Wicked Games

by M. J. Scott

  I assumed I got my cyber skills from my unknown father; Sara had been useless with any sort of machine.

  Damon studied me for a long moment. "I might have a systems integration issue in our accounting department."

  The needle shot into the red zone. Financial packages—other than the ones used by massive international banks—were not usually particularly temperamental. I could count the number of times I'd been called in to consult on one with less than five fingers. And a bookkeeping problem wasn't important enough to send Damon Riley looking for me in a game at Decker's, where there'd be no record of us meeting.

  I didn't like being lied to.

  "Riley Arts must employ more geeks, nerds, and tech heads per square foot than NASA, Wall Street, and the CIA put together. If your people can't solve an issue with your financial package, you should fire them. How about you tell me the real problem?"

  "No—"

  "I don't appreciate having my time wasted," I interrupted before he could spin another lie.

  He held up his hand, giving me an even better view of the chip glittering against tanned flesh. Interesting that his skin reflected that particular bit of what I had to assume was real-life detail when it blurred others. "Let me finish. Not here was what I was about to say. I don't discuss confidential matters in unsecured venues."

  I folded my arms. "You're the one who came to me. And at the prices this place charges, I'd think their security would be top of the line."

  "Not secure enough."

  There was that master-of-the-universe tone again. "Then why did you come?"

  "I believe in knowing who I'm dealing with. And being discreet."

  "Well, it was nice being stalked by you and all, but I have to get back to my friends." I stood. My chances of landing this gig seemed pretty remote.

  He rose too. Apparently he had nice manners when he wasn't being irritating. "Can you come to my office on Wednesday?"

  Do this all over again? Why?

  I shifted a little in the game chair, aware of my back sticking to the slightly sweaty fabric of my shirt in the real world, but held my avatar still as I tried to figure out if he was playing an angle. "Why Wednesday?" It was still Monday, unless our game had taken more time than I thought. If he did have the sort of problem I might be able to help with, surely it would be a priority.

  "I have business in New Zealand tomorrow." He tugged his shirtsleeves down with two sharp movements. "Unfortunately. I will, of course, pay for your time."

  Ah. Payment. He'd found my Achilles’ heel. The problem with being very specialized was you had to wait for the very specialized problems to come along. And while I did well enough, there had been a distinct lack of computers throwing temper tantrums lately, and there were other demands on my finances.

  Which was part of the reason why I was out on a school night. I was sick of cooling my heels at home, worrying about my lack of billable hours and what that meant for my debts. The prospect of cold hard cash flow was even harder to ignore than my curiosity about what might be going on at Righteous. It couldn't hurt to at least find out what the mysterious issue was, even if the boss had pushy and demanding and driven written all over him.

  "I'll have to check my schedule," I said finally.

  "Is that a yes?"

  Check on pushy. "It's 'I'll have to check my schedule.'"

  He gestured and a data entry screen appeared in the air before me. "Go right ahead."

  Pushy and not used to being kept waiting. Not my favorite traits in men, or clients, but traits I would put up with for a chance of a job at Righteous.

  I crossed to the screen, switched it to secure mode—which meant the visuals would be blurred for him—and called up my calendar with an irritated twitch of my hand. As the image appeared, I settled for glaring at it in lieu of glaring at him.

  Nothing had magically appeared to fill the next four weeks since I'd checked that morning. I was still negotiating over a potential trip to a province in Liberated China to see what I could do with a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant that was behaving in a less than state-of-the-art manner after that, but getting a visa was proving to be a bitch. Apart from a few local follow-up calls, my dance card was empty.

  Plenty of time to take on a new client.

  Ample space in my bank account to be filled.

  Not that Damon Riley needed to know that.

  "I'll have to move some things around," I lied. I hadn’t learned a lot that was useful from my mother, but “never appear too eager” had been one of her life rules. She used it on men and marks. I used it in business negotiations.

  His mouth quirked, making me wonder exactly how deep his investigations had gone. Money could buy a lot of supposedly secure data these days.

  "That's fine. I'll get my assistant to schedule some time on Wednesday and confirm with you."

  Wednesday. After his little jaunt to the southern hemisphere. Across the planet and back in a day. Obviously he didn't suffer any side effects from suborbital travel. Personally, it made me feel like I’d been on a three-day bender without any of the fun parts. And the travel drugs that were supposed to help only knocked me on my ass. Lucky for me, most of my clients were only too happy for me to travel via less expensive means like regular planes.

  But at least I had until Wednesday to do some digging of my own into Righteous and the man at the helm.

  "That will be fine."

  Damon offered his hand. "I look forward to it."

  His fingers closed over mine, and I couldn't help wishing it wasn't just two avatars touching.

  He hit me with one last smile. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to duck out the back way. Early start tomorrow."

  His avatar vanished before I could reply.

  I hit the release and yanked my headset free. Light stabbed my eyes and I blinked rapidly, ignoring the rush of dizziness from too quick a reentry as I clambered out of the game chair and pushed my way out of the curtained-off solo alcove.

  The sounds and smells of the club slammed into me after the relative peace of the game, a rush of reality that made me wonder if I'd imagined the whole thing. My eyes scanned the crowd, but there was no sign of anyone who looked like Riley. And there was none of the excitement that an appearance of the gamers' guru would cause. He really had slipped away. Easy enough to do. He'd probably been in one of the private suites on the upper levels.

  I fought the stupid surge of disappointment even as my hand tingled, remembering the touch of his avatar.

  "Mags! There you are. Where have you been hiding?" Nat pushed a drink into my hand. I took a swig without thinking, then cursed. It was an Insomniac. Crap. I didn’t sleep well at the best of times; I didn't need to add triple-refined syncaf to the adrenaline already riding my system.

  I passed the drink back. "You know I don't drink these this late."

  She blinked at me, then looked down at the glass. "Sorry." She gave me her “victory is mine” grin. "I wasn't thinking."

  She must've won her bout if she was drinking Insomniacs. She only used caffeine for hard-core victory parties.

  "You won?" I asked before she could ask me where I'd been again. If she found out, I'd never get out of the club. I'd have to repeat every detail to her and all her friends. Then they'd probably want to replay the game tape and endlessly critique every move. And I had the feeling that Damon Riley didn’t appreciate anybody who couldn’t keep their mouth shut.

  “Crushed them mercilessly,” Nat said.

  We high-fived. Nat’s team was climbing the ranks steadily, and I loved watching her kicking butt. But even as I grinned at her, I tried to think of a way to make my excuses and leave. The clock was ticking. I had thirty-six hours to try and find out as much as possible about Damon Riley.

  And thirty-six hours to convince myself that I shouldn't already be looking forward to seeing him again.

  I reached for the Insomniac. At this point, I needed all the help I could get.

  Chapter Two

/>   By eleven o'clock Wednesday morning, I'd managed to work myself into a fine state of nervousness. Slurping on my third syncaf of the day, I stared across the road at the front gate of the Riley Arts campus and tried to psych myself into going inside. My datapad had already chirped thirty-, twenty-, and ten-minute warnings at me.

  My feet stayed firmly rooted to the pavement as I watched the faint flicker of the shields above the fence in the sunlight, trying to peek through the electric haze at the low buildings scattered like white-and-glass jewels among green trees and greener lawns.

  Serious money had been spent establishing this place. Or reestablishing it. My day and a half of digging up all I could about Riley had told me that he'd been one of the first companies to push to redevelop downtown. Before the quake, there wouldn't have been a piece of property this large for sale in the heart of the city, but afterward, well, no one knew where was safe to rebuild, or if they even should. And no one wanted to build skyscrapers. Not that there were skyscrapers here—none of the buildings were more than a few stories high—but Riley had put his money where his mouth was nonetheless.

  Looking into the flawlessly manicured grounds, nobody would know there'd been a wreckage of a city here just ten short years ago. Not a leaf or blade of grass out of place as far as the eye could see.

  But part of me couldn't help interposing the image of the aftermath over the scene. Which was why I rarely came to this part of town any more. It was mostly like this now, big corporate headquarters mingling with the new memorial park and buildings rebuilt to resemble the originals to bring in the tourists. Tourists wearing optics and engrossed in the augmented reality feeds sent out from the memorial plaques, oohing and aahing over images of the old city overlaid over the new.

  Worse, some of the memorial plaques projected holo images rather than AR. The last thing I needed was to catch a glimpse of one of those. I had my own memories of Old SF. Once upon a time they’d been happy. Now they just mostly reminded me of all that I’d lost.

  But there was no memorial plaque here. All that stood between me and the inner workings of Damon Riley's empire were the gleaming gates and a sleek glass and metal security checkpoint. I still stood frozen, my confidence overwhelmed by nerves running riot.

  The man had managed to rebuild practically an entire town's worth of property in five years. I couldn't even get one lousy house back up. I was playing out of my league.

  The last drops of syncaf ran down my throat, and I tossed the cup at the nearest recycler. It squeaked and crunched, and I wondered if Riley might chew me up just as easily.

  "Stop being a wimp, Lachlan."

  My research on Riley had confirmed first impressions. He played the affable, charming computer geek humbled by his good fortune in the media and online, but his business record indicated someone who was single-minded in achieving his goals.

  Someone who didn't suffer fools gladly and who protected what was his.

  Lucky for me that I didn't like to be foolish.

  Though if I stood here much longer, I might melt in the midday steam. Frizzed hair and running makeup weren’t exactly the first—or second, I guess—impression I was aiming for.

  "Just another client interview." I sucked in a breath, straightened my jacket—resisting the urge to check that I hadn't eaten my supposedly immovable lipstick—then headed across the road.

  The gate guard looked like he had sumo wrestlers in his ancestry. Sumo wrestlers with sumo-sized attitude, judging by the way he looked down his nose at me until I announced I had an appointment with Mr. Riley. Apparently those were the magic words, earning me a respectful smile once his data screen confirmed I wasn’t lying.

  We did the inspect-the-ID dance—palm scan and plastic—and then the guard took a truly hideous digital picture of me, which the tiny ident tag he punched onto my jacket collar would project on demand.

  Tiny circuit lines surrounded the tag’s equally tiny lens. If I’d had to guess, I would have put money on it being some sort of locator device. No moving around Riley Arts without them knowing exactly where you were, apparently. Fair enough. In Damon’s place, I’d protect my secrets closely too.

  To complete the process, the guard zapped a set of directions to the building I needed to my datapad, informed me that the map and my access permission would be deleted in three hours, and let me through the gate.

  Inside, the air was slightly cooler, which meant the shields went overhead as well. Expensive, though welcome as I walked for what seemed like miles following the map to my destination—the tallest building on campus, five stories or so of elegantly curved glass and wood. I vaguely remembered rapturous articles about the design and the eco-friendliness of the whole campus when it had first opened, but I was too nervous to appreciate much about it other than it was big and the lobby was light and airy and oddly free of any of the things you might expect a gaming company to litter its offices with.

  Luckily, the concierge at the front desk was friendlier than the security guard. I guess if you made it through the gate, you were deemed safe. One glance at the image projected by my tag as she scanned it, and then I was ushered to an elevator bank and given detailed directions on what to do when I reached the fourth floor.

  The elevator disgorged me onto a sea of gleaming floorboards and I halted, trying to get my bearings. I shouldn't have bothered. Before I could take another step, a very tall woman, whose expression was far too efficient for her carefully trendy clothes and blue-streaked hair, stepped through a door that opened in the opposite wall.

  "Ms. Lachlan?" Pale gray eyes gave me the once-over. I got the feeling she didn't miss much. And maybe didn't approve of me.

  "That's me," I said, trying to give her my best I’m-harmless smile. "Your boss is expecting me."

  Her answering smile was tight. "I'm Cat Delaney. Mr. Riley's office is this way."

  You can take the suit off the assistant, but you can't take the assistant out of the suit. I doubted many of Damon's employees called him Mr. Riley—tech companies were notoriously informal—but I couldn’t fault her for being professional.

  Her heels tapped over gleaming floorboards as we walked. She stayed a little ahead of me, which gave me the chance to check the place out and try to get my bearings. This floor wasn't as sparsely furnished as the lobby. The bare brick walls were broken into sections by strips of vertical gardens, the green providing contrast to the massive framed pictures hung between them. The black-framed images were an intriguing mix of stills from Righteous games and other pop culture memorabilia both old and new.

  Every so often there was a door and a floor-to-ceiling pane of glass that allowed glimpses into the offices. Some had clusters of desks and some only one, but all of them were in use, if the sheer volume of gadgets and gizmos and wacky desk ornaments was anything to go by. No actual people were in evidence, but the casual feel of the place eased my nerves. Maybe Damon Riley would be easier to deal with on his home turf.

  "Where is everybody?" I asked.

  Cat kept walking. "Recognition hour. They'll be finished soon."

  She didn't offer any further explanation, and I didn't ask. “Recognition hour” sounded like the sort of compulsory touchy-feely corporate team bonding that made me happy that I worked for myself.

  The long corridor turned several times, following the lines of the building. Finally we reached a set of huge wooden doors. At first glance, the designs carved into them looked vaguely like they might have decorated the walls of an old temple in some hot and humid country. But on closer inspection, the figures revealed themselves to be stylized versions of famous characters from Righteous games.

  One side of my mouth quirked reluctantly. I didn't want to find the man and his sense of humor charming.

  "This is Mr. Riley's office." Cat placed her hand on the scanner beside the doors and they swung inward. "Go on in." She made a little shooing motion.

  I got the feeling that keeping Damon Riley waiting was a Very Bad Thing in her bo
ok. In my book, it was tempting to linger just on sheer principle. Taste in men wasn't the only thing I'd inherited from my mother—contrariness ran deep in my veins too. Though I'd never been sure if it was Sara's contribution or just Gran's sheer Irish stubborn-headedness.

  Neither was going to help me land Riley as a client, if indeed that was what I wanted to do.

  The jury was still deliberating on that one.

  But I did want to hear what he had to say. The more I'd read about Riley Arts, the more interested I'd become.

  "Thank you," I said politely, then walked into Damon's office.

  The room behind the doors was not much smaller than my apartment. If Cat didn't get enough cardio walking from her desk to Damon's office, then she'd be able to make it up just crossing from the doors to his desk.

  I hovered in the doorway, feeling dwarfed. Arching ceilings and the sweep of floor-to-ceiling glass that formed the far wall of the room spoke of wealth, power and authority.

  The décor took a little of the edge off. It didn't really look like any other CEO's office I’d ever been in. Sure, there was the standard desk and conference table made from the same dark wood as the doors, but they shared the space with a pool table and an antique pinball machine. Several surfboards leaned against one wall, and a giant screen dominated another. In front of the screen was a neat semicircle of squishy bright red leather recliners that I suspected might be game chairs in disguise.

  What was missing was the man himself. I'd assumed, from Cat's desire to get me here on time, that Damon was waiting for me. Apparently I'd been wrong.

  Unwilling to just stand inside the doorway like a nervous kid waiting for the principal, I walked over to one of the recliners, trailing my hand over leather that almost melted under my fingers, trying to adjust my mental image of the man to the room. Which one was the real him? The surfboard collector or the business genius who staged stealth interviews in virtual reality?