Chapter 13 #2
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Casey,” she said, never taking her eyes off me as she gestured behind her. An ink stain on her fingers caught the light. “Would you mind showing Finn more of the creative floor? I need to wrap up a few things. We could do lunch in an hour or so.”
“Absolutely,” Casey stepped away from the counter. “Come on, I’ll show you where the real magic happens.”
I caught Alex’s reflection in the glass partition as I followed Casey. She was still watching me, her mind whirring loudly behind her eyes.
As we headed toward the elevators, I stopped. “Actually, mind if we take the stairs?”
Casey glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “Sure. Any particular reason?”
“Motion sensitivity. Ride on the way up was rough.”
“Ah,” Casey nodded without missing a beat. “Stairs it is. That thing’s been on its last legs for months. Alex keeps threatening to withhold rent until the landlord fixes it.”
The stairwell was clean, well-lit, with concrete steps that felt solid under my feet—better than the trap masquerading as an elevator.
“How long since your accident?” Casey asked as we climbed.
“About eight months,” I appreciated that he’d asked directly rather than dancing around it. “Still figuring out all the ways my brain decided to rearrange itself.”
“That why you’re not flying anymore?”
“Among other things.” We reached the eighth-floor landing. “Turns out the Navy has opinions about pilots who can’t pass basic flight readiness tests.”
Casey paused at the door, keycard in hand. “Their loss.”
No platitudes about everything happening for a reason or how I’d find my new purpose. It was nice.
He swiped his card and held the door. “Welcome to where the magic happens.”
The creative floor stretched out before us—open and airy like the main floor, but with a different energy.
Casey explained that roughly sixty percent of the space was dedicated to creative work, the rest to development.
Low-walled cubicles were clustered in organic groupings with collaborative spaces scattered throughout—light flooding in through large windows.
A smaller kitchenette sat in one corner, and I could see a few conference rooms with glass walls along the far side.
Two small offices occupied prime real estate near the east windows—one clearly Casey’s based on the vintage movie posters and analog synthesizer setup Lennon had mentioned, the other Jordan’s judging by the multiple monitors and the cable management of someone who treated technology like a religion.
“This is where Legends of Heliox was born,” Casey smiled, gesturing toward a cluster of workstations where several people hunched over tablets and monitors. “Animation, character design, environmental art. The whole visual world.”
A woman with purple-streaked hair looked up from her tablet and waved. “Morning, Casey. New recruit?”
“Alex’s boyfriend,” he tossed a thumb toward me. “Finn, meet Gretchen, our lead character designer.”
“Oh, so there is someone she’s willing to introduce into the inner sanctum,” she grinned, holding out her hand. I took it. “Nice to meet you.”
She turned back to her tablet, stylus already moving across the screen in fluid strokes. I caught a glimpse of intricate character sketches—armor details, facial expressions, weapon designs rendered with precision that told of years dedicated to her craft.
Casey led me toward the development side, where the energy shifted from artistic flow to methodical execution. Developers sat in front of monitors showing lines of code, debug consoles, and what looked like game engines running test environments.
“This is where Sherlock lives,” Casey stopped at a workstation with three monitors arranged in a semicircle. “Want to see what Jordan was babbling about earlier?”
“Sure.”
Casey settled into the chair and logged in before pulling up what looked like a sleek interface—clean lines, intuitive design, nothing like the clunky military systems I was used to. “ Sherlock, load Gretchen’s Moncalez concept.”
The screen displayed detailed environmental art—hand-painted trees, lighting studies, architectural sketches for stone formations. Gretchen’s signature style was evident in every brushstroke.
“This is all Gretchen’s work,” Casey explained. “Concept art, environmental design, color palettes. Sherlock takes her art assets and uses them to build playable environments.” He spoke clearly to the interface: “Generate a forest clearing based on Moncalez concepts, medium density.”
The environment assembled itself using Gretchen’s art—her painted trees arranged in natural clusters, her stone designs placed strategically, her lighting schemes applied dynamically. The AI wasn’t creating art; it was implementing human creativity at scale.
“Impressive.” It was massively impressive. “So the artists are still doing the illustrative work.”
“Exactly,” Casey navigated through build options. “Artists like Gretchen design the world, Sherlock helps us populate it efficiently. Means we can create massive environments like Legends of Heliox with a small team while keeping our artists employed and valued.”
He pulled up a tactical overlay. “The strategic elements come from design documents our team creates—sight lines, cover positions, defensive choke-points. Sherlock implements the strategy and then figures out how realistic it is, suggests improvements when needed.”
“And the tactical concepts?”
“The team working together. Jordan worked with some military consultants on the strategic frameworks, but every implementation gets reviewed by humans,” Casey minimized the interface.
“Alex was very specific about Sherlock being a tool that amplifies human creativity rather than replacing it. She’d rather hire more artists than buy better AI.
Turns out it means she attracts the best artists and helped build a world-class AI. ”
“Nobody else has this?” I asked, mesmerized.
“We own a handful of patents for it. It’s something we’ve discussed licensing once it’s in a better place.
I think Alex feels guilty about pulling the trigger since we developed it in order to produce Legends, but she was very careful to write into the contract that we retained all ownership rights to any tools we developed during the project. ”
“Brilliant.”
“She really is.”
A notification appeared on one of the monitors—an incoming message from Alex. Casey glanced at it, then at me.
“Speaking of brilliant, Alex mentioned lunch in about an hour. You feel okay to meet more people, or do you need a break?”
The question was casual, but I caught the meaning underneath. Casey was looking for signs that I might be hitting my limits.
“I’m okay for now.” The tension at the base of my skull had remained stable, and the stair climb had helped settle some of the pressure. “Who else will I be meeting?”
“Tabitha, probably. Alex’s assistant. More like chief of staff, really.
She basically runs Alex’s life so Alex can focus on running the company,” Casey closed Sherlock’s interface.
“And Oliver, Alex’s business partner. Fair warning, he’s been stressed lately about some corporate stuff, but he’s a great guy.
He was Alex’s mentor before they started Catalyst.”
Corporate stuff. I filed that away, wondering if it connected to Jordan’s earlier comments about business decisions.
“Anything I should know about the corporate stuff?”
Casey’s expression shifted slightly—not evasive, exactly, but cautious. “Not my area. Alex handles the business side of creative, I stick to execution and technical strategy. But there’s been some... outside interest in the company lately.”
“Good interest or bad interest?”
“Remains to be seen,” Casey stood, locking the workstation. “Come on, let me show you the conference rooms. One of them has this ridiculous smart board that Jordan insisted we needed but nobody knows how to use.”
As we walked toward the glass-walled rooms, I found myself cataloging details—the way teams clustered naturally around shared projects, the quiet efficiency of developers debugging code, the creative energy of artists surrounded by concept sketches and color swatches.
People creating together instead of just co-existing.
The thought of outside corporate interest disrupting it all made my jaw tighten. These people trusted Alex to keep their world intact. The responsibility she carried suddenly felt much heavier.
“Casey?” A voice called from across the floor. “Can you look at this lighting rig real quick?”
“Duty calls,” Casey turned back to me. “Want to explore on your own for a few minutes? Or I can introduce you around if you prefer to wait.”
“I’ll wander.” The space felt comfortable—open enough that I wouldn’t feel trapped, organized enough that I could navigate easily. “Thanks for the tour. And the Sherlock demo.”
“Anytime. Watch yourself though. If you start talking tactical applications with our developers, you’ll never escape. Half of them are military strategy nerds.”
Casey headed toward a group of desks, leaving me to absorb the space surrounding me. Through the windows, I could see the Wasatch Front—snow-capped peaks that reminded me of Wyoming.
My phone buzzed with a text from Alex.
Alex: how’s the tour? Casey being a good host?
Me: Excellent host. Just saw Sherlock demo. Impressive as hell
Alex: Jordan will be insufferable if he hears you liked it.
Alex: lunch in 20?
Me: Looking forward to it
I pocketed the phone and continued exploring. The morning had been pleasant—better than I’d expected. Meeting people who were incredibly open and talented, seeing Alex’s professional world, understanding the scope of what she’d built here.
But I could feel the edges of fatigue beginning to creep in.
It wasn’t anything dramatic—just a subtle shift in how sounds felt slightly sharper, the overhead lighting seemed a fraction too bright, and my skin felt like it was pulled too tight across my shoulders.
The accumulated stimulation of new people, new spaces, new information triggering my internal fuel warning light.
For now, manageable. But worth monitoring.