by Misha Bell
Stalker much?
Ignoring her, I climb in and sit next to where he left his laptop in hopes that he’ll sit next to me.
I’m a Machiavellian genius.
Vlad takes a seat right next to me, and his lapis lazuli eyes meet mine.
My breath catches in my throat at the dark heat in his gaze. The air in the car suddenly feels charged with so much electricity I all but smell ozone.
His eyes fall to my lips, and as if pulled by a magnet, he slowly leans toward me.
Holy Kobe Cow.
Is Vlad about to kiss me?
Chapter Eleven
My heart drums a battle hymn in my chest, and my skin feels like it’s burning all over. All I can see are his lips, so beautifully shaped, so soft-looking. All I can think is leaning forward and closing that small remaining distance so that—
The car rips forward, jerking us both out of the moment.
“Buckle up,” Vlad says, his voice hoarse as he scoots a few inches away.
Moving like a zombie, I buckle up while he barks something at Ivan in Russian.
The car slows down.
Vlad raises the partition and turns to face me. “So, you wanted to talk.”
I take in a deep breath and gather my courage. “As I said earlier, I’m doing the testing, and you can’t stop me.”
The amusement that touched his eyes the last time I made this ultimatum is there again. “Didn’t you have someone else lined up for this testing originally? Sandra mentioned something along those lines.”
I shake my head. “She flaked.” There’s no way I’m going into the whole succubus-turned-nun debacle with him.
He sighs. “Fine then. Test it yourself if it means so much to you.”
I peer at him to make sure he’s not kidding. “That’s it? You’re just okay with it?”
He folds his arms across his broad chest. “You’ll have to convince me you can do it safely, of course.”
My cheeks burn. “I can be safe. That squirrel thing was an honest mistake. Going forward, I’ll do more due diligence and learn about the… err… hardware before using it. My plan is to break it all up into male and female batches, and obviously, I’ll make sure to test only the female toys from now on.”
He cocks his head. “Who will be testing the male batch? Or did he flake too?”
“It was the female’s boyfriend, so yeah, I lost him when I lost her. My new plan is to either create an ad on Craigslist or a Tinder—”
“Absolutely not.” The thunderous expression on his face must be what gave someone the idea of calling this man the Impaler.
My heart skips a beat, but at the same time, I feel my hackles rising. “No?”
The car halts.
“We’re here,” Vlad says through his teeth. “Do you want to wait for me in the car, or would you like to see the offices of a video game company?”
“The latter,” I say, mostly to show I wasn’t cowed.
In sullen silence, he holds the limo door for me, then leads me into a high-rise building, past security (where I learn he’s a consultant for the video game company we’re about to visit), and into the elevator.
“Look.” His tone turns conciliatory as the elevator starts moving. “Getting a random guy off the street is extremely dangerous. I don’t want you washing up in the New York Harbor because of this job.”
He might have a point.
Before I can reply, the doors slide open and he gestures for me to come out.
“To be continued,” I say and exit.
He gets us in with his ID, and I stare at the décor around us with unabashed curiosity.
The plaque on the wall is in a fun font reminiscent of comic books. It proudly states: 1000 Devils.
That sounds vaguely familiar. I think I’ve played a game they made, maybe even two.
In contrast to the rather sinister company name, there are bright colors all over, and the distant laughter makes it feel like a children’s playground.
This is a corporation? It almost seems like someone tried to design the exact opposite of the oppressively boring grays of our own silent-as-a-tomb office.
“First things first.” Vlad leads me into a walk-in closet to the side. “Gear up.”
Huh?
There are no clothes here, just Nerf guns.
Lots of Nerf guns.
Alrighty then. War it is.
Vlad grabs two rifle-shaped ones, then opens his trench coat and stuffs a handgun-shaped toy into the belt of his pants.
Lucky gun.
Shrugging, I pick out a two-handed white-and-orange blaster that reminds me of the Tommy Gun they show in old gangster movies.
“Stay back to back with me,” Vlad says, no hint of a smile on his face.
I do as he says, though when our backs touch, my hormones go haywire.
I bet there’s a drooling grin on my face.
We walk like that onto the main floor, like a pair of cops storming a mobster hideout.
Suddenly, an orange projectile smashes into my fake eyebrow.
“Hey!” I rub the spot before I recall that I have to be careful not to smear the drawing. “Not the face.”
“Sorry,” someone says.
I spot the assailant—a forty-something redheaded dude with a beer belly—and squeeze the trigger to unleash a cloud of darts into his chest.
Someone leaps out of the corner.
Vlad lunges in front of me and takes the next dart in the chest.
This time, the shooter is a lady a little older than Sandra, but I don’t let that stop me from unloading the rest of my darts into her torso.
Two more attackers join the fray.
Vlad is out of darts, and so am I.
Dropping his weapons, Vlad ushers me against the wall, so that the swarm of projectiles that are meant for me smash into his back.
Wow.
He’s right up against me, and it’s intoxicating. I can smell the sensual notes of bergamot and citrus and feel the warmth coming off his big body.
He looks down, and our eyes meet. His pupils are dilated, his high cheekbones edged with a hint of a flush. Slowly, he bends his head and—
“Leave my brother alone,” a voice booms over the sounds of the Nerf guns firing. “He’s here to help.”
Chapter Twelve
Brother?
My hormone-addled brain recalls a mention of a sibling who inspired Vlad to go into computer science.
Vlad steps away from me, rounding on the newcomer with a string of Russian.
Now that there are no delectable muscles blocking my view, I scan the speaker.
Yep. Has to be a brother. They look so alike they could pass for the same person—except the older sibling is a scruffy, laidback-looking version of the two.
“This is Fanny,” Vlad says, switching back to English. “We work together at Binary Birch.”
Work together—that’s a nice euphemism. He could’ve said “works under me.” No, wait, that would make me sound like a hooker.
The brother extends his hand. “Alex.”
No Mr. Chortsky here, interesting. Oh, and I get the 1000 Devils reference now—Alex owns his last name, it seems.
“Nice to meet you,” I say as I give his hand a professional shake.
“Step into the war room,” Alex says and leads me and Vlad into a large conference room with a view of Central Park.
A bunch of people are already here, and unlike the exuberant gun-toting colleagues we left outside, they look subdued, even haggard.
“We have a problem with Squirrel Simulator,” Alex says, but he makes it sound like there’s a double “w” where the double “r” should be in Squirrel, and a “w” instead of “r” at the end of simulator.
Weird. He said war room without doing that, so it can’t be a speech impediment.
“Again?” Vlad frowns and explains to me, “1000 Devils just released a fix for a major glitch in that game.”
So, Squirrel Simulator is a game.
I should’ve guessed that.
“Is it like Goat Simulator, but with a squirrel?” I ask.
“Much more fun.” Alex’s chest expands with pride. “A squirrel is smaller, so it can get into places a goat can’t even dream of.”
Vlad darts me a quick glance, then asks, “Did the glitch not get fixed?”
I redden. Was that glance in reference to the “squirrel can get anywhere” comment? It might be, since in my case, a type of squirrel was up my butt—and that wasn’t really fun. At least not for me.
“The last glitch is gone, but I think the big update with the fix introduced this new problem.” Alex picks up a remote, and YouTube shows up on the screen in front of us.
A video starts playing with a cute squirrel scurrying under a park bench. Suddenly, the furry creature expels smoke out of its mouth, which turns it pixelated—making the squirrel look like a demon from the deepest circles of hell.
Vlad frowns. “This reminds me of that glitch in the Sims, the one that made babies look like monsters.”
“It’s eerie,” I say, looking at the distortions in the image that look like claws and tentacles. “Almost like you did it on purpose to scare people.”
“Exactly.” Alex opens a laptop on the conference table and looks at his brother. “Can you check if we’ve been hacked?”
Vlad takes a seat in front of the laptop and starts typing away.
“Did you know cybersecurity was yet another one of my little brother’s talents?” Alex asks me with a wide grin.
“Nope.” I shoot a hungry glance at Vlad. Realizing the brother might catch on, I clear my throat and ask, “Have you ever been hacked before?”
“Never—and for the same reason. Vlad set up the security.”
“Have you already found the bug in the code?” I ask.
“No. The development team are on it, but it’s hard so far because we’ve been having trouble replicating the problem here in the office. The only reason I know that video isn’t a hoax are the one-star reviews from angry parents whose children couldn’t sleep after seeing this glitch.”
“Mind if I check out the game?” I ask. “What platform is it on?”
“It’s available everywhere,” Alex says. “Phones, PCs, consoles—you name it.”
Nodding, I pull out Precious and search the app store for Squirrel Simulator made by 1000 Devils.
I don’t find it, but I do see Squiwwel Simulatow.
Alrighty then. It’s really for kids. This explains why Alex pronounced the name that way.
I kick off a download of the game, and as I wait, I ask, “What was the glitch you just fixed?”
Wincing, Alex pulls up another YouTube video. In it, the still-super-cute version of the squirrel approaches a bully-looking kid who’s holding a baseball bat.
The squirrel halts.
The kid smashes the bat into the furry creature.
The squirrel takes flight, and flies and flies until the cityscape under him is barely visible.
Then the plummet begins.
“I take it that wasn’t supposed to happen?” I ask.
“Bug in the physics engine,” Alex says, sounding defensive. “We’re not the first to have something like this happen. The giants in Skyrim send people flying into the sky to this day.”
“Which is why we should’ve left it alone,” Vlad chimes in, his fingers still dancing away on his keyboard.
Alex shrugs. “We were getting hundreds of bad reviews for that, not to mention the emails from upset parents.”
Noticing that my download is done, I bring up the game.
Cute. I get to pick what I look like. I choose orange fur, maximum tail length, and white belly—mainly because that’s how the demon squirrel from the video looked before the horrific transformation began.
The game starts with a tutorial. I learn important facts, like that my teeth never stop growing and therefore I have to gnaw on things constantly to stay healthy. It also teaches me how to zigzag when escaping dogs and other enemies, how to bury nuts so that a fellow squirrel won’t steal them—sometimes even faking the burying process to mess with AI squirrel minds—and how to use my tail for balance and as a parachute during a fall or an umbrella on snowy days.
At least the realism isn’t one hundred percent. I’m sure the complaining parents wouldn’t like their kids to know that there’s a type of squirrel that has giant genitalia—at least for a squirrel. My ex told me about them. Their shlongs are forty percent of the length of their body, and the family jewels are about half that. My ex was clearly envious, especially of the other factoid: During masturbation, these squirrels can bend over and stick their penis in their own mouth. Also, most female squirrels have multiple male partners when they’re in heat—I’ve seen such an orgy a few times in the park.
When the tutorial is completed, I direct my furry self to scurry over to the nearby park, one that looks like the setting of the YouTube video. I figure that with my QA experience, I have as good of a chance of replicating this bug as the next corporate drone.
I climb every tree in the vicinity, eat some nuts, seeds, and a few eggs from an unattended bird nest—but look cute and cuddly throughout.
Hiding nuts doesn’t help, nor does hiding inappropriate things, like the lollipop I steal from a toddler.
I’m about to give up when I spot something that strictly speaking shouldn’t even be in this game—a cigarette butt under one of the benches.
I get that these are everywhere in reality, but this is a children’s game.
I also recall something I read once: Squirrels are addicted to nicotine from eating leftover butts, and also caffeine from licking discarded Starbucks cups.
Would the game let me eat a cigarette butt?
Hopping over to it, I grab it in my furry paws.
Before I can put the disgusting thing in my mouth, Vlad’s voice pulls me out of the game.
“It’s hard to prove a negative,” he says. “But as far as I can tell, you haven’t been hacked.”
Ignoring Alex’s reply, I put the cigarette butt into my mouth as if it were a juicy acorn.
Eureka.
Instead of eating the thing, the game cuts to smoke expelling out of my mouth—which, in hindsight, was a clue—and I become demonic, just like in the video.
“I reproduced,” I say.
Everyone snickers.
Vlad rolls his eyes. “Children.”
“As I was trying to say, I was able to reproduce the problem.” I show the screen.
Vlad stands up and comes over, invading my personal space. “How?”
Though it’s difficult to think like this, I explain about the cigarette butt.
His eyebrows furrow. Then he hurries back to the seat and bangs away on the laptop again.
Alex and I watch over his shoulder.
C++ covers the screen, and Vlad mutters something as he skims the code.
“Aha,” he says and minimizes the code window. He plays around in the source control repository until he has a code submission on the screen. One that, presumably, introduced the problem.
“This did it,” he says, confirming my suspicion. “Talk to Johnny Kove. If he did it intentionally—which seems to be the case—fire him.”
Does he own this company also? He sure sounds like he does.
Alex looks upset. “He’s one of my best developers.”
“You’re one of your best developers,” Vlad retorts. He explains to me, “Alex originally wrote this game, as well as a few other mega hits.”
“He’s being too modest,” Alex says. “We wrote it together, but now that he’s so busy with Binary Birch projects, I work on it with my dev team.”
“Well, it’s your call,” Vlad says, but his tone doesn’t match his words. “Keep in mind, though, if the guy does something like this again, I won’t come to the rescue.”
Alex says something in Russian. It sounds conciliatory, but it could be my imagination.
Vlad replies s
ternly, and they go back and forth like that for a bit. Something tells me the topic has shifted from games to something more personal.
“Thank you both,” Alex says when the sibling bickering comes to an end. “I’ll walk you out.”
That saves us from the Nerf gun attack. When the elevator opens, Alex glances at his brother with a mischievous expression, then faces me. “Fanny, we’re having a big 1000 Devils anniversary party at my parents’ restaurant next week. Could I ask you to please drag Vlad over there? It would mean the world to the family.”
“You don’t have to dignify that with a reply,” Vlad growls.
Since Vlad ultimately pays my salary, I take that as a hint to stay silent.
The elevator doors slide shut, and Vlad jabs the button for the lobby. “Back to our earlier conversation,” he says as we descend. “Did you think of a safe way to test the male batch of the hardware?”
I did, in fact, do just that. Running around as a squirrel is very conducive to plotting evil deeds, as well as testing procedures. The problem is, I don’t know if I have enough proverbial balls to voice my insane idea out loud.
“Look,” he says softly. “If you want to quit the project, I understand.”
This again? He thinks I’ve chickened out? That my prudish nature has won?
I straighten my spine. “Actually, I have the perfect male in mind for the testing. Someone you’ll think is safe, guaranteed.”
His lips thin into an angry line. “Who?”
I take in a deep breath and call forth all of my courage. “You.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Me?” Eyes widening, he steps back.
I’m committed now, so I barrel ahead. “It makes sense. I presume you trust yourself not to toss me into the Harbor. The privacy of the project isn’t compromised. And, well”—I blush horribly—“you have the right parts for it.”
Unbidden, my eyes drop to said parts, then I quickly look up.
The elevator doors open.
“Let’s continue this in the car,” he says, his expression turning unreadable.
Crap, crap, crap. Is he hating the idea? Hating me for even suggesting it? Ugh, how awkward is it going to be if he says no?