on the floor between two sections, rolling a tennis ball down the empty walkway for Crysis to fetch and bring back. The dog looked thrilled.
Mark and Amy had decided to call it a night about an hour ago, and yet there was still no word from Jason. She wasn't sure exactly when he'd left, but sometime before six. Maybe five thirty? Regardless, she was just guessing. Now, the clock showed that it was a little past midnight, and the warehouse was starting to creak as the temperature outside cooled. It was oddly relaxing.
"Ok," Zara said, breaking the calm. "I'm going to curl up on this floor in a minute if I don't find a bed. Anyone have a problem with Crysis sleeping on one?"
"You're fine," Chance promised. "But if he needs to go out, grab someone to go with you. I don't want anyone outside alone."
"Promise," Zara said. "He should be fine, though. I took him out with Mark earlier."
Then she staggered her way up from the floor, patted her leg to call Crysis to her, and headed to the rooms. Rhaven had to admit, she'd thought those were odd when she'd first started working here, but now they seemed like the best idea ever. Braden had once told her this was a lifestyle, not a job or career. He hadn't been exaggerating, either.
"Hey," she said, leaning over toward Braden. "I was thinking about doing something kinda like Simplify, that steel mod I made for Eternal Combat. What do you think?"
"Oh, I think the brushed steel look would be great," he agreed, leaning to close the distance between them. "Can you add in a spot for a bar? I was thinking we could have a stealth-to-dodge slider. Like, the more you move, the more it amplifies that stat. Give the user a visual representation."
"On it," she assured him, opening the developer tools to see if a graphical image for something like that already existed.
Because this was nothing like coding her own stuff. Here, she got all the cool toys. She didn't need to snag some royalty-free shape, modify it, and code it in. She could just ask for exactly what she wanted - or use something the others had already made. At this rate, she'd have a working mockup ready to show long before the Expo, which would make it even easier to tease the fans.
The sounds of their key clicks were the only thing in the room after that. Dez had pulled out her bottle of whiskey and was shamelessly drinking from the top. Chance was reading over her shoulder. And beside her, Braden was scowling at something. The flashes of light on his face meant he was looking at animation or running play tests.
Then something shattered. Rhaven jumped in her chair. Braden spun his toward the front of the building. Behind her, she heard Chance and Dez moving, but it only lasted for a single heartbeat before a siren began to scream loudly. There was no way to properly explain the noise! High-pitched and impossible to talk over, it wasn't the sort of thing that could be ignored.
Then she smelled it. Gasoline, smoke, and something else. Burning paper? Shit! The lobby was burning!
"Fire!" she screamed, scanning the walls for an extinguisher.
Everyone else was moving too, but Rhaven didn't care about that. She saw the metal box with the red canister hanging beside the whiteboard. That was just beside the archway that led into the lobby. Running as fast as she could, she struggled to get it open and then pried out the extinguisher. Looking back, she saw Chance heading for the rooms, most likely to get Zara. Dez was scrambling for the stairs to Amy's apartment. And Braden? He was going for the other extinguisher on the side wall. The one on the wrong end of the room.
As soon as she had the extinguisher free of the brackets that held it, she hurried to the front. Never in her life had she used one of these, but it couldn't be too hard, right? Just point and shoot. Yet when she rounded the corner she realized this was burning faster than she'd expected.
Oily trails of flames had spread across the floor. That explained the smell of gas. Then there were the shattered pieces of glass behind the chair at Amy's desk, and flames were licking their way up the wall behind them. The one with the Deviant Games logo on it. The same one that separated the warehouse from