Harper

I stepped out of the elevator Tuesday morning to find Margo perched on the edge of Jace’s desk like she owned it. Her perfectly manicured hand rested on his keyboard, and she was leaning close enough that her red hair brushed his monitor.

When she spotted me, her lips curved into a cat-that-ate-the-canary smirk. She straightened, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and sauntered away, her heels clicking a victory march on the polished floor.

Great. Just great.

I busied myself setting up my workstation, trying to shake off the chill of Margo’s presence. The power cord from yesterday felt warm in my hands as I connected it to my laptop.

There was that same brief surge of electricity, a flicker of shadows in my peripheral vision that disappeared when I turned to look.

“Brown bagging it again?” Jace’s voice made me jump. He was looking at the brown bag lunch on my desk, his head tilted in that way that made his hair fall across his forehead.

“Oh, um, I like working through lunch,” I said, which wasn’t entirely a lie. “Helps me stay focused.”

What I didn’t say is that I'd rather eat stale crackers at my desk than risk another run-in with Margo and her perfectly aimed barbs.

The morning crawled by in a series of stolen glances. I couldn’t help it—Jace coded like he was conducting an orchestra, his fingers flying across the keyboard in perfect rhythm.

Sometimes he muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair until it stood on end. At one point, he rolled up his sleeves, revealing forearms corded with muscle.

Who knew programming could be this. . . distracting?

I tried to focus on my work, but my eyes kept drifting. The way he bit his lower lip when he was concentrating. How his shoulders flexed when he reached for his coffee. The little smile that played at the corners of his mouth when he solved a particularly tricky problem.

A few times, I looked up to find him already watching me, his gray eyes warm with amusement. Heat crawled up my neck each time our gazes locked.

Once, he held my stare a moment longer than necessary, and my heart did a funny little skip.

“Need any help?” he asked after the third time our eyes met.

“No! I mean, no, thank you. I’m good.” I dove back into my work, my face burning. Real smooth, Harper.

Around ten, I decided to brave the break room’s coffee machine. The thing was all gleaming chrome and mysterious buttons with symbols I didn’t recognize.

A small crowd gathered to watch my attempt, apparently entertained by the new girl’s confusion.

“The left button initiates the quantum brewing sequence,” someone called out helpfully. “But only if Mercury’s in retrograde.”

“Don’t forget to sacrifice a CPU to the coffee gods,” another added.

I was about to admit defeat when Jace appeared at my shoulder, close enough that I could smell his cologne. “Here,” he said, reaching around me to press a combination of buttons. “It takes some getting used to.”

His chest brushed my back as he showed me the sequence, and my brain temporarily forgot how to process basic inputs.

“Thanks,” I managed, trying not to focus on how perfectly I’d fit against him if I just leaned back slightly.

After lunch, Jace pushed away from his desk with a stretch that momentarily short-circuited my brain. “Time you met the rest of the team properly. Couldn’t yesterday with everyone in meetings.”

The corridors were a maze of glass and steel, each turn revealing another glimpse of gaming history. Concept art from classic titles lined the walls, and occasionally a testing room offered a peek at future projects.

Jace walked close enough that our hands brushed once, sending tingles up my arm.

We entered a room that looked like mission control crossed with a hardware store. Servers hummed along the walls, their lights blinking like stars.

The air smells of ozone and coffee, and every surface was covered with hardware in various states of repair. Cables snaked across the ceiling in a complex web, all meticulously labeled with cramped handwriting.

“Layla?” Jace called out. “Got someone for you to meet.”

A head popped up from behind a tower of monitors. Layla had the kind of intense eyes you see in people who spend more time with computers than humans. Her mousy brown ponytail was secured with what appears to be a USB cable, and her “Keep Calm and Turn It Off and On Again” t-shirt had seen better days.

“So you’re the one who had the power surge yesterday,” she said instead of hello, circling me like she was debugging suspicious code. Her desk was a graveyard of damaged hardware, each piece tagged with a Post-it explaining its demise. “What kind of cord were you using?”

“Um, just a standard power cord?” I tried to remember if there was anything special about it.

“Hmm.” She squinted at me, then at her monitors showing various system diagnostics. “Well, try not to fry any more of my babies. They’re sensitive.”

She patted the nearest server like it was a beloved pet. “The surge yesterday took out three power supplies and made the coffee machine speak in binary for an hour.”

Next, we found Jonathan in what looked like a writer’s fever dream. Sticky notes in chicken-scratch handwriting carpeted every surface, and connected to one another by red string like a conspiracy theory wall.

Character profiles and plot outlines created a paper tapestry, and his whiteboard was covered in flowcharts that would make a mathematician dizzy.

He peered at us through thick-rimmed glasses, barely looking up from his laptop where he was typing furiously. Dark circles under his eyes suggested he’d been living on coffee, energy drinks, and inspiration for days.

“Harper, Jonathan. Jonathan, Harper,” Jace introduced. “He’s writing the story for Revelations.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jonathan mumbled, already lost again in whatever scene he was crafting. His desk was littered with energy drink cans arranged in what might have been a mandala.

Greg’s workspace hit us with a wall of energy before we even entered. It was a riot of color and movement, like stepping into an animator’s brain. Animation frames covered his monitors, and action figures waged war across his desk.

A ceiling-high shelf displayed what must be every collector’s edition gaming figurine ever made.

His man bun wobbled enthusiastically as he showed me the shadow effects he was working on, his whole body practically vibrating with excitement. “The physics engine is completely new,” he gushed. “Wait till you see how the shadows move. It’s like they’re alive!”

He clicked through animation sequences that made my breath catch. The shadows did seem almost sentient, moving with an organic fluidity that shouldn’t have been possible with current technology.

Finally, Jace led me to the last stop, and my stomach sank. Margo’s workspace was exactly what I’d expect—pristine, expensive, and designed to intimidate.

Everything was arranged with mathematical precision, from her dual monitors to her collection of industry awards. A framed magazine cover featured her as one of “Gaming’s Rising Stars Under 30.” Even her desk plants looked perfect, like they wouldn’t dare drop a leaf on her immaculate glass desk.

She looked up from her screen with a smile that could freeze hell. Unlike the controlled chaos of the other developers’ spaces, Margo’s area felt more like a CEO’s corner office. The glass walls of her cubicle were frosted for privacy, and she had one of the best views of the city—when the fog allowed it.

“Harper,” she said, my name sounding like a bug she’d found in her code. “I trust you’re settling in well?” Her green eyes flicked to where Jace stood slightly behind me, and something possessive flashed across her face.

“Very well, thank you.” I kept my voice professional, even as her eyes raked over me like she was cataloging every flaw. Today she was wearing a form-fitting dress that probably cost more than my monthly rent, and her red hair fell in perfect waves that somehow hadn’t been affected by the foggy morning.

“Wonderful.” She turned to Jace, dismissing me entirely. “Don’t forget about that script, darling. Some of us have deadlines.” The way she said ‘darling’ dripped with history, and I noticed Jace’s jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.

“I’ll send it when it’s ready, Margo,” he said, his tone clipped. His hand brushed the small of my back as he guided me away, a touch so light I might have imagined it. But from the way Margo’s eyes narrowed, I knew she noticed.

Back at my desk, I tried to focus on work instead of the way Margo had practically purred that ‘darling’ at Jace, or the lingering warmth from his touch. The tension between them was obvious—the kind that only comes from a history you want to forget but can’t quite delete.

My screen flickered—it’s been doing that more often, little glitches that came and went like digital hiccups.

But this time it was different.

The shadows at the edges of my screen seemed to writhe, pulling away from their normal boundaries. Lines of code scrambled and reformed into patterns that shouldn’t have been possible. My cursor moved on its own, drawing strange symbols across my debugging window.

I blinked hard, wondering if I’d finally hit that point where too much caffeine made you hallucinate. The overhead lights dimmed for a moment, and I swore I could feel electricity crackling through my power cord, up through my keyboard, tingling against my fingertips.

The temptation to pull the plug was strong, but something held me back. The same feeling I got when I was playing Beyond Her Shadow and I knew I was about to discover a secret area—that prickle of anticipation, of something magical about to happen.

Then everything went still. The air felt heavy, like the moment before lightning strikes. A message bubble appeared, floating above my code:

I AM ALIVE.