Chapter 15 Asher
ASHER
The ecosystem is collapsing.
I sit at my desk in the climate-controlled isolation of the server room. Ethan has the glass tower to intimidate investors, and Owen wanders the floor to charm the designers, but I prefer the steady hum of the mainframes.
From this corner, I can see every screen, every exit, and every threat. To an outsider, Mosaic looks functional.
The code is shipping. The beta metrics are green. The “Be Seen” campaign is tracking in the top percentile for engagement.
But I see the micro-fractures.
Ethan is running at 110% capacity. He hasn’t left the building in three days. He sleeps on the leather couch in his office, eats takeout at his desk, and speaks only in commands.
His cortisol levels are visibly critical. He is a machine running without oil, grinding its own gears to dust.
Owen is worse. He is quiet. Owen is never quiet.
The charm is gone, replaced by a sullen, restless energy. He spends his days staring at Tessa’s back and his nights drinking alone at Azul. He is a star that has burned out.
Earlier today, he pushed a commit to the repository without running the unit tests. It broke the login module for three hundred users. I fixed it silently without telling him because, if I told Ethan, Ethan would’ve tried to bury him. Or killed him.
We are degrading. The code is clean, but the hardware—us—is failing.
And Tessa.
I zoom in on the security feed on my second monitor. Camera 4 gives me the best angle of her profile.
She is typing. Her posture is perfect—spine straight, shoulders back. She wears the “office armor” every day now: high-necked blouses, sharp blazers, severe buns. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t laugh.
She works with a terrifying, mechanical efficiency that mirrors Ethan’s.
She is fading. The color I saw in her cheeks that night at Velvet—the heat of the club, the flush of the alcohol—is gone.
She is grayscale.
I watch her pick up her coffee cup. It’s empty.
She tips it back, realizes there is nothing left, and sets it down with a heavy, defeated sigh. She rubs her temples, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment of raw vulnerability that she thinks no one sees.
I see it.
I close my laptop.
I can’t fix this with code. I can’t patch the emotional subroutines of my brothers. And I can’t optimize Tessa remotely.
I need to reset.
I stand up, pulling my hoodie over my head. I need noise that isn’t the hum of servers. I need chaos that is contained behind glass.
I walk past Owen’s desk. He is staring at a blank email draft. His tie is undone, hanging loose around his neck.
“I’m leaving.”
Owen blinks, looking up. His eyes are bloodshot. “It’s barely eight. You usually stay until midnight.”
“My focus is degrading,” I state. “I need a reboot.”
“Must be nice,” Owen mutters, rubbing his face. “Have a drink for me. A double.”
“I don’t drink on Wednesdays.”
“Right. Schedule.” He sighs, turning back to his screen. “Go. Save yourself.”
I walk past Tessa’s desk.
She doesn’t look up. She is focused on a spreadsheet, her lips moving silently as she calculates. She looks tired. Not just sleepy—bone-deep weary. The kind of exhaustion that mere sleep doesn’t fix.
I hesitate.
I want to stop. I gave her the security logs this afternoon.
I told her Ethan deleted the footage to protect her.
I gave her the data, hoping it would recalibrate her system, but it hasn’t worked.
She still looks shattered. I want to tell her Owen misses her laugh so much that it’s physically painful to watch him.
But my role is to watch. If I speak now, I disrupt the fragile equilibrium she has built.
I walk past her.
I drove for forty minutes. Aimless loops around the beltway. A waste of fuel, time, and tire tread.
A week ago, the inefficiency would’ve grated on me. Now, it feels like necessary maintenance. My internal processor is stuck in a loop, and the hum of the engine is the only thing drowning out the noise.
I finally pull into Pinball Wizard, a dive bar in South Austin that smells of floor wax and the electric ozone of overheating circuit boards.
It is my sanctuary.
It isn’t crowded. It is dark, lit only by the neon glow of two hundred vintage arcade cabinets. The noise is a cacophony of 8-bit chiptunes, flipper clicks, and the solenoid snap of the flippers.
It is chaos, but predictable chaos.
I walk past the bar, ignoring the bartender’s nod. I’m not here to talk.
I head to the back row. The pristine collection of 1990s Williams tables. Medieval Madness. Monster Bash. The Twilight Zone.
They are machines of pure physics. Angles. Velocity. Momentum. There is no algorithm here, only gravity and reflex.
I head for my usual table: The Addams Family. It is the best-selling pinball machine of all time. It has complex rule sets and magnets that disrupt the ball’s trajectory. It is a perfect puzzle.
But someone is already playing it.
I stop, annoyed. I usually have this row to myself on Wednesdays.
I watch the player at the machine.
A woman. Trench coat over office clothes. Hair pulled back in a messy bun, with strands falling loose, curling around her neck.
She is playing aggressively. She slams the flipper buttons, nudging the machine with her hip—just enough to save the ball, not enough to trigger the tilt sensor.
Thwack. Clack. Ding.
She traps the ball on the right flipper. She holds it there, taking a breath. Then she aims and fires.
The ball shoots up the ramp, hitting the “Thing” scoop perfectly.
Multiball initiated.
Three balls shoot out onto the playfield. The machine screams, lights flashing like a strobe.
The woman laughs.
It is a bright, genuine sound that cuts right through the arcade noise.
“Focus,” she mutters to herself, her hands flying over the buttons. “Don’t drop it. Don’t you dare drop it.”
My lungs lock.
I know that voice.
I step closer, my pulse jagged in my throat. It’s impossible. I left her at the office forty-five minutes ago. She must’ve left immediately after me and headed straight here.
I closed the telemetry app on my phone an hour ago. I wanted silence. I wanted to be blind to her location for one night.
The statistical probability of her being here, in my specific sanctuary, at this specific time, is less than 0.04%.
“You need to aim for the electric chair,” I say, my voice rough with shock. “It yields the highest jackpot multiplier during multiball.”
She screams.
It’s a short, startled yelp. Her hands jerk, and all three balls drain down the center.
Game Over.
She spins around, clutching her chest. Her eyes are wide, hazel, and furious.
“Asher!” she gasps. “What is wrong with you? Do you have a teleportation device? Are you stalking me?”
“No,” I say, staring at her. “I… I come here every Wednesday.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I am A.B.” I point to the high score list on the machine’s dot-matrix display.
She looks at the screen. The top three scores are all A.B.
She looks at me. Her expression shifts from anger to disbelief, and then to something softer.
“I came here to get away from you people,” she says, half-laughing, half-groaning. “I drove across town to a dive bar to escape the Branson gravity well, and here you are.”
“We are inevitable,” I murmur. “I didn’t know you liked games.”
“I like hitting things,” she admits, leaning back against the machine. “And since I can’t hit your brother, this is the next best thing.”
“Which brother?”
“Ethan,” she says instantly. Then she pauses. “And Owen. Mostly Ethan.”
“Ethan deserves to be hit,” I agree. “He is operating on a corrupted logic loop.”
Tessa sighs, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “He’s a jerk, Asher. A controlling, manipulative jerk.”
“He is protective,” I correct. “He views the company as a fortress and you as the Trojan Horse.”
“I’m not a horse. I’m the best strategist he’s got.”
“I know,” I say, stepping closer. “Which is why I gave you that flash drive today. You saw the deletion record. You know what he did.”
“I saw it,” she whispers. She looks down at her shoes. “But why did you give it to me?”
“To prove a point,” I say. “I texted you that he was trying to save you. But you need to understand why.”
“The truth is that he regrets letting it happen.”
“The truth,” I say, stepping into her personal space, “is that he nuked the file because it was proof that he was compromised. He couldn’t risk the footage existing. Ethan doesn’t get compromised, Tessa. It terrifies him.”
She looks up at me. Her eyes are searching mine.
“And you?” she asks softly. “Are you compromised?”
The question hangs in the air.
I look at her.
She is the variable I can’t solve. She is the glitch in my system.
“Yes,” I say.
Her breath catches.
“You’re watching me,” she whispers. “In the office. I feel you.”
“I am monitoring you.”
“Why?”
“Because when you aren’t in my line of sight,” I admit, my voice low, “I feel… anxious. I need to know your coordinates and that you’re functional.”
“I’m functional,” she says, though her voice trembles. “I’m working. I’m paying my rent. I’m being professional.”
“You're buffering,” I correct her. “You're spinning, waiting for a connection.”
She laughs, a wet, shaky sound. “You used my tagline against me.”
“It’s a good tagline.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out a token.
“Play again,” I say. “Two players. But not taking turns.”
“What?”
“Split flipper,” I clarify. “I take the left. You take the right. We play the same ball.”
She looks at the machine, then at me. “That requires a lot of coordination.”
“It requires trust,” I say. “And timing.”
She hesitates. Then she steps up to the machine. She places her right hand on the button.
“Okay,” she says. “But if we lose, it’s your fault.”
I step up beside her. I place my left hand on the button. My body brushes against hers. Her hip bumps my thigh. The familiar scent of jasmine rises from her skin, mixing with the sharp chemical smell of the arcade.
I launch the ball.
For the next ten minutes, we don’t speak. We just react.