Page 69 of Achievement Unlocked

Elliot snorted. “Bullshit.”

I glared at him. “I’m still happy to bite that dick.” If he was going to grump, I was capable of countering.

Elliot held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying anything. You’re such a fucking caveman.”

“You’re one to talk.” I knew as well as everyone else here that Elliot had a sadistic and controlling streak that didn’t always stay in the bedroom. “Do you want to see this or not?”

“What would Megan think?”NowElliot was going to be playful.

Landon tensed next to me, the coiled muscles in his arm pressing into mine.

“The bug. Do you want to see the bug?” I clarified.

Elliot opened his mouth.

“In the game.” I had no idea what he was going to counter with, but I wasn’t giving him the chance.

“Fine. We both have things to do today that aren’tantagonize each other. Show me.”

I nudged Elliot out of his seat and took his place. While he and Landon watched over my shoulder, I played through the steps Fallyn had outlined.

“Oh, you’re right,” Landon muttered.

I liked hearing that.

“Right about what?” Elliot sounded genuinely surprised. “Do it again.”

I played through the steps again, and watched as a sliver of pixels glitched. “Right there. Did you see?”

“That little… Right there?” Elliot pointed at the screen but didn’t touch it.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“That’s not a bug. It’s a tiny little graphics glitch.”

“Until someone exploits it,” I said. “Fallyn’s already figured out how.” Fuck. I’d said too much.

“How do you know that?” Suspicion snaked into Elliot’s question.

I wasn’t willing to disclose how many things she’d fed me, because I didn’t want one of the devs to cut off that source of information, but I had to offer something. “She stopped trying to submit bug reports to you because your people ignore her, and she sends them directly to me.”

“So you’re consorting with the enemy?”

I twisted in the seat to see Elliot’s frown, and let out a sigh of frustration. “Are you kidding me with that? It doesn’t matter who found it if it’s legit.”

“But…” With a low growl, Elliot snapped his jaw shut.

“But it’s a basic algo error,” Landon said. “Look at the debugging window.” He spat out a string of sentences that had words I knew, but only barely followed when he strung them together.

Spinning in my seat, I watched Landon talk, growing more animated with each thought, while Elliot stared at him.

When Landon finished, he said, “Unless you’ve already tried that. We did labs on it in school last year, so you probably have.”

“No. Wait. That’s…” Elliot pushed past me and grabbed the keyboard. His fingers flew across the keys. His crouched over position. He paused for a moment. “Landon, if I redirect the error handling, skip this second try catch, and add a new alert, what do you think it will do?”

“Fail if someone uses the mouse to move,” Landon said.

Elliot nodded. He did a bunch more tapping. “What about this?”

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