Davis gives not an inch. I could have run into a Market Street lamppost.

Elite's head honcho is broader in person than on Raven's livestream, his chest etching ridges in the yellow polo shirt. A scar pocks one temple and his eyes pulse from black, horn-rimmed glasses. Khakis. Those same high-lacing boots, company-issue apparently, looming over my sandals like thugs cracking their knuckles.

We're a step outside the elevator. He holds out a box. "Your phone."

I say, "Don't bother, I'm not getting service."

Davis explains he doesn't need to make a call. Cellphone use is prohibited during Blackquest 40.

"Oh, okay." I pat my jeans pocket. "I'll keep it in my pants."

He smiles but his left hand is clenching one of those foam stressballs. With his right, he raises the box. "Please, Miss Bollinger."

He knows my name. Interesting. "So what's the thinking on those boots. You guys are, like, commandos? Business commandos?"

"Dress is one tool in the organizational quiver. Used properly, it binds employees together and promotes a culture of discipline."

I find myself straightening up—it feels automatic in this guy's presence. "You recommend brownshirts or blackshirts?"

Missing the reference, or more frighteningly not missing it at all, he says attire is out of scope. The man speaks with this irksome schoolmarm composure—a librarian walking third graders through Dewey Decimal. I've crossed paths with a few of these corporate-training types. They have to act like their product/insight/worldview is unassailably obvious. (Once you've shelled out tens of thousands of bucks to have them explain it.)

"So forty straight hours," I say. "People are going to sleep here? In their cubicles?"

"We have cots."

"Food?"

He nods. "Meals will be catered."

"Gotta take my girlfriend to her doctor appointment at 4:00." I'm actually between relationships. "She's counting on me."

"A protocol exists in cases of essential family duty. Which taxi service is not."

This guy. Unreal.

"How is this legal? Keeping people here almost two full days against their will— if OSHA hears about this, I'm guessing game over."

Davis says each Codewise employee signed an addendum to his contract.

"I never signed anything."

"You did. Electronically, six weeks ago. The new clause acknowledges the unique challenges posed by today's software industry and the employee's assent to a broad range of company actions. We worked closely with your HR department in crafting the language."

This does sound like an email I would scroll through and click away, just to get the ick off my screen. I am actually feeling nauseous now, being subjected to this guy and his rhetoric.

"Well listen I'm enjoying the heck out of this, but I have work."

I try stepping around to the elevator, but Davis blocks me with his box. "Phone surrender is not optional."

The box physically brushes my shoulder. "Number one, you always have options. Number two, this"—I cock an eyebrow at where my shirt got touched—"is stopping immediately. Yesterday. Last week."

He keeps his box stiff. "Why are you on this floor, Miss Bollinger?"

I mumble indistinctly.

"The only room still being utilized on this floor is the server room."

I frown as though the term server isn't ringing a bell.

He says, "I expect you were maintaining carebnb. Your soft-launch is today, correct?"

My face goes sideways, and a chill is walking up my neck. Should I deny? That seems pointless.

"What do you do, hack everybody's email before you start a gig?"

"A thorough understanding of personnel is vital." His gaze travels the length of my body. "We make a point of knowing each employee in his totality."

"For the record, I'm a 'her.' But I think you know that. You're looking hard enough."

Davis chuckles. He does lower his box now.

"Deb Maurine Bollinger, born 1990 to Celeste Bollinger at San Francisco General Hospital. Raised indigent. Subjected to frequent and scarring violence as a juvenile. Gained hardship admission to Massachusetts Institute of Technology at age 16. Double-majored in robotics and gender studies. Awarded PhD from Harvard in three years, computational science and engineering. Hired via on campus interview by Google, where advanced self-driving technology several generations beyond competitors. Promoted to lead engineer for darkest of Google Labs projects. Details unknown, rumored to be company's top priority. Left eighteen months later to join Codewise Industries."

I scratch behind my ear. "Who told you I was scarred?"

He ignores this. "You see Miss Bollinger, to sufficiently stress an organization, to deliver the max-out training we promise our customers, we must assess the team fully. This is why the Blackquest 40 requirements are the most demanding, the most grueling we have yet conceived. Because of you and what you are capable of."

Flattery in general works on me, but I'm just not feeling it now.

"That's going to be a problem," I say.

"Why?"

"Because I'm not participating."

"Your superiors assure me otherwise."

"You mean Carter Kotanchek? CK Slick? See he looks like my superior on the org-chart, but—"

"You will participate, you will hand over your phone." Jim Davis lifts the box. A tendon bulges in his elbow. He's pulverizing that stressball. I half expect his eyeballs to start filling red.

But I'm mad too.

"Get your sorry ass outta my way."

I slam through his box and the arm holding it. Phones tumble to the floor, clattering, landing in heaps. Davis squats over his high-lacing boots and begins deliberately refilling the box.

I don't help.

"Be aware," he says before the elevator doors can close, "that any device requesting data from the network will have its circuits fried. That's why I came down. To activate this countermeasure."

I scoff. "Fried? Nice use of layman's terms. How exactly does said frying occur?"

"A rootkit disables the chip failsafe. Simultaneously, a circular virus creates heat and voltage spikes that melt the motherboard."

I scoff again. More like a half-scoff. "A rootkit and a virus? Sure thing."

He continues collecting phones from the carpet.

I say, "I don't have time for web-surfing anyhow, so I guess it won't matter. Phone's just going to be sitting on my desk."

"It will still fry. Even background processes—a simple time/date request—trigger the malware."

I feel my forehead crinkle. Is he bluffing? Could they get chip-write access that easily? I don't know enough about malware to say one way or another. My real question, though, is this: how is this character, this glorified motivational speaker, versed in rootkits?

I think about the big tower that tripped me in the server room.

With the corner of a fingernail, I poke the pinhole on the side of my phone. A tray pops out and off it I pry my SIM card—which has all the important stuff like passwords and Raven logic. I stash the SIM card in my pocket and chuck the phone at him.

"Choke on it."

Davis catches the phone on its fourth skip. "Quite careless for a device you fought so hard to keep."

I shrug. "It's shatterproof. Specs don't say so but it is."

He smiles dubiously. "If the feature is not in the specifications, how would—"

"Because I built it, douchenozzle."

As I walk away, he turns the phone over in his hand and reads the logo.

G.