Nakala had ignored all attempts at communication during the evening and into the morning. In-game mail went cold. Texts remained unread. Even calling her (a serious faux pas in his mind) resulted in no response. It worried Dylan. He didn't think she was in any sort of danger... she wouldn't have logged into Colossus and given him a bunch of shit before vague posting and heading out.

That didn't mean something wasn't wrong, though.

And he had no idea what it could be.

As he walked into the office at Monsoon Entertainment in the morning, Dylan debated going straight to Nakala's desk. Sure, there was some big stakeholder meeting today (and rumors of a long-awaited announcement about Project Rundan) and that would mean Dylan would need to wrestle with the copier to get the latest report in Mark's hands before lunch. But he could spare five minutes, right?

Nakala likely wouldn't be in yet, anyway. As a programmer, she had a little more freedom in her hours. No eight-to-five with a mandatory hour lunch.

But Mark would be watching for Dylan. Or, more accurately, Caroline would be watching for Dylan. She was always in before 8am, and while she pretended that she was working, everyone knew she was secretly recording when everyone strolled in. If you were tardy too many times (and how many were too many was arbitrary), she would happily go to Mark and get you written up.

Nakala was worth a demerit, but Dylan also didn't want to test Mark on a stakeholder call day.

He sent Nakala another text instead.

You: Hey. I know you're ignoring me after your cryptic message last night, but I just wanted to let you know I was thinking of stopping by, but I'm worried about the dragon. Lunch?

He pressed the up button on the elevator, and the bank on the right dinged. Before the doors could open, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Nak: Not ignoring. Big meeting. Usual place.

Sure. Not ignoring.

And Templars were a functional tank that were far superior to Warriors.

Smirking at his own joke, Dylan walked down the long, boring, beige-and-white hall towards his desk. The office was quiet, but that was likely due to the big meeting Nakala had mentioned, or the stakeholder meeting later in the day. But what did he know? He was only an accountant.

With a grimace of determination, Dylan sat down at his computer. He logged into the network, opened his email, and got to work.

###

There was a flashing red light on the button panel. The little LCD error screen reported that there was a paper jam in port. Which port, he didn't know. The copier wasn't going to tell him. Not until he opened her up.

Dylan glanced up at the analog clock on the wall. He had fifteen minutes until lunch, which meant ten minutes to get the printer issue figured out.

Roxanne, as he had so affectionately nicknamed the office printer, was one of those huge blocky numbers with four different feed trays. It may have once been white when it was new, but that was at least twenty years ago, and the plastic had since taken on a brownish-beige hue that Dylan mentally associated with CRT monitors and mice that had balls in them.

The printer was the cause of most of his problems. It was a mechanical mastermind that plotted against him (and almost only solely him) whenever he was the busiest. He'd even had to call IT down a few times. They always arrived with the ancient yellowed tome of instructions, as if the archaic error messages like "PC Load Letter" actually meant anything.

Once, Roxanne waited exactly long enough - just until Dylan had crossed the office to check why it wasn't printing - before it ruptured a toner cartridge and coated him in black powder from the waist down.

He didn't have time to play with Roxanne. But here he was, doing it anyway.

The first two trays were the easy ones to access, since they popped almost all the way out on their own. Naturally, there was nothing wrong with either of them. It meant he had to go deeper. The third tray was a challenge to check - the tray only slid out far enough to fit new paper inside - and so reaching the interior required opening the side panel, unsnapping the rollers, and carefully pushing everything aside. All one handed, of course. His other hand needed to hold his cell phone as he used it as a flashlight to see what the hell was going on.

Dylan found nothing. When he closed the panel, the machine beeped, whirred, and then went silent again. The red light flashed once more. On the front, the LCD screen changed from "Tray 3 Open" to "Paper Jam In Port."

Rage filled him. Dylan contemplated picking Roxanne in some super-human feat and tossing it out the window. Defenestration wouldn't solve anything, but it would make him feel a hell of a lot better.

The jam was in the fourth tray. Which was impossible. The fourth tray was the one that held the A1-sized paper that nobody used anymore. He wasn't printing from that tray. But the machine wasn't going to listen to reason. Instead, it was going to require him to yank the machine away from the wall, open the back panel, and dig himself elbow-deep into the finest technology the 1980s had to offer.

"Dylan, do you have that report yet?"

The soft anger in Mark's voice made Dylan freeze for just a moment. "Almost. Roxanne won't give it up."

There was a thin chuckle and Dylan could hear Mark lean up against the wall. "You know, you're the only person in this office that has problems with this machine. Do you need me to call IT again?"

"Honestly, an exorcist might be more help." Dylan swept his hand around in the tray twice more, and then extricated himself from the metal cavity. "If this doesn't work, I might need to print to marketing again."

"You know they hate that."

"Or you could buy me a new printer."

Mark smiled thinly. "But where would you be without your daily battle against the beast?"

Dylan rolled his eyes and closed the tray. And then preemptively opened all the other trays and closed them before waiting.

One of two things was going to happen: Roxanne was going to print the report, or Dylan was going to hit it and hope that somehow solved his problem.

Once again, the machine beeped and whirred. but instead of flashing its LCD screen at him cryptically, it started to groan to life. Eventually, a handful of pages spit themselves out into the cooling tray.

"Here," Dylan said as he collected the pages. "I've already quad checked, but I won't feel bad if you want to back me."

Mark looked up at the clock and grimaced. "I trust you. Either that, or I don't have time. Your choice." He grinned. "Good work on the report. If this whole thing goes smoothly enough, I promise to give you all the credit you deserve for slaying the beast and saving the day. Maybe if the CFO is impressed enough with it, he'll give me the budget for a new printer."

"If you don't mind, I won't hold my breath."

Mark laughed at that, waved the pages in the air, and exited their little hole-in-the-wall towards the elevators. Dylan returned to his desk. He had about fifteen minutes to kill before lunch time with Nakala, and as much as he wanted to just head out early, he could see Caroline watching. So, instead, he loaded up Readthis. The rumor was that Monsoon was going to make some big announcement at the stakeholder's meeting today. And the biggest thing Dylan knew about was the mysterious Project Rundan.

Nakala was on the design team. But she'd been absolutely silent about the whole affair, refusing to share even the smallest leak. He wasn't sure if it was some nasty NDA, or if she really took her job that serious.

There was nothing new on the internet. No one had any additional news ahead of the meeting, which was pretty rare. Usually an intern leaked a meeting agenda or got a copy of someone's notes out. But all Dylan could find was some four-hour thread of a countdown. The comments were flooded with people making every possible prediction, from the very likely Teufel 5, to the very unlikely Dreadthorne 2. The more absurd predictions were those that guessed at new IPs. Monsoon had about fifteen IPs under its belt, and there's no way they'd release a new one when Dreadthorne wasn't even three years old.

But he knew the codename was Project Rundan. And Rundas, as the Hittite God of the Hunt, didn't exactly embody any of the current IPs.

Dylan tried not to let the hype get to him. Monsoon was his employer, and he already played all of their games. It wasn't like he wasn't going to play this one too, no matter what it was.

But the thrill of discovery was there. Lurking. Chewing on his ability to sit still.

He glanced up at the clock, and noticed it was about two minutes until lunch time.

Fuck it.

He grabbed his coat, and headed off towards the door. On his way out, he flashed Caroline his most winning smile. She glared at him and returned to typing at her computer. Hopefully she wasn't writing him up, but at the same time, Dylan couldn't bring himself to care.

Maybe after Nakala told him what was going on with her, he'd be able to get her to share what she knew. Then at least he'd have something to look forward to while on unemployment.