By the time we make it to the conference room, Paul guiding my woozy steps, I'm better. My eyes have cleared. The slosh has morphed into manageable disorientation. I sit beside Paul at one end of a table and find myself able to touch the chair-arm, to process its sponginess with my finger. I can even smell.

McGriddle.

Paul hunches over our knees. "That's quite a bruise. Does it hurt?"

I shrug. "Not half as bad as Carter and that wannabe drill sergeant after I finish with them."

"That's the wrong approach," my supervisor says. "Don't let anger be your driver."

But I'm not really going to fight them. Not like that. I scan the conference room, considering possibilities. The projector-computer will be blocked from the outside world ... the phone is not going to reach 911 ... the window has potential—maybe I could sprawl, "SEND HELP, FASCIST CORPORATE TRAINERS ARE HOLDING US HOSTAGE!" across several sheets of copy paper—except that we're on the second floor and the adjacent building is windowless.

Through the door, Carter watches us. Jim Davis is frowning at one of his doomsday countdown timers and hassling people back to work.

Paul asks what happened in the garage. I tell him.

"It was savage," I say.

"But you did try to leave?"

"Yeah I tried to leave. So? So what, you're taking their side?"

He kneads the bridge of his nose. "I know it feels good to follow our impulses. But as adults, sometimes—"

"Think they blocked Bluetooth? If not we might get an SOS through there."

"You're not listening, Deb. You're not being rational."

"Oh I think I'm being extraordinarily rational."

"No. You aren't. Look I realize you disdain protocol— you've succeeded largely in spite of it. You have the kind of talent people accommodate. But there is a limit. There are times when compliance is required."

"Says you."

"Yes, says me!" His eyes bulge like Mr. Magoo if he stopped squinting. "Carter and Susan want Blackquest 40 to happen. They wouldn't have brought these guys in if they didn't see a concrete financial benefit."

"What, this FPP-1 junk?"

Paul wheezes. "I suppose. These executives ... the logic can be circuitous I admit. They have a plan. We need more revenue, and they have a plan to achieve that. Our job is to execute."

"Are you sure they have a plan? Because I'm not."

"I have worked sixteen years in this industry: I know how these business types operate." He fixes me with his thickest gaze. "You don't."

"What? You are these business types. You co-founded Codewise with Susan and Carter— you're rich and white, and you married your Asian secretary."

Paul falls silent, taking sudden interest in the table's woodgrain. As soon as the words are out, I feel terrible. What do I know about him and Li Wei? Paul doesn't throw my personal life back in my face. In fact, he once called out the whole team after a racy ad featuring lesbians entangled with Armani ties found its way to the kitchen corkboard. (It didn't bother me, but his concern was sweet.)

"I am white. I did marry my secretary," he says into the table. "But the rich part ..."

"Huh?"

"I have three kids, and Sunnyvale's expensive. Not much left after the mortgage payment."

"How do you even have a mortgage?" Venture capital paid $1.8 billion—even split three ways, that should have been enough to support a family of three hundred. Does Paul have the mother of all gambling problems? Did he sink his windfall into Vonage shares?

He seems to read my thoughts. "I cashed out early, two years before the buyout."

"Seriously? Why?"

"I thought ..." He pinches his forehead, then sighs. "Well, $900K was $900K. When Carter walked into my office and made the offer, I was shocked. My parents taught elementary-school math. I drove the same Jetta I had at Carnegie Mellon. It felt like a no-brainer."

"But didn't— I mean, did Carter suggest maybe keeping a little skin in the game?"

Paul shakes his head.

"What a bastard," I say.

"I was a grown man, I took the deal."

"Did Susan object?"

"Oh, Susan was part of the deal— the offer was on both their behalves. They split my shares 50/50."

I open my mouth to speak, but cotton balls are clogging the base of my throat. I cannot imagine Susan screwing him over. Probably it was Carter's idea and she just went along, too busy to bother.

Paul continues, "To their credit, they believed the growth would continue. They had faith. I didn't. Carter had just bought the Cray"—the Cray XK7 supercomputer currently mothballed in a broom closet—"and I thought his ambition would bankrupt us. I played it safe."

"Yeah but you're the one who built all those whizbang systems that put Codewise on the map! They became managers and you kept coding. Like those genome algorithms— that was all you, right?"

His mouth quirks at the memory. "It was."

"But you were just hired help by then," I say. "Like the rest of us."

So much makes sense now. Paul and Carter always bicker. In meetings, over the Dev queue. I have seen them fight over which grayscale is most appropriate for presentation drop-shadows. Of course. I'm surprised Paul can stomach working in the same building. I knew he was the hump-it-and-don't-complain type, but man.

Paul says, "Can you believe that stunt he pulled at kickoff, what they've got biz side doing?"

He has no clue about my server-room adventure. "Uh, I ..."

"Did you even go?"

In this moment, I am finding it hard to lie to his face. "Raven badged in for me."

He raises a shoulder, unsurprised. "Well you missed a doozie. Somebody stood up and asked what the rest of the company was supposed to be doing, while we engineers are slaving away on those 187 interfaces. Carter says, 'Crafting a business plan.'" Paul gussies up his own doughy features in an imitation of his old grad-school classmate—what a nice hidden talent, these impressions. "Guy asks, What business? Carter says it doesn't matter. They should be capable of analyzing any industry.

"Then, get this, he picks a newspaper off the podium, reads the first headline he sees— Bay Area Firm Bets Big on Space Tourism, about that launch Thursday— and says, there. There's our business: private spaceflight. They're going to mock up marketing materials, budgets, a ten-year plan. I swear he's rubbing our face in it, the arbitrariness. How completely divorced from the actual work-product these businesspeople are."

"They're just making up a random business plan?"

"Right."

"Do the same rules apply for them? No phones, nobody in or out?"

"Yep. Carter wants, 'that same time-crunch capability, instilled throughout the organization.'"

Paul's jowls are quaking. His eyes do dart to my toes below, so I know it's the same old him in spite of our new intimacy.

"Screw 'em," I say. "Without us they can't build their big Lego phallus. So we bail. They already assaulted me— what more can they realistically do?"

"Fire us. I did mention my three children, right? And what's going to keep your carebnb servers up and running? Hosting fees aren't cheap."

Rrrrright. In fact, they can be pretty reasonable if you're secretly using your employer's servers. I suppose his point stands, though: if I got fired, /t would become unavailable.

"I have faith in Susan. Anything that comes down, Susan can undo." I walk to the window, edging my nail into caulk. "I'm getting out."

"How? You heard what Jim Davis said. You'll end up locked in the kitchen, guarded, and then what chance will you have to keep tabs on the soft-launch?"

I feel my tongue traveling up my face, pushing out the cheek. Through the door glass, Davis is approaching. Gripping that stressball, pounding those commando boots over office carpet.

"Play it cool," Paul urges. "Put your head down, do your work."

I watch Davis. And he is watching me, with a glare so penetrating—so possessing—that I instinctively hug both elbows across my chest.