“Maybe I shouldn’t be on this team anymore,” Cole grumbled.
“That’s what I was calling about.”
“What? You really think I should be off the team?”
“No,” Jason said. “I could tell you’ve been having your doubts. Before you left Seattle, you ate and breathed Hammer Strike. You were supposed to come back to fix the remaining bugs, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“You never came back and just threw together a patch on your laptop. What the hell happened?”
Rather than try to lie to his longtime friend, Cole simply replied, “I told you what happened.”
“First you told me there was family trouble you needed to work through. Then you said you had to stay in Chicago for personal reasons. The only way those excuses could get more generic would be for you to send them to me written in black ballpoint on a brown paper sack.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not trying to get into your personal business. If you need time away, you can have it. If you want to keep working for Digital Dreamers, you can, but I don’t usually allow someone at your level to work remotely. I don’t care what kind of a laptop you’ve got, you need to be here with the rest of the team to hash out new ideas and put together a functioning build for the next Hammer Strike. We need something to show at the next Electronic Gaming Conference.”
“So there really is gonna be a Hammer Strike 2?” Cole asked.
“Not if we keep churning out garbage like that first batch of downloadable content. Come on, Cole. Did you really think a few new color sets for the weapons would make fans happy?”
Suddenly, Cole felt like a kid being scolded by the principal. What made it worse was that he knew he had it coming. “No, Jason,” he sighed. “I didn’t.”
“Have you heard the new slang floating around the review sites?”
“Yeah,” Cole laughed. “When this year’s NFL game came out, they tried to make people pay a few bucks more to unlock the bonus stadiums and a few different touchdown dances for their characters. Someone called the patch ‘Hammer Paint.’ To be honest, though, that first content I submitted was more than just different colors.”
“There were a few new shapes for the weapon handles too. Whoopie. The point is that whenever anyone online thinks they’re getting ripped off by some shoddy crap pushed out by a game company, they call it ‘Hammer Paint.’ That does us no favors, buddy.”
Cole winced at that. It was one thing to catch grief from fans. Hearing it from a friend and his boss was bad. Since both of those people were wrapped up into one normally soft-spoken guy, it was doubly bad.
“What are you working on now?” Jason asked.
“You haven’t gotten my latest?”
“No. That’s why I called.”
Frantically, Cole tapped on his laptop to see when he’d sent his last e-mail to Digital Dreamers. “Aw hell, Jason. I thought I sent it to you a week ago.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll love this,” Cole said as he leaned forward in his chair. “Not only have I worked out some new multiplayer arenas, but I’ve incorporated shifting day and night patterns that affect which monsters are out at what times. And get this—after they download the patch, if snipers camp in the same old spots for too long, those monsters will sniff them out. Some of the urban areas will have collapsing buildings or new areas attached to the perimeter of the play area. It’ll breathe new life into all the popular maps!”
“Okay,” Jason said in a favorable tone that probably came along with a nod. “What else have you got?”
Relieved by the reaction he’d gotten, Cole said, “I’ve designed some new enemies as well.”
“More monsters? Do we really need that?”
“These monsters aren’t just new character models. They’re the old monsters that transform into bigger, stronger, or faster ones. It’s a real evolution of the game and it’ll only require a few more animations to go from one to the other. Trust me,” Cole added. “I’ve researched them thoroughly and they’ll kick our players’ asses. I’ve got everything drawn up and laid out as far as how it all fits together. It sounds like a mess right now, but it’ll be so cool.”
“Sounds like it.” This time Jason seemed genuinely pleased.
“But wait,” Cole added in a voice pulled straight from a late night infomercial, “there’s more. I wrote up some tweaks for the now infamous painted hammers that will upgrade the stats.”
“You mean the different colors and handles won’t just be pretty?”
“Nope. I came up with ways to modify the weapons so anyone who bought that first batch of downloadable content will do more damage or get more attacks or even—”
“I get it, Cole. Will it be easy to implement?”
“The changes should just fit right into a patch that—” Knowing Jason was more concerned with the bottom line, Cole cut himself short. “It’ll just be another download. I thought we could make it free as a show of goodwill.”
“And a way to apologize for the first bunch of crap we put on the market.”
“My way didn’t sound so brutal, but yeah.”
“Send what you’ve got as soon as you can,” Jason said.
“I just did. Hopefully this will keep me employed for a little while longer.”
“I wasn’t going to fire you, Cole. Well, not yet anyway. Apart from the whole Hammer Paint fiasco, you’ve been turning in better content than any of our other part-time contractors.”
Part-time contractors. A fancy name for the guys who sent in pages of ideas to get a small commission. He might not have clawed too high up the corporate ladder, but the part-timers didn’t even have a rung. Now it seemed he was down there with them.
As if picking up on the gloom settling in over Cole’s head, Jason asked, “How’s Paige?”
“What was that?”
“Paige. You mentioned her in a few of your other e-mails a while ago. It sounded like she might be something more than just a friend, but you hadn’t quite…you know…sealed the deal.”
Jason was never good at guy talk. He knew the basics, but couldn’t commit enough to the subtle banalities to be truly fluent in the language.
“She’s been kicking my ass,” Cole grumbled.
“I hear you, man. Women.”
“I’m going to stop you before you try to call me bro.”
“That’s probably for the best.” Jason shifted enough to make his chair squeak and then said, “The e-mail just arrived. It looks like some good stuff. Your old job is waiting for you whenever you decide to come back to Seattle, but don’t take advantage of our friendship. Another Hammer Paint fiasco will sink our download division for good.”
“Read through everything I sent you. If you still want to scold me after that, I’ll bend over and take it like a good cell mate.”
Chapter 4
Kansas City University of Medicine Kansas City, Missouri
Lisa Wilson knew better than to walk by herself at night. Not only had her parents drummed that into her head ever since she was young enough to have strangers offer her candy, but she had enough common sense to avoid certain spots after the streetlights came on.
She’d enrolled in the University of Medicine because it was located in a section of town she knew well and, thanks to a few student loans and a partial scholarship, the tuition was within her range. The little apartment she shared with a roommate was a short walk from the university on Highland Avenue, and Lisa knew how to get there without straying into any danger zones.