“Then it’s decided,” the director said as he stood up from his seat. “Nero, I want four new geeks in training by Monday next week.”
“That may be too fast—” Nero argued, but he wasn’t given a chance to finish.
“Our people are dying. You fix this by Monday or I’ll find someone else who will.”
A chill went down Nero’s spine. It was a standard threat, used often in Wulf, Inc., but it scared the bejesus out of him. Sure, a lot of the people who worked here had families and friends, a life outside of searching for paranormal baddies. Captain M had a husband and four kids, all werewolves living normal suburban lives except during the full moon. She was of a breed that went loony during the moon.
But Nero didn’t have anybody. Since his infection with lycanthropy ten years before, he’d cut ties with anything that wasn’t part of this life. Captain M and so many others might find a civilian job, but running a team that fought bad guys was all he knew how to do. And there were no private sector companies who hired guys without a civilian résumé that made sense. He didn’t have one because Wulf, Inc. didn’t talk to civilians about what it did. Which meant if he didn’t do what he was told, he’d be out on his ass without references.
“Monday,” he said glumly. That meant he had seven whole days to screw over five new werewolves and pray that they lived to hate his guts.
Just as well. He was working on a time clock too. Bitterroot had set a forty-nine-day time limit on his do-over, and the faster the geeks solved that problem, the sooner he could be done with this whole timeline and go back to the way things used to be.
Chapter 3
“GODDAMNED TECHsupport! Fucking idiots.”
Josh Collier’s brows went up as he joined Wednesday Addams, aka his best friend since high school, Savannah Nielson, where she sat at the hotel coffee bar. She was glaring at her phone, and he gave it even odds she would throw it across the room any moment now.
He sipped his triple-sweet black coffee and waited.
“What kind of losers take a job answering moron questions all day? I’ll tell you who. Losers who can’t read emails, who won’t give a straight answer, and can’t think for themselves, that’s who.”
“Wow. Quite a statement about an entire career path.” He glanced around the room at a couple of Klingons, two wizards, and three scantily clad elven princesses. Given the usual gaming convention crowd, a good half the room had probably worked tech support at one time or another. Savannah obviously didn’t care.
“You know what I mean,” she huffed. “MyDestined Mayhemgame keeps throwing me out at the final battle. I can’t figure out why, and tech support is all, ‘Did you update your software? Do you have the latest version? Perhaps if you turned off your machine and restarted it?’” She rolled her eyes. “Like I didn’t think to do that before I contacted them.”
He winced, knowing her problem immediately but reluctant to give her the bad news. Hell, he’d lost a few months of his life in the exact same way only to discover the horrible, betraying truth.
She sighed as she pulled at her dark black Wednesday Addams hair. Given that she was normally all curls, it had probably taken her an hour to straighten it… as opposed to the hundreds of hours it had taken him to make his seemingly benign wizard cape costume.
“Okay,” she groaned. “Tell me what the problem is. And laugh that I didn’t ask you first before I tried so-called customer service.”
“You need a faster rig to play the final level.”
She shook her head. “No, I checked that. The game specs—”
“Are a lie. The latest expansion requires more, and they’re behind on updating the website.” He gave her a sarcastic grin. “But they will sell you a cheat for a mere fifty dollars.”
“That’s obnoxious!” she cried, and he agreed.
Games were one of the few places in the world that followed rules. Even in-game surprises could be discovered ahead of time if one scoured the internet hard enough. That a gaming company would do a bait-and-switch like this was heinous, which is why he’d initiated a revenge campaign out of sheer moral outrage. He didn’t have the technical skills himself, but he did know who to contact to point out the company’s perfidy. He expected that sales ofDestined Mayhemwere about to tank due to an insidious malware infection, but that didn’t help Savannah.
She eyed him over her mocha. “Tell me you have the cheat.”
“I don’t play that game.” Anymore. He figured out the truth two weeks ago and sold all the games he owned that were made by that company. It cut his game collection, but it was the principle of the thing. Plus, he needed the cash to pay for MoreCon.
“But you know it, right?”
He flashed her a grin. “I might know a guy who knows a guy.” He pulled out his phone and texted her the steps.
“Why is it always a guy? Why don’t you know a girl who knows a girl?”
He arched a brow at her. “Me? Girls?”
She snorted. “You have to get out of the lab sometime.”
“No,” he laughed. “I really don’t.”
