SIX HOURS PREVIOUSLY

Penny's phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it. There was no reason to check it. She already knew what the notification would say.

Re: Bill from Whiteway Insurance

Re: The Last Logo Concept You Sent Us Didn't Work

Re: Your Delayed Rent Payments.

Penny's inbox and texts were minefields, and with just one swipe, she knew she would set it all off, so she didn't take her phone out. Instead she kept walking and focused on the feeling of the crisp March air cutting across her cheeks.

It was a beautiful day for Chicago. The sky was almost blue, although it was more #5bf4f2 than #8be4ff, and the sun was actually shining. Big beams of light slanted down between the skyscrapers, dappling the street with warmth and melting the last traces of winter’s gray slush that still clung to the curbs. The sidewalks were full. A surprising amount of people were out. Weirdly, they were almost all dudes.

Where was Eshan taking her? Penny wondered.

Her best and only friend been very cryptic when he'd invited her to hang out saying only,

"You will have some fun, Quarters."

She had thought that meant they were going to play Overwatch at his house. (Overwatch was how they'd met years ago.) But then he'd given her an address on Michigan avenue and told her to be there at exactly 3pm.

It was now 2:59.

Penny frowned and stood on her tip-toes, searching the crowd. Eshan should’ve been easy to find. He was an Indian man the size of a Viking.

“Boo!”

“Jesus!” Penny squeaked and whirled, nearly dropping her ancient brick of a phone.

Eshan Patel stood behind her, grinning, hands in the pockets of his sports coat. Penny blinked up at him.

Eshan was only a year older than her at twenty-five, but he was nearly half a foot a taller, and maybe because he was sporting a beard and business casual attire looked much older.

Penny pointed a finger at him. “If you scare me like that again, I swear to God I will not vote for you in your next election, Alderman Patel.”

“You don’t live in my district, Quarters,” Eshan said. “I’m not worried.”

Penny rolled her eyes.

Eshan gotten into politics, he always joked, because of his hatred of the penny. They cost more to make than they were worth and were a perfect example of everything wrong with the world -- namely that the government propped up special interests instead of trying to enact real change. As a result, he called her Quarters. It was annoyingly endearing, which was a good way to describe Eshan in general.

“So,” Penny said. “What are we doing today?” She tried to keep her tone light.

"It's a surprise."

"Uh-huh," Penny said. In her pocket her phone buzzed again.

What if it's Mom? She thought with a stab of panic. Wincing, she fished it out, and flicked open the screen, but it wasn't Mom, just another email about the bills from Mom's last stay in the psychiatric unit.

"Quarters, you're not going to cancel on me again are you?"

Penny looked up from the phone, guilty. "Sorry. No." She made a big show of stowing her phone back in her pocket and putting her hands up. "I am one-hundred committed to having fun today. I promise."

"You're just lucky I like you. If anybody else canceled on me six times -- six, Quarters. I would not be inviting them out to the world's most amazing event."

Penny winced, fighting back a stab of guilt. "I'm sorry about that party. It's just I've got to take on extra work with Mom's bills and --"

"Hey, it's okay." Eshan waved her away, his expression suddenly soft. "I'm joking. I know you've got stuff. And if there's ever anything I can do to --"

"No," Penny scowled. "I'm really doing fine," she lied.

She was not doing fine.

Her life was a mess. To be honest, it had been a mess for the last seven years since her Dad had died, and her Mom's mental health issues had gotten worse, but the problem was that Eshan had already helped her out once, two years ago, when her Mom had had her first inpatient stay.

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Quietly, and with no fuss, he'd Venmoed her two thousand dollars, after seeing a bill laying out on her counter. Penny had tried to return it, but he'd refused. Money wasn't an issue for him, since Eshan came from serious generational wealth. (His parents were lawyers, and the descendents of some Indian fruit magnate.) But after taking the money, Penny had felt so bad, she'd nearly thrown up.

Oh, she'd paid Eshan back, not in money, but in labor, by writing half of his speeches, and designing his campaign ads, but it still hadn't felt like enough. Plus, taking the money had made her feel like such a failure. And after everything that had happened to make her life a mess, she hated that feeling almost more than anything else.

"So, where are we going?" Penny asked.

Eshan shot her an enigmatic smile. “Come and see.”

Together they walked around the corner, and Penny’s jaw actually dropped, which honestly she thought was just something that happened in cartoons. “Holy shit.”

What Penny had thought was a few people waiting for something, was actually the end of a line of at least two hundred people. It stretched nearly the full length of the city block. There were even uniformed officers standing every hundred feet or so, keeping watch.

“Are we buying pot?" Penny asked in a low voice..

Eshan burst out laughing. “No. I don’t think I can do that anymore." Eshan motioned her to keep walking.

Penny followed him. In her pocket her phone buzzed again. This time, Penny switched it to silent and turned toward studying the crowd.

They were, as Penny had noticed earlier, mostly men in their late twenties through early forties. None were particularly fashionable or and many had the sort of unassuming quiet vibe Penny often found in engineers or IT people. Nerds. Although rich nerds, going by the brand of headphones one of he guy's was wearing.

She let out a sigh of relief. Nerds were her people, which meant this wasn't a political fundraiser. Eshan had taken her to one of those once and Penny had wanted to stab her eyes out. .

Maybe they were going to a Diplomacy tournament.

As Penny passed one of the guys, he turned, and gave her a very non-discrete once over.

Penny sighed. There was one problem with being a girl geek.

In the real world, Penny was not a hot girl. With her curly red hair, smattering of freckles and lack of curves, she never attracted a lot of male attention. However, whenever she went to card game or e-sports tournaments, which she sometimes did with Eshan, in her very very rare spare time, it was always a different story. The law of numbers meant she often got more male attention than she wanted, usually in the form of guys trying to explain to her how the game worked. Beating them was always satisfying on a visceral level.

As Penny kept walking, she listened intensely to the conversation a pair of guys were having.

"Jesus, Greg, not everything is a conspiracy.”

“And what about the rumors that they bribed the FDA to get it though?”

“Who the fuck cares. It’s going to be epic! I can't wait to watch.”

Penny frowned. Eshan had said they weren't going to buy drugs. But what else needed to go through the FDA. Some other new drug?

Finally, Penny reached the end of the line and stopped in front of store, that except for a few things looked like every other luxury establishment lining Michigan Avenue.

The things that were different were two.

First, a version of a red carpet unfolding from the shops doorway, except instead of red, the posts on either side of the door were black, as was the carpet, which stretched out a few feet down the sidewalk. Manning the door were another two uniformed officers, along with a tall man in a turtleneck, which was also, predictably black. He had a small, metal pin on his lapel, but it was too small for Penny to say exactly what it was.

“You should have seen the paperwork they had to go through to get the right to put the carpet on the sidewalk.” Eshan said, his eyes glimmering. “I think they spent nearly a thousand dollars just for that permit.”

Penny nodded, trying to listen as Eshan went on about the details of sidewalk permits, but then her attention was stolen by something else, the sign above the storefront. She’d been so caught up by the line, she hadn’t noticed it until she was right underneath it. There were no letters on the sign, nothing that actually explained what the store was to someone who didn’t already know. Instead there was simply a giant metal logo in the shape of an O. From far-away that’s all it looked like, but up close, you could see the O was actually a snake eating its own tail.

Penny's mouth went cold, and her breath caught.

A snake eating its own tail was the symbol for eternity, rebrith, both the end of the world and the beginning. It was a symbol that had once meant hope to her, and so many other kids, along with imagination, and dreams and fantasy, and really really fucking good video games.

It was a symbol that now made her blood run cold.

Because this was the logo for Oroborus, the world’s best gaming studio, run by the world’s most visionary amoral asshole, Edward Prince.

A man, who had, without question, ruined her life.