Cole hadn’t felt comfortable anywhere since he’d seen his first werewolf, but the gutted old restaurant off of South Laramie Avenue was a spot where he could sometimes let his guard down. At one point the restaurant had customers, employees, and a real name. Now, all that remained of the place’s former glory was a sign painted onto the front wall that had been partially worn away by the elements and who knows what else. The letters that could still be seen were: RAZA HILL. He parked along the side of the place, collected his bags of food, and hurried in.
“You’ll never guess what happened,” he sputtered the moment he caught sight of Paige sitting on a stool in the kitchen.
She glanced over to him and asked, “Where are my cheese fries?”
“Remember those Nymar I called about? There were three of them, and I chased them away without any help. Hey, wait a second. You seriously weren’t planning on coming to help me?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re planted on that stool like nothing happened! What if I got hurt?”
Shrugging, Paige replied, “If you can’t chase off three Nymar, then you’ll never be any help to me. Where’s your weapon?”
“Oh, I left it in the car.”
“But you brought in the food? At least you’ve got your priorities straight.”
“Don’t you want to hear about the Nymar?” Cole asked.
Paige swiveled around on her stool, placed her hands on her knees, and gave him one crisp nod. “Yes, Cole. I want to hear all about the Nymar. After that do I get my cheese fries?”
He dumped the fast food bags onto the counter. “Here you go. The fries and everything else is in there. I’ll go get the rest of my stuff and we can eat.”
“Do you know how cute you are when you pout?”
“Save it.”
After taking his weapon from the front seat, Cole stomped back into the restaurant. He slapped the spear down, grabbed a double cheeseburger from the pile, and tore into the steamed little miracle.
“There,” Paige said. “Feel better now?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. Now I’m ready to hear about the Nymar.”
Cole looked over to find her holding a handful of gooey cheese fries that had all been bitten off in the middle. That same cheese was smeared over a good portion of her mouth, and a few drops had fallen onto the front of her nightshirt. With her hair pulled back into a messy tail, she was anything but glamorous. Somehow, she still managed to get that twitch she’d been after.
Launching into his story while stuffing his face, Cole went through the whole account. By the time he was finished, most of the cardboard burger boxes were empty. Most of the food that hadn’t been eaten was soaked into the front of Paige’s clothes.
“So they weren’t feeding in public?” she asked.
“The guy in the alley was paying for it, but he was out of sight.”
“That’s not a killing offense, but the Nymar are supposed to stay around the Levee or near the Loop. There must be more of them coming back into town after that business with Misonyk was cleared up.”
It had been a while since that name was mentioned. The Nymar were worried about dredging up old demons, and the Skinners were simply glad to be rid of the lunatic who’d used an infected werewolf to try and make a name for himself in Chicago and the adjacent states.
“Things have been quieter than usual since Misonyk was killed,” Paige continued, “but it’s stupid to think that would last too long. Most of the Nymar that left town will be coming back to pick up where they left off.” She picked up one of the onion rings from the two remaining boxes on the counter and then dipped it into some partially hardened cheese from the second container. “Others might come here thinking we’re still soft from what happened before,” she said amidst a pungent, greasy spray. “You said that girl had her hair in pigtails. Were they tied back with bands that had little cats on them?”
“Huh?”
Waving her hand impatiently, Paige said, “Never mind. She was one of Steph’s girls, all right. They all have the same attitude and like to push their luck.”
“What did you mean about those cat bands?” Cole asked.
Paige hopped down from her stool and tapped his forehead. “Know your enemy, young one. Steph and Ace’s working girls all wear their hair in pigtails tied back with bands that have cats on them. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”
“They’re scantily dressed vampire hookers that flash their goods every chance they get and you think I’m looking at the bands in their hair?”
“Did you at least notice the pigtails?” she asked hopefully.
Cole perked up as he replied, “Oh yeah. I noticed the pigtails.”
“We need to pay Steph and Ace a visit. They know better than to cross the border we laid down, so that means they’re either testing us or they’ve got reinforcements to back them up. We’ll go to that new Blood Parlor tonight after the crowds die down.”
Cole watched Paige hop off her stool and walk out of the kitchen. He’d been around her enough to know just how long he could study her from behind before getting caught. When the timer in his head went off, he pretended to look at something else. Paige shot a quick glance over her shoulder but had no reason to break her stride.
“Too slow, dragon lady,” he whispered in his own kung-fu impression. “Time for young one to polish his stick.”
Cole’s spear leaned in the corner of his walk-in refrigerator, gleaming with a fresh coat of the varnish that was mixed using an old Skinner recipe. Although Skinners tended to hand down their teachings through word of mouth, Cole desperately wished Paige would just give him a damn list of ingredients. Instead, she’d forced him to mix up dozens of batches until he finally got it right. Since he actually had some time for himself, he abandoned the Skinner stuff in favor of something from his own century.
The laptop was his own little tricked-out piece of home, which had recently been upgraded so it could handle Sniper Ranger multiplayer without locking up every ten minutes. Running a connection into the sealed metal box hadn’t been easy, but it was worth it. That and the signal booster he’d rigged for his cell phone turned the freezer into a work space that was slightly better than the first cubicle he’d ever been assigned in the real world. As soon as he logged in to play a few rounds of Sniper Deathmatch, an instant message popped onto his screen: CALL JASON.
Jason Sorrenson was a friend, which meant his messages were usually a bit more colorful. Rising to the upper echelons of a prosperous game designing company hadn’t turned Jason into a corporate jerk, so whenever he even slightly sounded like one of those jerks, something was wrong. Cole flipped open his cell phone, pushed the button to dial his old work number, and sifted through his mental list of all the reasons Jason could be pissed at him this time.
“Digital Dreamers.”
“Why the formalities?” Cole chuckled.
“Who is this?”
“Aw Christ, I haven’t been gone that long. Besides, dumb shit, you just IM’d me to call you.”
“Pardon me?”
For Jason to be this serious, something was definitely wrong.
“This is Cole.”
“I’ll patch you through to Mr. Sorrenson.”
Then again, another good explanation was that the person who’d answered the phone wasn’t the head of Digital Dreamers. As if to make Cole feel even more out of place, the person on the other end of the phone asked, “Cole who?”
“Cole Warnecki. I work there. Jason’s expecting me, so just patch me through!”
Having tapped into his mean streak already that night, Cole was able to repeat the trick well enough to get the lines of communication unclogged. There were a few clicks, followed by a ring tone and then another voice that sounded a whole lot like the previous one.
“Jason?” Cole asked cautiously.
“Yeah, Cole. I’m surprised you responded to the message so quickly. I’ve had a hard time getting in touch with you.”
“Maybe your new assistant has been handling all your business. Nobody’d know the difference.”
“I know. I’ve been trying to talk differently to avoid confusion.”
“You really need to learn how to throw your weight around more,” Cole chuckled. “What’s up?”
“How’s that downloadable content for Hammer Strike coming along?”
“I’ve put a few more things together. The game’s only been released for a couple months.”
“People on the forums have been clamoring for it,” Jason replied.
Cole let out a haggard sigh that he hoped translated fully through the cellular connection. “People on the forums are always clamoring for something. When we announced there would be downloadable content for Hammer Strike, they wanted to know what it was and when it was coming. When we released that first batch of stuff, they all bitched that it wasn’t enough. When we announced that the new multiplayer maps were coming, they bitched about the release dates or the price.”
After a slight pause, Jason said, “That first batch was just a bunch of different clothes for the characters and new designs for the weapons.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“The new designs didn’t even change weapon performance, and we charged three dollars for each download.”
“I know!” When Cole sighed again, it was less for dramatic effect and more to get some actual air into his lungs. “That first batch was rushed. I know it was crap. I made the crap. I check the forums, so I realize everyone else out there thought it was crap too. Still, it sold pretty well.”
Jason didn’t voice his impatience, but Cole could feel it as if he could see his boss rolling his eyes to examine the underside of the Mariners cap that was always stuck on his head. “We’ve got some loyal fans. They buy our games because they know they’ll be good, and they download the extra content because they think it’ll be just as good. I let that first batch slide to test the waters, but it didn’t go over well. Not well at all.”
As always, Jason was being kind. Cole had worked on Hammer Strike since the game was nothing more than an excited conversation over some hastily drawn sketches. Since then both of them had been hip-deep in creating the characters, enemies, fighting mechanics, level design, background rendering, and anything else it took to turn ideas into a functioning video game. When Cole took off for his vacation to Canada, Hammer Strike had been almost ready to be pressed onto disks. That was before he knew what a Skinner was or that monsters were real. After Hammer Strike had been released, it was all he could do to keep up with the project he’d started.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be on this team anymore,” Cole grumbled.
“That’s what I was calling about.”
“What? You really think I should be off the team?”
“No,” Jason said. “I could tell you’ve been having your doubts. Before you left Seattle, you ate and breathed Hammer Strike. You were supposed to come back to fix the remaining bugs, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“You never came back and just threw together a patch on your laptop. What the hell happened?”
Rather than try to lie to his longtime friend, Cole simply replied, “I told you what happened.”
“First you told me there was family trouble you needed to work through. Then you said you had to stay in Chicago for personal reasons. The only way those excuses could get more generic would be for you to send them to me written in black ballpoint on a brown paper sack.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not trying to get into your personal business. If you need time away, you can have it. If you want to keep working for Digital Dreamers, you can, but I don’t usually allow someone at your level to work remotely. I don’t care what kind of a laptop you’ve got, you need to be here with the rest of the team to hash out new ideas and put together a functioning build for the next Hammer Strike. We need something to show at the next Electronic Gaming Conference.”
“So there really is gonna be a Hammer Strike 2?” Cole asked.
“Not if we keep churning out garbage like that first batch of downloadable content. Come on, Cole. Did you really think a few new color sets for the weapons would make fans happy?”
Suddenly, Cole felt like a kid being scolded by the principal. What made it worse was that he knew he had it coming. “No, Jason,” he sighed. “I didn’t.”
“Have you heard the new slang floating around the review sites?”
“Yeah,” Cole laughed. “When this year’s NFL game came out, they tried to make people pay a few bucks more to unlock the bonus stadiums and a few different touchdown dances for their characters. Someone called the patch ‘Hammer Paint.’ To be honest, though, that first content I submitted was more than just different colors.”
“There were a few new shapes for the weapon handles too. Whoopie. The point is that whenever anyone online thinks they’re getting ripped off by some shoddy crap pushed out by a game company, they call it ‘Hammer Paint.’ That does us no favors, buddy.”
Cole winced at that. It was one thing to catch grief from fans. Hearing it from a friend and his boss was bad. Since both of those people were wrapped up into one normally soft-spoken guy, it was doubly bad.
“What are you working on now?” Jason asked.
“You haven’t gotten my latest?”
“No. That’s why I called.”
Frantically, Cole tapped on his laptop to see when he’d sent his last e-mail to Digital Dreamers. “Aw hell, Jason. I thought I sent it to you a week ago.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll love this,” Cole said as he leaned forward in his chair. “Not only have I worked out some new multiplayer arenas, but I’ve incorporated shifting day and night patterns that affect which monsters are out at what times. And get this—after they download the patch, if snipers camp in the same old spots for too long, those monsters will sniff them out. Some of the urban areas will have collapsing buildings or new areas attached to the perimeter of the play area. It’ll breathe new life into all the popular maps!”
“Okay,” Jason said in a favorable tone that probably came along with a nod. “What else have you got?”
Relieved by the reaction he’d gotten, Cole said, “I’ve designed some new enemies as well.”
“More monsters? Do we really need that?”
“These monsters aren’t just new character models. They’re the old monsters that transform into bigger, stronger, or faster ones. It’s a real evolution of the game and it’ll only require a few more animations to go from one to the other. Trust me,” Cole added. “I’ve researched them thoroughly and they’ll kick our players’ asses. I’ve got everything drawn up and laid out as far as how it all fits together. It sounds like a mess right now, but it’ll be so cool.”
“Sounds like it.” This time Jason seemed genuinely pleased.
“But wait,” Cole added in a voice pulled straight from a late night infomercial, “there’s more. I wrote up some tweaks for the now infamous painted hammers that will upgrade the stats.”
“You mean the different colors and handles won’t just be pretty?”
“Nope. I came up with ways to modify the weapons so anyone who bought that first batch of downloadable content will do more damage or get more attacks or even—”
“I get it, Cole. Will it be easy to implement?”
“The changes should just fit right into a patch that—” Knowing Jason was more concerned with the bottom line, Cole cut himself short. “It’ll just be another download. I thought we could make it free as a show of goodwill.”
“And a way to apologize for the first bunch of crap we put on the market.”
“My way didn’t sound so brutal, but yeah.”
“Send what you’ve got as soon as you can,” Jason said.
“I just did. Hopefully this will keep me employed for a little while longer.”
“I wasn’t going to fire you, Cole. Well, not yet anyway. Apart from the whole Hammer Paint fiasco, you’ve been turning in better content than any of our other part-time contractors.”
Part-time contractors. A fancy name for the guys who sent in pages of ideas to get a small commission. He might not have clawed too high up the corporate ladder, but the part-timers didn’t even have a rung. Now it seemed he was down there with them.
As if picking up on the gloom settling in over Cole’s head, Jason asked, “How’s Paige?”
“What was that?”
“Paige. You mentioned her in a few of your other e-mails a while ago. It sounded like she might be something more than just a friend, but you hadn’t quite…you know…sealed the deal.”
Jason was never good at guy talk. He knew the basics, but couldn’t commit enough to the subtle banalities to be truly fluent in the language.
“She’s been kicking my ass,” Cole grumbled.
“I hear you, man. Women.”
“I’m going to stop you before you try to call me bro.”
“That’s probably for the best.” Jason shifted enough to make his chair squeak and then said, “The e-mail just arrived. It looks like some good stuff. Your old job is waiting for you whenever you decide to come back to Seattle, but don’t take advantage of our friendship. Another Hammer Paint fiasco will sink our download division for good.”
“Read through everything I sent you. If you still want to scold me after that, I’ll bend over and take it like a good cell mate.”