thinking. "Hm. I'll have to speak with Rishab about increasing your salary."

"I don't–"

"One moment, please, Ms. Kaneko. I'm not finished." Thaddeus cleared his throat. "The work you did clearing that worm from our servers today sealed the deal. Had that thing deleted or exfiltrated Ms. Fox's files, that would have been absolutely devastating to RoboCorp. Cathryn's a very important part of the executive team, even more so than her title might suggest. Losing her files would have been a significant loss, both to the business and to posterity. If she were in the office today, I'm sure she'd want to personally thank you for what you did to protect her data from some would-be vandal operating out of a dank pit somewhere."

"Oh, I don't think this was a lone wolf," Ayaka interjected. Thaddeus blinked at her in surprise, and Ayaka felt the sudden urgent need to shrink into a small ball and hide.

"No?"

"Um. No. I think it must have been another corporation," Ayaka said simply. "The design was more complex than what most anyone outside of a government or corporate infiltration team could have put together. And the countermeasures it used to try and boot me out of PlayLand when it felt threatened… I'm pretty sure they were a less-lethal version of military-grade killcodes."

"You think so?"

Ayaka nodded. "It hurt like hell and I barely held onto the session. That's a pretty good indicator that someone with serious money behind them created the thing. Maybe it was an independent agent, but there aren't very many with those kinds of resources."

Thaddeus nodded. "I'll defer to your expertise. Anyway, for those reasons, I decided to personally call you and let you know that your considerable merit is not lost on me, Ms. Kaneko. You're an astonishingly productive employee, you're an astonishingly valuable employee, and you're an astonishingly capable employee. I want to personally tell you that if you maintain this level of excellence, you'll go far at RoboCorp."

Ayaka felt her cheeks burning. "Thank you, Mr. Biggins."

"'Thaddeus,' please."

"Thank you, Thaddeus."

"You're welcome. Ms. Kaneko, look at me, please?" Ayaka looked up from the desktop, her cheeks no less flushed. Maintaining eye contact was difficult, but she could at least look at his mouth as he spoke. "Very good. Thank you." Thaddeus took a deep breath and folded his hands together neatly on the desk. He looked Ayaka square in the eyes and she was struck by how blue they were, like the water in her virtual paradise. "Ms. Kaneko. I like to believe that I have an eye for talent and you…" He pointed at her. "Are exceptionally talented. Which brings me to my second point: an invitation to go far here at RoboCorp. Very, very far indeed."

Ayaka said nothing. But she forced herself to maintain the eye contact. Thaddeus nodded, then pushed his chair back from his desk and walked over towards the windows overlooking Old Town.

"I love this city, Ms. Kaneko. Sincerely. I know every CEO and founder says that, but since the day my father moved here when I was five, I knew there was no place in the world I'd rather live and work and die.

"I love its buildings, I love its food, I love its culture, I love its people. It… There are things it's taken from me. But it's given me so much, too. And it's my intention to give back.

"I want to see its people smile. I want to hear its children laugh. When it's time for me to shuffle off this mortal coil…" Thaddeus turned to Ayaka, and she saw something wild in his eyes, like a sort of divine mania. "I want to go to my final reward knowing that I've left my mark on its very face.

"And I want you to help me."

Ayaka's eyes went wide. She opened her mouth to speak and sputtered helplessly. "Me?" she finally croaked out.

"You," Thaddeus said with a nod. He moved away from the window and drew closer, looming over where Ayaka sat in her plush chair. "I have a special plan for this city, and you've got the unique skillset and personality traits I need to bring my vision to life. I'm afraid I can't tell you more unless you agree to help, and if you do, you'll be required to sign an NDA so punishing that your great-great-grandchildren will still be cursing your name if you ever break it. But in exchange, you'll be well taken care of and you'll know you did something truly remarkable and enduring with your life."

Thaddeus held out his hand, his fingers a little splayed and the angle a little off, as if he didn't want her to shake it so much as he wanted to lift her up. "So. Will you, Ms. Kaneko? Will you help me change this city?"