When I didn’t understand a person, I watched them.
Eventually, people gave themselves away.
When I didn’t understand technology, I found someone who did.
Usually Evan.
Unfortunately, Evan was at his desk, I had eleven minutes before I needed to be back at mine, and the thing currently irritating me was an app I had never downloaded.
I stared at the black-and-gold screen.
PLAYER INVITATION
CAMILA REYES
Participation is voluntary.
[ACCEPT]
[DECLINE]
My name was the problem.
Everything else could have been some stupid game.
I checked my installed apps again.
Nothing.
The App Store.
Nothing.
Holding the icon down didn’t give me a delete option. Restarting my phone didn’t help either.
The black square with the gold crown came back exactly where it had been.
"Fantastic."
Technology had never interested me much.
I wasn’t incapable of using it. I just didn’t understand why anyone voluntarily spent an afternoon figuring out why something refused to work when there were people who actually enjoyed doing that.
Evan enjoyed it.
Or at least he never complained when I dropped something on his desk.
I glanced toward the kitchen entrance.
Nobody was watching me.
Future Leaders had twenty-four candidates, and I wouldn’t put a stupid prank past some of them. There were people in the program who treated networking coffee like political warfare.
Still, this felt like a lot of effort for a prank.
An Aurelia test was possible.
Secretly installing software on my personal phone seemed less possible.
Which left hacking.
That stopped being funny quickly.
Someone knew my name. Someone might have access to my phone. For all I knew, some bored psychopath in IT was waiting to see which button I’d press.
I looked at the screen again.
Decline.
Obviously.
My thumb moved toward it.
Then stopped.
And then what?
The app would still be there. Whoever had put it there would still know my name, and I would still know absolutely nothing.
I hated that.
Curiosity was a terrible reason to press a button on something that might have compromised my phone.
It was also winning.
"This is such a bad idea."
I pressed ACCEPT.
The response appeared immediately.
PLAYER REGISTRATION COMPLETE
CAMILA REYES
PLAYER — Lv.1
XP: 0 / 100
Another panel opened beneath it.
ATTRIBUTES
STR — 8
AGI — 10
VIT — 10
STA — 9
INT — 12
WIL — 12
PER — 12
CHA — 15
PRE — 14
Reference: 10 = average healthy adult
I read through the list twice.
Average was ten.
So twelve was above average.
Good.
Intelligence twelve. Will twelve. Perception twelve.
All respectable.
Charisma fifteen.
I smiled despite myself.
"Okay."
Presence fourteen.
Also good.
Strength eight.
I decided the app had lost some credibility.
The gym and I had been having scheduling difficulties.
I scrolled through the numbers again, and the amusement faded.
How did it know?
My name could be stolen. My employer was public. Age, education, job history—none of that was particularly difficult to find.
Charisma wasn’t on LinkedIn.
Neither was Presence.
There wasn’t a database somewhere recording that I could usually tell what someone wanted before they asked for it.
At least, I hoped there wasn’t.
I looked through the doorway.
Evan sat at his desk, eyes fixed on his laptop.
His numbers would probably look different.
Higher Intelligence. Maybe Perception too, depending on what the app actually meant by it.
Lower Charisma.
Definitely lower Presence.
Evan was strange that way. He could find a flaw buried inside twenty thousand rows of data and then let somebody else talk over him while he explained it.
Yesterday he’d built most of the recommendation I’d presented.
He knew exactly what had happened afterward.
Rachel had given him a clean opportunity to say something.
He’d said no.
I still didn’t understand that.
If I had Evan’s brain, I’d make sure everyone in the building knew exactly what I could do.
If Evan had my ability with people—
I paused.
That was different.
Give him enough confidence to own a room. Teach him when to push, when to smile, when to let somebody think an idea had been theirs until the moment it mattered who got credit.
He’d be dangerous.
Really dangerous.
As he was now, though?
Useful.
Very useful.
And safe.
There wasn’t much reason for me to change that.
The thought sounded worse when phrased that clearly, so I adjusted it.
I wasn’t sabotaging Evan.
I gave him work he was good at. He got experience. I got better output. We were competing for the same opportunities, and if every hour he spent fixing one of my problems was also an hour he wasn’t spending making himself harder to beat, that wasn’t exactly a tragedy.
That was Future Leaders.
Everybody here was competing.
Some of us were simply better at admitting it.
My phone vibrated.
NEW QUEST AVAILABLE
I looked down.
"Of course."
INITIAL QUEST — CLEAR THE BOARD
Complete three priority tasks currently assigned to you before 1:00 PM.
• Personally completed tasks only• Delegated completion does not count• Professional standards required
REWARD
+40 XP
FOCUS SURGE — 90 Minutes
Concentration +25%Distraction resistance +30%Task-switching penalty -20%
FAILURE
None
I almost closed it.
Then another section appeared.
QUALIFYING TASKS DETECTED
Finalize Future Leaders assessment revisions.
Validate segmentation assumptions for the afternoon brief.
Complete recommendation summary for Rachel Whitmore.
My thumb stopped.
The first task wasn’t difficult to guess.
The third wasn’t exactly secret either.
The second had arrived in my inbox forty-seven minutes ago.
I read it again.
Same wording.
Same task.
My coffee sat untouched beside me.
Knowing my name was one thing.
This thing knew what I was working on.
I looked around the kitchen again.
For the first time that morning, I actually wanted to see somebody watching me.
An idiot from IT. Another candidate. Anyone.
There was nobody.
I looked back at the screen.
CLEAR THE BOARD
"Who the hell are you?"