chamber box. I checked my rearview mirror to see if anyone tailed my car. Would anyone really follow me for allegedly burgling a soccer-mom-mobile? Seriously, who would bother to follow me anywhere?
The Fred Meyer megagrocery store down the street had the best chance of stocking gross, processed chocolate breakfast powders. I strolled the cereal aisle and hit the goddamn gold mine of instant breakfast deals: buy one get one free! I texted my mom while in the checkout line, letting her know I’d gotten a few boxes and was headed to UPS to ship them for overnight delivery. I would barely make the nine P.M. cutoff.
She wrote back, You wake me up. I text tomorrow when we get package. We need rest for our big trip.
That translation, I’d like to think, was “thank you.”
Chapter Three
The office manager stopped by to tell me I’d be moving from the cubicle I’d been assigned a month ago to an interior shared office on the other side of the floor, closer to the executive team. They needed my work space for an intern, who also happened to be Ian MacKenzie’s nephew. Kicked out of my spot because of good ol’-fashioned nepotism.
After stacking my office belongings into a precarious pile on my laptop, I headed to my new home. I had only been at Seventeen Studios a few weeks, not long enough to accumulate the dozens of bobbleheads, figurines, and other promo merchandise that other game veterans had littering their work spaces. The tchotchkes ranged from cute, marble-eyed animals to red-eyed, flying demon aliens with bloody razor teeth. Some of the QA testers and marketing people had so much crap in their cubicles and offices that it looked like a toy store’s unwanted Black Friday inventory had exploded all over their desks and shelves. A few senior people on my team were among the first employees at Seventeen Studios, and on their fifth anniversary, they were gifted real company-issued samurai swords and metal battle shields engraved with their names and their company start dates. These swords and shields were heavy as hell: I tried to lift one of the swords with two hands and nearly threw out my back.
Once I unpacked, the only thing missing was my coffee mug. The one with “C8H10N4O2,” the atomic structure of caffeine, written on it in big bubble letters. A going-away present from my coworkers at my last job, and the only thing I had brought to work with any sentimental value. Other people had framed photos of dogs and babies. I had my nerdy mug.
I passed by my old work space on the way to the bathroom. A new minifridge, Keurig coffee machine, decorative lamps, and an $800 Aeron desk chair made the transformed space unrecognizable. There was an actual red carpet runner rolled out from the footpath to the cubicle entryway.
On the desk, the intern even had better pens than everyone else. And nonyellow Post-its cut into cool shapes. And a brand-new MacBook Air. My eyes narrowed as I read his name on the frosted cubicle wall.
NOLAN MACKENZIE
I pulled out my phone to find out more about Nolan. Fucking. MacKenzie. There were older pictures of him online shaking hands with famous politicians. Images of his worldly travels to exotic destinations. Recent photos of him with a woman deliberately cropped out. Someone with wavy blond wisps and a very tan left shoulder. I rolled my eyes and tried not to think about how unfair all this was.
One of the finance assistants came up to me. “You got booted from your cube already? Didn’t you just get settled in?” He glanced at the nameplate and raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I heard about that guy.”
“What’d you hear?” I asked, mirroring his eyebrow action.
“It’s Ian’s nephew. Some hotshot MBA guy. He’s probably just like his dear ol’ uncle. Sorry he stole your work space.” He walked away shaking his head.
One “silver lining” about my office move, though: the room had skylights and fit two desks plus a preinstalled small sofa. The not-so-good news: I’d share the office with a TBD employee, not of my choosing. But the absolute worst news? Five life-size cutouts of busty anime Japanese women in bikini armor littered the entire space. They were the “Kaizen Five,” and each possessed a unique battalion weapon. Yoshi and Toshi, twin warriors, carried identical AK-47s, which seemed physically impossible to strap and shoot over their 36DDD chests.
The scrawled signature across the breasts of these giant cardboard characters read “Created by Ian