Page 21 of Amethyst Flame
My pulse skittered. How did he know that? Maybe I should run away… But then he dragged a name badge into view, already printed up with my unsmiling photo. When the hell had they taken that?
My paranoia was raging, but I squashed it down. Obviously, Jacob must’ve uploaded it when he falsified my application. But damn, he couldn’t’ve picked a cuter shot? Jackhole.
I dredged up a grin for Gerry. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“We’re excited you’re joining us,” he said in the least excited voice ever. “Your orientation starts in our main lounge café. I’ll take you inside.”
I followed him behind the waterfall to the door with the security panel. He swiped his card, and the door hissed open into the wonderland of BantaMatrix. I recalled that the café was down a ways and to the left. The bathroom I’d hid in was on the opposite side.
It was all just so friendly.
Alling had plied me with freshly baked cookies in those comfy chairs when he was trying to figure out what I knew about the stolen MoTH tech.
That was before he tried to shoot me—and, of course, before I killed him.
My throat was as dry as a stale KitKat when I entered the more intimate scale of the café area. A couple dozen other people my age were milling in the space, some with drinks already in hand, some chatting. By the time I joined them, I’d picked out the marketing interns (inexpensive statement jewelry), the C suite aspirants (bespoke chinos), the IT crowd (checking their phones), and the actual engineering graduates (gobbling the cookies).
A few of the group looked me over in the same appraising way, but just then a whisper and a zing moved through the huge space and all eyes went past me. What…
I glanced behind me. Ah. Doctor Adley Ruskin, founder and CEO of BantaMatrix. I’d accidentally stolen some of her most valuable tech, and she had no idea.
Low heels silent on the tile, she strode up in palazzo pants that even Swann would’ve liked. The gray color seemed like it should’ve been boring, but the flow of the fabric was weirdly mesmerizing. Was there some tech in the almost invisible white piping? Her fitted white tunic top with flared V neck was truly plain by comparison, except the sleeveless style showed off a minimalist tattoo running the length of her arm. I was about to dismiss it as an embarrassing tribal appropriation of some sort, but then I realized it looked more like a circuit board or Mandelbrot set or something. And under it was a thin, old scar.
During and after everything that had happened, I read up on BantaMatrix, but I hadn’t encountered any stories about Ruskin’s personal life. Lots on her tech brilliance and business savvy, but now that I thought about it, seemed strange there weren’t more of those annoying puff pieces about herleaning inor “Pixie Cuts for Company Presidents” or whatever.
Adley Ruskin was the real deal.
She was tall too, so when she smiled over us, her sharp green eyes settling on each of us in turn, it felt… Damn, it felt like a goddess came to Earth to bless us.
“Welcome to BantaMatrix,” she said, her voice pitched perfectly between clear and genuinely warm. “You all already know you are the best of the best, so I won’t waste your time reminding you about your potential. But here is where you’ll realize the promise of your talents and your dedication.” She beamed. “We’re so excited you’re joining us.” And she meant it.
She went on, telling us most of what I’d already read about BantaMatrix’s history and current projects. “Not the top-secret ones, of course,” she said with a wink. I admit, I was dazzled. Too bad I wasn’t actually the best of the best and had few talents and less dedication.
I wanted to vanish into my old jeans and my Legendelirium t-shirt, like Obi-Wan Kenobi dying into his desert robes, slayed by the cool factor of his enemy. Sigh. I missed most of what she was saying but then with a jaunty wave she turned us over to “Senior Lead Engineer and Director of New Talent Fostering, Selma Oluwa. Impress her and I’ll be seeing you again.”
Everybody watched Ruskin and those nifty pants stride away. Everybody except me. Since I wasn’t doing any impressing, I’d never see her again, so I turned my attention to Oluwa. The woman’s bright yellow head scarf matched the centers of the geometric flowers in her wrap dress and brought out the richness of her dark skin. She caught my eye with a small smile, waiting patiently for faces to turn her way.
When enough did, she said in a heavy Boston accent, “You’ve gotten the welcome. Tomorrow we’ll start the work. For the rest of today, we’ll break you into your chosen departments and do some team-building exercises.”
I groaned aloud. All eyes flicked toward me. Oops. Obviously I’d been on my own too long.
Oluwa’s dark eyes glinted. “Miss Taylor, I take it you’re no fan of team building.”
“Oh, I love teams,” I said hastily. “Yep, there’s definitely amein team. It’s just…uh, out of order and backward?”
She pursed her lips. “Sometimes backward and out of order gives you a new way of looking at things. But for now, let’s start on the same page.”
“Yes, for sure,” I said like the most overeager freshman Computer Science 101 student ever.
She gave us some more directions and introduced the department specialists who would lead our various groups. She divided us up, and to my dismay, I was with the engineers. Obviously Dane and Jacob had decided that was the best place for me to find the information we needed. But while I had some experience with hardware—I knew enough to upgrade my gaming system, for example, and I’d soldered a wire or two—I was going to out myself as incompetent in this group sooner rather than later. Maybe just as well I’d already established myself as the class clown.
The five of us engineering interns—well, four real engineers and one ringer—were sent to the other end of the lounge, as far away from the cookies as possible. Our quintet stood there a little awkwardly while the more outgoing groups like sales and marketing were already laughing together and doing fake trust falls into each other’s arms.
“We should’ve brought the rest of the cookies with us,” one guy mumbled under his breath.
Another of our quintet—the tallest guy, had to be six-five at least, and a couple years older than the rest of us, with white-blond hair cut in a high and tight—glanced at me. “I noticed you didn’t get any cookies,” he said in a low, gravelly voice of the sort I did not associate with engineers. “So I thought you’d be with the UX team.”
The user experience group would’ve been a better fit, actually. But I didn’t appreciate him making snap judgments about me. Especially ones that might expose my lies.
