The alarm clock ripped through the silence with the subtlety of a forum troll commenting "EZ clap" on a puppy video. Bia buried her face in the pillow as if the fabric could filter out reality: Monday, eight AM, first day in the corporate hell disguised as a game company. "Designer assistant" sounded like a euphemism for "human cannon fodder."
Getting up required negotiating with every fiber of her being, which argued in chorus: "It's only 22,600,800 more minutes until mandatory retirement... or something. Who counts minutes, anyway?". The prospect of facing an office full of humans—beings who breathed, smiled, and made eye contact without convulsing—was as appealing as sucking on a sour milk popsicle.
The existential wardrobe crisis lasted 47 minutes.
"Professional?" — a wrinkled dress shirt that had smelled like mothballs since 2018.
"Cool?" — a band tee with the print "Post-Punk Forever" faded to just "Punk Forever" (which, frankly, was more honest).
"Invisible?" — a hoodie that screamed "don't notice me, please, I have emotional fungi."
She opted for the middle ground: dark jeans, a t-shirt from a famous puzzle game (it was a game studio, right?), and a black cardigan that made her look like "person who reads instruction manuals on the bus." Not invisibility, but a decent disguise.
The commute to the company was a marathon of catastrophic flashbacks:
"What if I call the CEO 'boss' on the first day?"
"What if I spill coffee on the keyboard and delete the company's project?"
"What if Steven is there?"
Ah, Steven. The neighbor. The @StarryNight88. The guy who saw her three-day-old hoodie and still had the audacity to send "Good morning, neighbor." Now he was a colleague. The universe clearly had a kink for existential torture.
The company building appeared like a spaceship landed between auto parts stores. Glass, neon, and a sign that blinked "GAME OVER" in an ironic loop. Bia took a deep breath, wondering if her sweat smelled like panic or expired deodorant.
Inside, the chaos was organized: keyboards clicked like machine guns, monitors displayed code that looked like ancient runes, and someone yelled "REVISE THE 3D MODEL, DAMMIT!" from across the room. There were posters for a dark platformer game, action figures from a brutal medieval RPG, and a mushroom-shaped sofa where a guy slept hugging a controller.
She froze when a familiar voice sounded behind her:
"Welcome to the chaos. I'll show you to your desk."
Steven. Tight black t-shirt (since when did he have shoulders?), hair messy like someone who woke up five minutes ago, and a smile that said "I know you saw my profile on the photo app."
Bia swallowed hard.
"Let the game begin," she thought, wishing her face wasn't as red as a K.O. in the world's most famous fighting game.
The air conditioner wheezed like a B-movie serial killer, blowing a mixture of poorly photocopied dust and institutional despair. Breathe. Just breathe. Second day? Third? Time dissolved into a haze of caffeine and panic. My heart had migrated from "heart attack" to "controlled vomiting." Progress.
The office was an amusement park for sociopaths: walls screaming with "inspirational" graffiti, beanbags arranged like giant Lego traps, and an open space that felt more like a fishbowl where I was the beta fish swimming in circles. Goal of the day: reach my cubicle without touching anything human.
Escape route: zigzag between the coffee machine (which creaked like a skeleton) and the printer (which coughed up documents like a consumptive). Destination: the reject corner, where my desk accumulated dust and crumbs of self-esteem.
But the universe, that sadist, had other plans.
While Bia navigated the office with the grace of a baby penguin on roller skates, focused on her own internal abysses, the conversation in the Marketing glass fishbowl took a predictable turn.
"Speaking of challenges..." Marcos began, one of Dante's dress-shirt clones, subtly pointing with his chin towards Bia's awkward figure passing by. "See the new girl from Art? Looks like she fell off the moving truck."
Ricardo, another member of the pack, let out a chuckle.
"What's up, Marcos? Leave the girl alone. She seems harmless. Probably spends her day drawing sad unicorns."
"Harmless or... an exotic challenge?" Marcos retorted, a competitive glint in his eyes. "Fifty bucks says she's never gone out with anyone from this company. Actually, I bet she's never gone out with anyone, period."
"Uh oh, here we go..." Ricardo murmured, but he was already smiling.
Dante, who had been distracted by his phone until then, looked up, appraising Bia from head to toe with an expression of mild disdain. "The weirdo? What's the fun? Looks like she'll break if we talk too loud."
"Exactly!" Marcos exclaimed. "The fun is the challenge! Who can lure her out of her shell? Make her... I don't know, blink? Maybe even smile without looking like she's having a seizure, or get her into bed?" He rubbed his hands together. "Quick odds or evens here. Loser has to try."
Dante rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, guys. This again? Hitting on the weird new girl? So lazy..."
"Rules are rules, Dantinho," Ricardo said, already extending his hand for odds or evens. "Someone has to have the guts. Or the bad luck."
Hands slapped together. Odds. Dante had chosen evens.
"SHIT!" Dante cursed, lightly banging the table. A chorus of chuckles from his friends echoed through the fishbowl. "Seriously? Me? With... with her?" He looked at Bia again, who now nearly tripped avoiding a strategically misplaced beanbag.
"It's fate, champ!" Marcos said, patting Dante on the back. "Look on the bright side: it'll be a funny story to tell. 'How I tried to tame the swamp creature from Art'. Or maybe she'll surprise you!"
Dante forced an arrogant smile, the annoyance still visible in his eyes. He didn't want to lose the bet, nor seem less "manly" to his friends by refusing the challenge, however pathetic he found the target.
"Deal," he said, his voice now falsely confident, loud enough for Bia, even focused on her own misery, to catch fragments. "By Friday she'll be..." he paused dramatically, savoring the word, "tamed."
Tamed. The word set off an alarm at the nape of my neck. I reached the cubicle, collapsed into the chair, and the computer monitor reflected my face: pale, sweaty, with the expression of someone who'd seen Death dressed in HR.
Someone had bet on me. Or against me.
And the worst part? I didn't know what the game was.
The communicator blinked. Rodrigo, the "too nice to exist" art lead, dropped a bomb:
"Bia, urgent: organize the 'Whispering Forest' folder. It's a mess. Thanks!"
Mess was an understatement. The folder was a digital black hole—random JPEGs, PNGs without backgrounds, broken links to "inspiration" sites that looked hosted in hell. Perfect task for someone who wanted to disappear.
I started dragging files, but my brain, that traitor, went into hacker mode.
Flora_Bioluminescent_Nocturnal.
Fauna_Predators_Mimetic.
Architecture_Ruins_PreHuman_Influence_Nouveau.
I created a README.txt with a cross-referenced index and notes on "thematic inconsistencies" (translation: "This is all wrong, Rodrigo") and fired off the email. Mission accomplished.
Until thirst struck.
The Water Cooler: Water gushed from the filter like a vengeful waterfall. The lever jammed. The floor became a lake.
"Need help?"
Steven.
He fixed the lever with a casual movement, like zipping up a fly.
"Happens," he said, smiling. It wasn't a smile. It was an enigma.
Silence.
My eyes glued themselves to the floor tile. He left.
The Code: On the way back, I passed a programmer's desk. His screen showed lines of code from the "Whispering Forest" AI.
And then… The world stopped.
The lines transformed into holograms in my peripheral vision. I saw the error:
Aggro logic fail.
Race condition.
Irrational behavior = dead players.
He's about to make it worse.
Panic. Speak or not speak?
If I warn him, I look like a weirdo know-it-all.
If I don't, the game breaks.
And then… Another detail: Weird variable names. Ciphered comments. Something is hidden there.
Was it just my paranoia speaking louder, or was there really a mystery hiding in the lines of code for that game?
A cold sensation ran down my spine, different from the usual social panic. This wasn't just old, poorly commented code. It was... deliberate. The obfuscated variables, the suggestive comments, the hidden network calls... This smelled like something more than just sloppy programming. It smelled like a secret.
My brain, now operating in threat analysis mode, began connecting the dots in the background, even while the "speak or not speak about the AI bug" battle still raged. Hidden code. Undocumented network calls. Misleading nomenclature. This wasn't a side project. This looked like... data exfiltration.
Someone was using that seemingly harmless AI code as a Trojan horse to pull information from Studio. Espionage. Right under everyone's noses.
The realization hit me like a cold shock, momentarily overriding the social panic. There was something much bigger and potentially more dangerous happening here than just a bug in the AI. The programmer in front of me... was he the spy? Or just an unwitting tool, using compromised code or libraries without knowing?
The decision became even more complex. If I alerted them about the AI bug, I would draw attention to that piece of code. Could that expose the espionage mechanism? Or could it put me in the crosshairs of whoever was behind it? But if I said nothing about the bug, it could break the build, delay the project... and the spy code would remain there, active, stealing who knows what.
Shit. Double shit. Now it wasn't just about my social anxiety versus logic. It was about a bug versus a possible corporate crime. My life was complicated enough without adding "accidental witness to industrial espionage" to my resume of failures.
With a Herculean effort, I forced my legs to move. I decided on strategic cowardice. I retreated slowly, without saying a word to the programmer, and returned to my cubicle, my heart pounding for a completely new and much more frightening reason. The code hologram dissipated, but the questions and the sense of imminent danger remained etched in my mind.
I had seen too much. Now what?
I returned to my cubicle feeling like I'd just crossed a minefield. The encounter with Steven, the flood at the water cooler, the holographic code analysis, the impending AI error, the discovery of possible espionage... My brain was fried, operating with the processing power of a boiled potato. I just wanted to crawl under the desk and wait for the end of the workday (or the end of the world, whichever came first).
I tried to focus on some mundane task – maybe renaming some texture files or researching inspiration sources for a generic fantasy setting. Anything to get the image of the spy code and Leo's voice mocking me in the family group chat out of my head.
It was then I heard voices approaching my area. My body tensed instantly. It was Rodrigo, the art lead, talking to someone else I didn't immediately recognize – maybe someone from production or quality control. They stopped near the partition of my cubicle. I held my breath, trying to merge with the chair.
"No, seriously, Carlos," Rodrigo was saying, with a genuinely impressed tone. "You should have seen how Bia organized that Whispering Forest folder. I just asked her to categorize it, thought it would take all day in that chaos. Not only did she do it in, like, two hours, but she created an indexing system, renamed everything logically, and even left notes about thematic inconsistencies the narrative team hadn't even caught!"
Carlos (the name now made sense, maybe the art director mentioned before?) let out a low whistle. "The new girl? The quiet one who looks like she's going to apologize for breathing?"
"That's the one!" Rodrigo confirmed, laughing slightly. "I also asked her to vectorize some sketches from Mario, those for the new crafting system. She not only vectorized them but corrected some perspective flaws that were bothering me and made the interface flow much more intuitive in the process. Without me asking! The girl is quiet, but she has a clinical eye and absurd logic. A real find."
"Good to know," Carlos said. "We need people with initiative like that. Maybe we should give her something more challenging to test..."
My heart leaped with panic. More challenging? No, thank you! I was fine with tedious, invisible tasks!
I heard their footsteps moving away, the conversation shifting to deadlines and budgets. I released the breath I hadn't realized I was holding. They had... liked it? My organizational OCD? My unsolicited corrections? That didn't make sense. Normally, normal people got annoyed when you messed with their stuff without asking.
Confusion set in. Was it genuine praise? Or were they being sarcastic in a way my faulty social antenna couldn't pick up? And the idea of giving me something "more challenging"? I shivered just thinking about it. More challenges meant more visibility, more interaction, more chances to fail spectacularly in public.
And as I processed this new source of anxiety (being recognized for my work?! How horrible!), the irony of the situation hit me. There I was, being praised (maybe) for organizing folders and correcting drawings, while harboring the secret of a possible industrial espionage crime happening right there, just a few meters away, hidden in the lines of code of the AI they were so proud of developing.
My genius was good for creating impeccable organizational systems and identifying logical bugs, but would it be enough to handle a potentially dangerous secret? Or would my social ineptitude and paralyzing fear make me stay quiet, ignore what I saw, and hope it was all just paranoia in my head?
The buzz about the "weird genius" might have been starting, but inside, I felt more lost and terrified than ever.