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14 – Soft Mornings
There was softness, and there was safety. Waking up was rarely a slow process. Being able to ascertain her immediate situation upon waking was a skill she’d crafted over a life of uncertainty. A life where safety that had existed upon going to sleep might have disappeared overnight. Magnolia stared at Screen’s soft back, adjusted the blanket, and snuggled in further, slipping one leg between Screen’s, trying to meld with her best friend’s marshmallowy form. Sleeping rough, sleeping around people she didn’t trust, sleeping next to people who didn’t respect her…all had given her a comprehensive roster of skills. An ability to recognise what a change in…
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43 – Storming Calm
Afternoon slid into early evening, and as it did, more techs started to fill in the empty desks, taking up their position as guys-gals-and-nonbinary-pals in the chair, support to their field or combat recruit. And in another world, she’d be doing the same thing. Stef held back a sigh, and tried to fight down any feelings of missing out. She was lucky – more than lucky – to have found a place where she might belong. An entire flight of luck dragons had been drained in order for the stars to align just right. The fact that maybe in a few weeks or months she’d have to transfer…
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42 – Probably Not The Answer
‘You’re an idiot.’ ‘I heard you the first four times.’ Stef watched as Curt walked over the scaled-down sim like some kind of overly-formal kaiju. It was mostly a collection of warehouses and industrial buildings. Nothing that would have a lot of traffic at night, which was good – it meant fewer civilians getting in the way. ‘You’re an idiot.’ Sending him a text hadn’t annoyed him. Asking for help hadn’t annoyed him. It wasn’t until she’d loaded the sim and explained what she was studying for that his vocabulary had seemed to boil down to three words, spoken with an increasingly flustered voice. ‘I…
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24 – Tech Support
The Tech department seemed so much more full of life than the Field floor. Large, flat-panel monitors streamed memes and videos. There were the standard emergency diagrams and such, but they were drowned out by schedules of a dozen different MMOs and P&P RPGs. Stef grimaced as she bumped into Curt. Warn me before stopping, next time. He pushed open a door but made a shushing motion. ‘This is the phone bank,’ he said, stepping aside to let her see a room with seven recruits at large desks, each containing at least three screens. ‘Some people can call us directly, but we also get a…
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01 – Uncertain Parameters
Click to jump straight to the chapter. ‘What’s that movie?’ Magnolia tried to twist her head towards Screen but was met with a soft wall of boob. There was a laugh from behind the wall of boob. ‘You’re going to have to be a little more specific,’ Screen said. ‘There’s at least…three movies that exist.’ Magnolia sighed and curled up on top of her best friend. There were few softer places in the world than on top of the cuddly Tech, and definitely none in this Agency. She tried to reset her train of thought. ‘The cock is bad. Something like that.’ Screen laughed, and the mirth rippled throughout her…
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05 – Screen Saver
Click to jump straight to the chapter. Someone kicked her. She moaned. ‘Get up!’ She could still taste blood and plastic. ‘Get up!’ Screen brought her hands up and felt disgusted when she found her face semi-glued to the carpet with blood. She hadn’t been out – if she’d been out at all, she could remember the passage of time, even though it was fuzzy – for long. ‘Your turn next, you’ve got to get up!’ A fairy shouted at her as he dragged her to her feet. She immediately went to the wall for balance, her head leaning against the window. The room was half empty, and her headache…
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04 – Screen Saver
Click to jump straight to the chapter. The troll had such a tight grip on her hair that Screen was sure he was going to tear out a clump of her hair. And it was definitely going to be a while before she asked anyone to pull on her hair, which was a shame because there was something a woman with a solid grip on her that made her melt in such a good way. Part of her wondered at her thoughts as the troll marched her back into the main office area, her co-workers unable to express their shock, voices stolen by the silence collars. There were two options:…
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03 – Screen Saver
Click to jump straight to the chapter. After a few more reassurances from the agent, Jones had disappeared, the webcam feed replaced with what seemed to be a slideshow stream straight out of his memes folder. She watched the volley of pictures, grateful at his attempt to distract her. But it was barely working. There was only so much that cute pictures of kittens could do to combat the fact that she was one shitty hiding space away from being hogtied and shipped off to be sold to someone who – at best – would kill her before eating her. She looked down at her phone and tapped her thumb…
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02 – Screen Saver
Click to jump straight to the chapter. As tempting as it was to just head home from the new office, management was always less suspicious of her actions when they saw her at least a few times a day. She’d successfully managed to not do any work for three days, simply by walking past Manager Tom’s office a few times a day with a LAN cable around her neck. She called for a rideshare as she packed her laptop and accessories, then headed for the lift, functional, but still covered in plastic as befitted the work-in-progress building. The car pulled into the side street at the same time as she…
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01 – Screen Saver
Click to jump straight to the chapter. Five Years Before Dorian Knocks The new office was shiny. So shiny. Oh so shiny. It was such a shame that it would be three months before they could actually move into it. Screen flipped to a fresh page of her notebook, wrote down the port numbers, then checked the numbers against the assumed map of the new office layout. It would have been much, much preferred if the map had been finished, but actually signing off on complete work was something that the managers seemed to be almost allergic to. Consequently, the first week in the new office was going to entail…
