Chapter 50
The Developers
The c-suite didn’t scare him anymore.
The keypad code was in his fingers now, muscle memory, the way his gaming hotkeys used to be.
The door opened and the ventilators greeted him — hiss-click, hiss-click, the chorus that had made him gag sometimes until he reminded himself that it was just the room itself breathing.
Like something alive. The room was alive because the people in it were alive, and Levi had made sure the room reflected that.
Tyler’s corner had a Knicks pennant pinned to the wall behind his bed and a pair of running shoes on the shelf Levi had found in Tyler’s desk drawer.
Owen’s bedside table had his coffee mug — the stained one, the one with a circuit board printed on it — and a stack of sci-fi paperbacks Levi rotated every few weeks because Owen struck him as someone who would hate seeing the same book cover for months.
Zoe’s space had her purple mug, a framed photo of her with her parents Levi had found in her office, and a small succulent that Levi checked on every visit even though Zoe couldn’t see it.
Maddie’s wall had three of her own concept art prints — the forest, the asylum’s exterior, and the observation deck — mounted in frames Levi had bought himself because the art was beautiful, and the artist deserved to see her own work when she opened her eyes.
If she opened her eyes.
Elliot’s space was harder. Levi had put up a photo of Elliot and Jasper from the documentary — a still frame he’d captured from the video, the two of them laughing, Jasper’s arm around Elliot’s shoulders after they roped Paul into getting crew shots of everyone.
He’d put Elliot’s headphones on the shelf — expensive ones, the kind a sound designer would own.
He didn’t stay long at Elliot’s bed. He couldn’t.
If he stayed too long, he started thinking about Asher’s jaw on Elliot’s face, about Asher’s voice saying I thought about killing them and the thinking turned into a heat in his chest that wasn’t grief.
It was the anger Levi promised would last a long time and the promise was holding.
He checked the medical records. He made sure they were being repositioned every two hours to prevent bedsores, he checked that Tyler, Jasper, and Owen were being shaved.
He checked the IV lines, the feeding tubes, and the catheter maintenance logs, and the checking was thorough and precise because it was the most important thing he did every week.
He replaced the old flowers in each vase.
Sunflowers for Tyler because Tyler was big and bright and sunflowers felt right.
White roses for Owen because Owen was quiet and clean and the roses were simple.
Purple dahlias for Zoe. Wildflowers for Maddie — a chaotic mix, the kind of arrangement that looked like someone had grabbed a handful from a meadow, because Maddie’s art had that quality.
Something wild and alive and unpredictable.
Jasper got whatever was most fragrant. This week it was gardenias.
Levi put the gardenias in the vase on Jasper’s bedside table and pulled the plastic chair to its usual spot and sat down.
Jasper’s face was the same. It was always the same.
Levi picked up the hand.
“Hey,” he said, the way he always started. “It’s Thursday. I brought gardenias. They smell really good — if you can smell anything in there, I hope it’s these.”
The ventilator breathed. Jasper’s hand was warm in his.
“I’ve been thinking about the sanitarium this week. The safe room — God, you were always so…calm. Even when everything was terrible. I’d be losing my mind and you’d be making jokes like we were hanging out in someone’s dorm room instead of hiding from things that wanted to kill us.”
He squeezed his hand.
“I think about that a lot. How easy you made it feel. I used to think the game generated that — the calmness, the humor. But Paul showed me some of your employee reviews and your coworkers all said the same thing. Jasper makes the hard stuff easier. Jasper’s the one you want in the room when everything’s on fire.
“ He let out a small, watery laugh. “You were like that before the game. The game just — showed me the real you. Without knowing it was the real you.”
He wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand. The crying didn’t embarrass him anymore. Not here. Not with his friends.
“We’d be best friends, you know. Out here.
If you were awake. I know that. You’d come over to the house, which Asher would hate, because you’d make me laugh.
Asher gets jealous when other people make me laugh, but I bet you’d think that was hilarious and you’d do it more on purpose.
” He was smiling. Crying and smiling. “You’d be the worst influence.
We’d play games and smoke your terrible weed and Asher would sit in the corner being weird about it and we’d both ignore him. ”
He looked around the room and tried not to let the weight of all of them crush him.
“We’re going to come get you,” Levi said softly, in the same voice he said those words every week.
The promise that was a promise and a prayer and the only thing he could offer that wasn’t flowers.
“Me and Asher. We’re going to figure it out, we’re going to go back in, and the first person I’m coming for is you.
I’m going to walk into whatever scenario the system puts us in and I’m going to find you and tell you it’s time to come home. ”
He squeezed Jasper’s hand.
“I’m sorry it won’t be today.”
Levi loosened his grip and set Jasper’s hand back on the blanket.
“See you next Thursday, Jasper.”
He stood up as he wiped his face. He looked around the room at the six lives he was helping maintain the way he would maintain a garden — with regularity, with attention, with the belief that the seeds were still alive under the soil even though nothing had broken the surface yet.
He turned off the overhead light. He’d installed a dimmer three months ago — the fluorescents were too harsh and clinical, but he left the bedside lamps on. They had a warm light that said someone is coming back.
He walked out of the c-suite, closed the door behind him, and stood in the hallway for a moment, his forehead against the wall, breathing.
Every week. Every week he did this and every week it hurt. Every week the hurting was worth it, because the hurting meant he hadn’t stopped caring.
Asher’s office door was open. It was always open — Asher didn’t close doors when Levi was in the building.
Asher was at his desk, two monitors running, his reading glasses on.
The glasses were new; Levi had noticed him squinting at screens and made him get an eye exam.
The glasses made Asher look like a professor who moonlighted as a serial killer, which Levi told him, and Asher had said I would never moonlight, I’d be full-time.
He was on a call, using his weird phone voice.
Corporate Asher, discussing contract specifications with someone from the Department of Defense.
Virtual Vice was pivoting — the technology was too valuable to die in a locked building with six comatose employees.
The military wanted the immersive training system.
The neural interface. The adaptive AI. They wanted it with modifications — a remote shutoff switch, a hard disconnect protocol, the safety features Asher never built because Asher had never cared about safety.
Asher cared about safety now. Or rather — Asher cared about funding the c-suite, and the c-suite required money, the money required contracts, and the contracts required safety features.
The care was logistical. The result was the same.
The people upstairs would be maintained.
The medical staff would be paid. The machines would breathe.
Because Levi had asked, and Asher never said no to Levi when it came to the c-suite.
Asher saw him in the doorway. The phone-voice continued for another sentence and then: “I’ll call you back.” He hung up and the corporate posture dissolved. He smiled the way he always did when Levi entered the room—with his whole face.
“How are they?” Asher asked.
“The same. Owen’s IV site looked a little red — I flagged it for the nursing staff.”
“I’ll follow up.”
He would. He always did. Whatever Levi flagged, Asher followed up.
Not because he cared about Owen’s IV site, but because Levi cared, and Levi’s caring was Asher’s operating system now, the way Asher’s wanting had been Levi’s operating system in the early weeks.
They ran each other now. Two pieces of badly written code, compiled together, the only language each of them could still parse.
Levi stepped into the office. Asher started to stand and Levi waved him back down — not yet — because something against the side of the desk had caught his eye on the way in.
A large frame was leaning against the desk’s flank with the image side turned to the wood. The back of it was matte black, and Levi wasn’t sure which piece of art had come down from which wall.
“What’s that?” Levi asked.
Asher’s face did something Levi rarely saw on it these days—it became uncertain. He furrowed his brown, his lower lip sucked between his teeth.
“Don’t —” Asher started, then cleared his throat. “Look at it if you want. I just hadn’t — I wasn’t sure when I was going to show it to you.”
Levi crouched. The frame was heavy; he tilted it carefully away from the desk, eased it around, and rested it against the desk’s other side so the image faced into the room.
He looked at it.