Chapter 84

“That was fun,” Gracie said when Octavia returned to the room after seeing the reporter out.

“Thanks for showing up,” Octavia said, taking a seat in the chair Fran had just been sitting in.

“I got here as soon as I could,” Gracie protested.

“No, I meant that,” Octavia said. “I was honestly just saying thank you.”

“Oh. I think we use too much sarcasm around each other,” Gracie said. “Now we can’t tell whether we’re being caustic or not.”

“Ha, true,” Octavia agreed. She leaned back in the chair, legs sprawled out and head tilted back, and stared at the ceiling listlessly.

“Fuck…I still have so much work to do for the bank security system project.”

“How’s your team doing?” Gracie asked.

“Pretty good. I’ve got Trina, Parker, and Hazel working on it,” Octavia answered. “We’re meeting later today to work out the details. What about you?”

“We’re about done installing the new features for the theme park,” Gracie said. “By this time next week, the Wild and Wacky Wonderland Park rides will have a higher safety rating.”

“What were they before?”

“Don’t ask. Suffice to say, a lot less people would have been willing to get on the ‘Tummy Twister’ if they knew it.”

Octavia sat up and frowned. “How come you got the fun project and I’m stuck foolproofing a blockchain system for the bank?”

Gracie shrugged. “We flipped a coin. I had luck on my side.”

“Next time, I get the fun project.” Octavia huffed. “Or we determine who does what in some other, more equitable way.”

Gracie smirked. “A Mario Kart tournament, then?”

Octavia grinned. “Hell yeah.”

The door opened, and Lauren stuck her head through it.

“Hey, guys. Gracie, that shipment of thermocouples just arrived, I had them moved to the design lab. And Octavia, the head of the bank called while you were in the interview.

“I told him you’d call back. Something about a new feature they’d like to add.”

Octavia groaned. “Not another one!”

Both she and Gracie stood then followed Lauren out the door.

“I’ll need to get my equipment set up for the prototype build,” Gracie said as they walked through the halls of their office.

“Already done,” Lauren said. “I had Jerome set it up this morning. I figured you’d need it once the shipment came in.”

“Excellent,” Gracie said. “Lauren, you are the quintessence of efficiency.”

“Damn right,” Octavia agreed.

Lauren responded with a modest smile. “Well…you two are honestly the best bosses I’ve had. You know how much I love working here.”

“I thought it was because of our amazing benefits?” Octavia said.

“Or the free yoga classes on Wednesdays?” Gracie said.

Lauren laughed. “Those things don’t hurt. So…how did the interview go?”

As they made their way through the building, they walked through various rooms—conference rooms, quiet working rooms, and one set up with a Ping-Pong table and some retro arcade games in the corner.

There were people sitting and working with headphones on or standing around chatting with their colleagues.

With the bright, colorful furniture and quirky décor, the place almost looked like an ad for a college program—a fun, tech-savvy space, complete with the diverse, hip, unrealistically happy crowd.

“Same old, same old,” Octavia said in response to Lauren’s question. “It was all, ‘You’re so rich—that’s amazing! But you’re women—even more amazing! But you give away all your money—whuuuuutttt?’”

“The magazine ~Tech Today~ would like to sit down with at least one of you next week, by the way,” Lauren said.

“You do it,” Octavia told Gracie.

“No way. You’re the friendly one, you do it.”

“Since when have I been friendly?”

“You’re more friendly than me, at any rate.”

Neither Octavia nor Lauren could argue with this. A cactus was more friendly than Gracie.

Octavia sighed. “Another thing Mario Kart will have to decide. Well, I need to get going. Are we still on for tonight?”

Gracie nodded.

“Just come over when you’re done. I have to warn you all, Quentin’s been going through a cooking obsession, so you will be expected to try a multitude of dishes. Fortunately, he’s a good cook.”

“That brownie fudge you brought into work the other day was just heavenly,” Lauren said. “I’ll happily try all of Quentin’s cooking.”

“Good. I’m getting tired of being his guinea pig.”

“Dear Quentin,” Octavia remarked, “that man just adores you.”

“As he should,” Gracie responded complacently.

“You two really are cute together,” Lauren added.

They parted ways. Gracie and Lauren went off to the design lab, Octavia to her office to make a call.

After returning the call of Mr. Elias Hedley, regional manager at Derbyshire Bank, Octavia set the headset back in its cradle and fell back in the cushy, neon-pink seat at her desk.

Her office was enclosed in glass, sitting directly across from Gracie’s.

Whereas Gracie’s was filled with black furniture with walls covered in blown-up black-and-white photographs of machinery, Octavia’s space was an explosion of color.

Her neon-pink chair was positioned behind a turquoise desk, which sat on a patterned orange and pink rug.

The one non-glass wall behind her desk was a light turquoise, and the couch and two chairs set up near the door were in shades of magenta and teal.

Octavia propped her feet up on her desk, her yellow Converse reflecting in the blank screen of her computer monitor. Being the boss was great.

With the immense success of Athena, O.G. had quickly risen to the point where it was.

Seemingly overnight, Octavia and Gracie became the new faces of groundbreaking technology—the people who everyone wanted to get a piece of.

Every product they had followed up with after that only further cemented their place in the tech world.

Octavia was happy with what the company had become. It was a relatively small group of people, but they were still able to deliver quality products to some of the biggest organizations around.

The thrill of coding ideas into existence was all the compensation Octavia needed.

She didn’t mind the money, of course, but it made her day to get to wake up every morning knowing she had a full day of discoveries ahead of her.

It was exactly the kind of life she had always wanted to lead.

A knock on her door brought her head up from her shoes.

“Busy?” Hazel asked.

“Nope. What’s up?”

Hazel stepped into the room, her combat boots clunking on the floor.

“I just emailed you the code I’ve been working on for the bank project. Also, I know we have that meeting this afternoon, but I have to pick up Manson from the vet.”

Manson was Hazel’s bulldog.

“I’ll swing back after; I might be a few minutes late,” Hazel finished.

“Cool,” Octavia said. “Hey, you know what? We’ll meet outside in the courtyard. Manson can chase all the squirrels he wants to. Unless he, like, broke a bone or something?”

“Nah. He’s just in for a follow-up visit,” Hazel reassured her.

“Great,” Octavia said. “Everyone loves it when you bring Manson in. He should come to work with you every day.”

“But then I wouldn’t get any work done.” Hazel chuckled. “And no one else would, for that matter. You might not be doing yourself any favors with your relaxed ‘bring your pet to work’ policy.”

“Plenty of people have brought their pets in, and there haven’t been any problems,” Octavia said.

“Well, except when Parker brought in his boa constrictor. But the real problem was Gerald getting out of his case and escaping to the lounge.”

“And it had to be on the one day the representatives from Vector Virtual Reality Tech were here,” Hazel said, smiling. “Remember the scream when that poor lady found Gerald curled up in an armchair?”

Octavia shuddered. “At least they still wanted to do business with us.”

Hazel’s chuckles trailed off. “I have never had as much fun anywhere as I’ve had working here,” she said. “No one ever brought in a twenty-five-pound snake back at Icarus, that’s for sure.”

“I’ll bet they didn’t.”

Hazel stood. “Okay, see you later.”

It had been a while since the name Icarus had been brought up, Octavia realized.

She often forgot how she’d come to know Hazel and what events occurred right before the magenta-haired software developer ended up working at Octavia’s new company.

It was funny how quickly that name, and the name of its previous owner, had faded from the public conscious once it became known that Icarus would be no more.

The manufacturing facilities around the world had been sold, for much less than they were worth, many said.

Curie had taken over all the research and development facilities, tripling its net worth. Eventually, the dust settled, the panic died down, and life went on.

If you asked, no one really remembered the name that they had spent so long praising. No one remembered his name.

The last time Octavia had seen him had been when he walked out of the apartment. Every now and then he crossed her mind.

But with her business, there was so much else running around in her head, the memory of him was more distant each day.

“I’m on my way,” Octavia huffed into her phone as she stepped out of the building and onto the busy sidewalks of Sanatio City.

People were bustling past her, everyone in a rush to get home after a long workday.

“You’re leaving the office later than usual,” Gracie’s voice came from the phone.

“Yeah…you can thank Mr. Hedley for that,” Octavia said. “I know it’s what the newspapers keep saying, but damn. I’m not a miracle worker.

“I can’t just snap my fingers and make whatever they want appear in coded form.” She scowled. “Anyway…I’ll be there in a few. What is it that Quentin wanted?”

“Worcester sauce,” Gracie said, “apparently, we’re out.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“You think I know?”

Octavia sighed. “Okay, okay. I’ll stop by that healthy store he likes so much. He wants the organic kind, doesn’t he?”

“Of course,” Gracie said, “and don’t worry about being late. Lauren and Elle are here, but Muffy is still on the way. Also, two buddies of Quentin’s are still on the way too.”

“What? You didn’t invite our dear friend Sierra?” Octavia exclaimed.

“Ha. You’re funny,” Gracie said. “See you in a bit.”

Once the call beeped off, Octavia lowered the device from her ear to stuff it into her pocket. She balanced her book bag on one arm, and she had her laptop clutched in the hand of the other.

That was when a rushing pedestrian brushed by her, jostling her arm with the book bag hanging off it. A bunch of items tumbled to the ground from the bag’s open pouch.

“Dammit!” Octavia muttered, shooting a deathly glare at the back of the person to blame, who continued on his path without so much as a glance backward.

With a sigh, she knelt to retrieve the assortment of pens, notebooks, and her graphing calculator that lay scattered on the ground.

Then she heard him.

A voice that had all but faded from her memory spoke itself back into existence.

“Still not bothered to watch where you’re going, I see.”