“What the hell is that thing supposed to be?”
Cole Warnecki squinted and leaned forward as he tried to come up with words to describe what he was seeing on the monitor. Drawing a complete blank, he shook his head and replied, “I don’t know. Some sort of monster?”
The man next to Cole didn’t take his eyes from the thing that had caught his attention. He shook his head, but not in the vaguely bewildered way that Cole had a second ago. “A monster or maybe some kind of alien?”
Cole snapped his fingers. “A demon! That’s what it is.”
“What kind of demon?”
“The kind that…wait a second…maybe it’s some sort of guardian spirit.”
Jason Sorrenson shifted his eyes away from the thirty-two-inch screen, swiveled in his chair so he could face Cole, then reached for a pair of glasses. He slid the dated wire frames into the grooves they’d worn over both ears and onto the bridge of his nose before asking, “Isn’t this your game, Cole? Shouldn’t you know exactly what every one of these things are?”
Cole kept looking at the monitor and the image frozen on it. In his hands he held a controller that was connected to a black video-game console on a table beside Jason’s desk. Finally, Cole set the controller down and pressed his fingertips against his closed eyes. “Shit, you’re right. You know how crazy things get when we’re this close to going gold.”
“Going gold? We’re barely through play testing and you think we’re ready to start manufacturing disks?”
Letting out a breath, Cole flinched as if someone had just blown pepper up his nose. “A Cerberus! That’s what it is!”
“What?”
“You know, like one of those demon dogs from Greek mythology. But it’s different than those other ones that showed up in—”
“Save it, Cole.” Jason was in his mid-forties, but carried himself as if he had sixty years of grief on his back. Leaning back, he sunk into the expensive padding of his chair, clasped his hands behind his balding head and stared at Cole through the dated wire frame glasses. His office matched the chair in comfort and had enough windows to fill it with whatever light the gray Seattle skies could offer. In comparison, the rest of the offices in the building seemed like dungeons. Outside, a stiff breeze blew in from Puget Sound; all the bare branches in the nearby park swayed in a slow rhythm. Winter hadn’t arrived quite yet, but the city looked plenty cold already. “What’s going on with you lately?” Jason asked with more concern than might be expected from someone so high on the corporate ladder.
Cole was about ten years younger than his boss, but he let out a sigh as if he was the older of the two. Working his way through the ranks of Digital Dreamers Inc. had been a labor of love, but times like this didn’t feel so romantic. “I don’t know,” he said before his pause became uncomfortable.
“Do you want to abandon Hammer Strike?”
Glancing back to the monitor, Cole looked at the pause screen displaying the game’s title and options. “I’ve been working on Hammer for over two years. Giving it up now would just be…”
“Lazy?”
“I was going to say stupid, but I guess both are pretty close.”
Jason got up and sat on the edge of his marble desktop. “I’d hate to lose you, Cole,” he said while picking up his own controller and hitting a button to put the game back into motion. “You’re anything but lazy, but you do seem sort of distracted.”
“That’s putting it nicely. It feels more like I’ve had my head jammed up my ass.”
Chuckling under his breath like a preteen boy too nervous to follow up his friend’s swearing with a bad word of his own, Jason let his fingers drift effortlessly over the game controller. He moved his muscle-bound, onscreen avatar to one of the Cerberus-type creatures and used the titular hammer to pound it into a mess of pixilated gore.
Cole pinched his chin between a thumb and forefinger while watching Jason maneuver through the game. “Do that combo I showed you.”
“The killing move?”
“Yeah.”
Jason’s fingers flew through the prescribed set of motions, causing the digitized character to perform a jerky dance. “It’s not working,” he said while shaking his head.
Cole took the controller from Jason’s hands and went through the same motions, only a bit faster. After a few more attempts, he bounced the controller off the floor and turned his back to the screen. “God dammit!”
“Maybe you need to take a vacation. You know…relax a little?”
“I can’t take a vacation this close to the release date.”
“So we’ll push the date back. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Letting out a breath, Cole straightened up and turned around to face his boss again. He knew he might not have been in the best shape of his life, but with his natural athleticism, he held up better than most guys his age. Considering how much time he spent in front of a computer screen, his lack of a gut was even more impressive. He chuckled at his own expense and dropped back into his chair. “I don’t think a vacation is what I need, Jason.”
“I’m not letting you quit.” Lighting up like the power button on his game console, Jason said, “I know! What about Nora?”
“I haven’t seen her for a while.”
“She works one door away from the programmers’ lounge. You must see her every day.”
“I mean I haven’t seen her…like that. Not for a while.”
Jason nodded slowly. “Why not?”
“Not just a boss, but a relationship counselor too? I think you should prescribe me some painkillers. You know, the good ones that put you to sleep for a while?”
“I just thought it would do you some good to get your mind off of work, and Nora seems a lot more qualified than me to do that trick.”
Cole laughed and scooped the controller up from the floor. He only meant to test that it wasn’t broken, but quickly found himself entering back into the digital fray. “Maybe I will give her another call. She’s nice.”
“And fine as hell.”
“Don’t let H.R. hear you say that, but yeah, she’s hot.”
“All right, then. Take a week off. Rest up and then come back to work so you can tell me about what Nora wore on your date. Feel free to be as graphic as you’d like.” Looking around as if he truly feared an H.R. bug on the wall, Jason added, “But that’s just a friend talking.”
Cole knew it was true, that Jason was speaking as more than just a boss trying to put an employee at ease. Jason had always been a good friend. In fact, he was the sort of guy who couldn’t be a prick if his life depended on it. That was a great quality for a person, but not for the head of a growing company. Fortunately, Digital Dreamers had more than enough professional pricks to make up for Jason’s good nature.
“Since I’m being forced away from here,” Cole said, “maybe I could do more than just sit around my apartment and try to get my hands under Nora’s blouse.”
“What more do you need? What more would anyone need?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do,” Jason replied as he picked up a controller for himself. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have said anything.”
“Maybe I can get away and do something exciting. After putting together so many games, I’ve been thinking I could do an even better job if I had something real to draw from.”
Jason glanced at Cole just long enough for his character to get blindsided by a hulking swordsman wearing glowing armor. “You mean something more than those trips to the firing range or those ninja classes? Were those even real, or just semiclever ways to get some research money?”
“I still go to the firing range,” Cole replied, “and those classes were real.” After inputting a specific sequence of button presses, his avatar reached over his shoulder and drew a new, impossibly big, weapon from an undersized holster. The weapon was a spear with a grip that wrapped around both of the warrior’s fists. The upper end narrowed into a gleaming point, while the lower end forked open, which came in handy to block an incoming blow from one of the game’s demons. “I just put that weapon in. Pretty cool, huh?”
Jason didn’t reply. He was too busy glaring intently at Cole.
Finally, Cole buckled. “All right. I went to two of those ninja classes before I quit. Too much jumping. I only paid for a month of lessons anyway.”
“Consider it my contribution for this vacation you need so badly. Although I don’t think you’ll find a getaway advertised anywhere that’d put you close to the sorts of things you put in your games.”
“Not even on the Internet?”
Without taking his eyes from the screen, Jason shook his head. “Not even on the Internet.”
“What about one of those extreme vacations?”
“Jesus, Cole. Didn’t they stop doing that kind of crap ten years ago? If you want to snowboard, just do it.”
“Not snowboarding. Something better than that. Like a hunting trip.”
“Hunting? When have you ever hunted?”
“Never.”
“Then what made you think of it?”
Cole paused so he could skewer the last enemy on the screen with a flourishing combination. He then walked his character over to Jason’s guy and stabbed him in the gut.
“You’re fired,” Jason replied in a monotone. “Clean out your desk.”
Ignoring his boss, Cole said, “I got an e-mail a while ago about some kind of hunting trip in Canada. It’d be pushing it, but I should be able to get a seat on that plane before they’re all booked up. Firing some rifles and crawling around outside would be great research for when I start in on Sniper Ranger 4 next month.”
Jason shook his head and let out a breath. “Seems more like a lame attempt to get Digital Dreamers to pay for your vacation.”
“Was it that lame?”
“Yeah.”
“Whatever. That hunting trip in Canada is short a man. It’s so cheap it’s almost free, and I’ve even got my own gun.”
That caught Jason’s attention. “Should I be worried by that?”
Cole did his best to scowl, but didn’t need a mirror to know he wasn’t pulling it off. Aborting his attempt at intimidation, he said, “My dad took me out a few times and left a rifle at my place last winter. I don’t know what kind it is, but it should be all right for hunting.”
“You really don’t know how to hunt, do you?”
“Sort of. Well…”
Chuckling even harder, Jason set down his controller and leaned back into his chair. “Personally, I just wish I could be there to see you on a trip with a bunch of gun freaks.”
“Hunters, Jason. They’re hunters.”
“It sounds like a good deal. Just promise me to take plenty of pictures and some video when you shoot yourself in the foot. I want to post it on our website.”
Rather than try to stick up for himself, Cole said, “The plane leaves the day after tomorrow.”
“Isn’t that short notice?”
“That’s why the tickets are so cheap, moron.”
Rather than trade any more insults with Cole, Jason said, “Take your vacation. Since you decided to pick up and leave this close to deadline, you get to apologize to all the websites and gaming magazines for the delays.”
Cole got up and tossed his controller onto the chair he’d just vacated. “Or I could refrain from telling H.R. about how much you admire Nora’s—”
“Go!”
Cole’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a beige, stucco building on Yale Avenue. He didn’t think it was quite worth as much as he paid to live there, but the owners were doing their best to give the place a better image. Mostly, that consisted of spending money to print newsletters convincing tenants that the chipped paint was stylish, rather than just repainting the damn walls.
The apartment had acquired an even more rumpled appearance once he put his own things into it. A new couch and recliner sat amid a coffee table and lamps that had been with him since high school. His bed was fairly new, but the dining room table and chairs had come along with him after he moved out of his parents’ home in Yakima. Of course, like anyone else in his line of work, the television and entertainment center were top of the line and got upgraded whenever he received a bonus, or simply couldn’t control himself while walking through one of the many electronics stores he frequented.
For the most part, Cole could relax in his apartment. At the moment, however, the main thing on his mind was getting out from within those walls, even if he had to scrape and claw to do so.
“This is a nice place, Cole,” Nora said as she wandered through the one-bedroom dwelling. “Kind of a mess, though.” She was a nice person and a good friend. Any man with functioning senses would readily admit that she was appealing to every last one of them. Her voice was soft. Her hair and skin were smooth. Her touch was gentle. Her curves were nicely proportioned. She even liked to play video games, which was a bonus if not absolutely necessary. All in all, Nora should have been everything he was looking for in a woman. The real mystery was why having her in his apartment made him want to bolt for the street.
Cole looked up from the bag he was packing just long enough to glance around. The apartment wasn’t in the best shape, but it had sure looked worse. “Messy? What do you mean?”
But Nora wasn’t biting. She lowered her chin and looked at him over the top of her glasses in a way that had made nearly every man in the Digital Dreamers offices melt at one time or another. “Where should I start?” she asked. “How about the fact that you invited me over just so I could watch you throw clothes into that old duffel bag?” Suddenly, her eyes widened and she clapped her hands together. “Are we going somewhere for the weekend?”
“Actually, I’m the one that’s going away. Just me.”
The disappointment in her eyes wasn’t obvious, but it was there for anyone looking closely enough to see it. “Oh.”
“I asked you over as a way to…wrap things up.”
“Oh,” she said in a more somber tone.
Cole tossed the last pair of socks into his bag and walked over to her. Nora was almost as tall as him, which put her well above an average woman’s height. Straight, dark blond hair hung past her shoulders, and perfectly even bangs made a straight line over her eyes. Her glasses had quirky plastic frames and lenses that were too thick to be mistaken for a fashionable attempt to look smarter. She always wore skirts to accentuate her shapely legs, but never wore tight blouses or sweaters.
The moment Cole stepped up to her, he could feel Nora moving closer to him. He placed his hands on her hips, and in response she reached up and slipped her hands around the back of his neck.
Doing his best to ignore the instincts raging inside of him, Cole said, “Maybe it’s not such a good idea for you to be here.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.”
Her muscles tensed and the softness in her expression faded a bit. “Does this mean you’re breaking up with me?”
“Come on, Nora. We really haven’t been together for long.”
“I know,” she said while letting out a breath and taking a step back. “It’s just that I was afraid this might happen from the first moment I thought about approaching you.”
“You were going to approach me?”
She nodded with a hint of embarrassment. “I hung back because we work together and that can always get weird. But, we don’t really get out and meet people anywhere else. At least, I don’t.”
“I don’t either,” Cole quickly added.
“Then why break up?”
“Because I’m going on this trip to clear my head. The way things have been going, I’d like to wipe everything away and start over.”
“Reboot the ol’ system, huh?”
It was just that sort of geek-talk that had captured his heart. That, and how good she looked in her short skirts and button-down blouses while playing the newest build of Zombie House 6.
“You could put it that way,” Cole said. “I didn’t think it would be fair for me to string you along, take off to reboot and then expect you to wait for me like some dutiful wife from an old war movie.”
Nora smiled and closed some of the distance she’d created with the backward step she’d taken. “One, you’re not going to war. And two, there isn’t a man alive who could turn me into a stereotype. Most guys would catch hell just for lumping me into that category, and technically, I should hurt you for including me with everything else that’s just supposed to be wiped away.”
“Sorry about that. I just—”
“You just talk a few steps ahead of your brain, Cole. I know that. You’re also not most men.” She pressed herself against him and whispered into his ear, “I think it’s cute that you brought me over here to get one more bit of lovin’ before you take off on your manly Canadian guy-fest.” Smirking at the bit of surprise she saw in his face, Nora added, “But you’re right. We’re not hitched, and there’ll be time to see where we stand when you get back. For now, why don’t I send you off in style, soldier?”
Cole nodded and kissed her. Nora’s lips tasted like strawberries, and the skin under her sweater was even smoother than it looked.