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Chapter 1 - Rafael
Pacing from the wall of windows to his oversized desk, Rafael Brantley settled uneasily in his desk chair, checking the clock for the dozenth time in the last few minutes. Somehow when he was so eager to have this meeting, time slowed down to an endless drag. He had a beautiful hardwood timepiece on his desk, the faces of the clock on each side actually two of his discarded bronze scales. It was a bit of his truth sitting there in a room devoted to only his human persona, which always reassured him—except right now, when the minute hand had to be playing a game with him.
He couldn’t sit still this afternoon, not when he was so close to selling his latest app; leaving space in his schedule in case he needed to discuss the deal had been a mistake since everything had already been said and it left him with time to fidget. This would be the final meeting, actually putting him in the room with the lawyers who had drawn up the deal, and would result in a final contract for him to sign. It would be nice if they had a contract on hand today, but he doubted there were no final points for the lawyers to bicker over. He wouldn’t put it past the Next-Gen Apptec people to try to throw their weight around a bit more either. Why they bothered, he didn’t know. Raf knew how good his team was, and he knew the app was worth every penny he’d asked for it.
Surge was a financial management app with a new security protocol he’d devised. For someone who had investments and income from disparate sources, he had quickly recognized how important it would be if he could bring it all together in one place. He’d started with his own investment companies, banks, and stocks, and then let the team loose to scale it outward. He now had all of his accounts—minus the hidden ones—in one app, instead of the eight he’d had prior.
Still fidgeting, he rose, thinking that maybe he could do a spontaneous walkthrough of his floors of the building to kill time, but that would likely stress out a number of his programmers working on other software nearing a deadline.
Today it was bright and beautiful out, and Raf would’ve liked to shift and fly for twenty minutes to cool his head, but sunset was a few hours off yet. Even if it were dark out, he would never manage to fly inside the city without being seen—that was better done as far from people as possible, and he wasn’t a teenager anymore. He could control himself, for all that he occasionally wondered what it would be like to freak the entire city out. Imagining it was just a guilty pleasure, though, he’d never actually do it.
He paced his large office instead. Two walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, and he walked over to the corner between them for lack of anything better to occupy his mind.Dammit, pull yourself together. How many apps have you successfully sold already?It was a significant number if he counted everything back to before he’d started his company; one of his Advanced Undergrad projects had been one of the first apps he sold, and he hadn’t even graduated MIT before the offer was made. Back then he’d also had to do all the work himself—it was a hassle but also more fun. Nowadays he spent far more time managing the programmers he’d hired than writing his own code. Management was something he was capable of, certainly, but it was tedious compared to the enjoyment of successfully solving a coding problem.
The view from his top-floor office in the thirty-story office building wasn’t bad, it was just something he was so familiar with that it no longer held the same appeal. He’d had to pay a pretty penny to claim the top floors for his company, Heliodoro Software, but it had been well worth it. He could see much of downtown Denver, though his building was hardly the only tall structure—other skyscrapers blocked segments of his view, many taller still. Still, he could see the traffic, and for some reason the hectic movements of cars far below soothed his restlessness. Perhaps it was just that others were as frantic as he was feeling.
The loud dance beat from his pocket startled him; his smile as he recognized his friend’s ringtone came immediately afterward. He pulled out his phone. "Yo, Lance."
"Hey Raf. Can you come by the club and help me with Chas? He’s got that look on his face again and asked the bartender to leave the bottle." The deep voice of his friend was tight with concern.
Rafael swore quietly. Their good friend’s sister was not well, and Chas had gone to medical school and taken on the responsibility of investigating the disease to try and help her. He’d shouldered the weight alone, and when something didn’t work with one of his lines of research or Angela took a turn for the worse, he launched himself into a bottle. "Is Angie okay? Has he said?" Given that the wider world couldn’t know about Angela’s unique physiology, it was impossible to get a regular research lab working on it.
"He’s said three words since he got here. None of them to me." Lance’s voice sounded tired, but he always took time out of his busy management schedule to reach out. "You’re better with him like this than I am." The admission was quiet, but no less intense.
Rafael sighed heavily and ran a hand through his thick, wavy, black hair. "I can’t. The final sale meeting is in…" He broke off and glanced at the clock on his desk yet again. "Less than half an hour, now. I don’t know how long it will run, but it won’t be quick." His heart went out to Chas and Angie, but he was trapped at work right then. There really wasn’t anything he could do from here, either.
"I expect he’ll still be here later, but I’ll see what I can do in the meantime." Lance sighed audibly, and Rafael had to agree. Chas was hard to cheer up because it really was life and death when researching a genetic disease that killed their kind. He was also brilliant, and for some reason that made it harder to talk him into optimism. Why, Raf had no idea. Something to do with knowing all the facts, so they looked however bleak they were going to.
He walked back to his desk and pulled a sticky note pad to himself and wrote 'Chas and Angie' in big block letters he couldn’t miss. This he stuck to the clock he kept looking at.
"Can you come by when your meeting is done? We need to talk about the whiskey distributor again, and see if we can strong-arm him into behaving or if it’s time to stop putting up with his bullshit." Lance ran Club Phoenix, a shifter-friendly club in downtown Denver owned by the three friends with some additional investment from a few other dragons they knew. It had been a surprise for Raf to move out here and find that there weren’t any shifter-friendly places around. Back East there seemed to be pockets of shifters of various types who congregated in the VIP areas of certain establishments. As soon as he’d pointed out the lack, his first friends in the area—Lance and Chas—had agreed that Denver deserved one.
Rafael nodded slowly, then remembered that he was on the phone. "Yeah, I’ll be there, even if it’s peak hours. Try to get Chas into the lounge or we’ll lose him in the rush, will you? I don’t want him making a scene like he did last time he was out in front in this mood."
"I remember. Mickey knows, too, but I’ll make sure he moves myself if I have to throw him over my shoulder to do it." Lance didn’t sound pleased with the idea, but they all dealt with Chas’ mood swings, and the underlying misfortune, in their own ways.
"I’ll see you later, then. I’m sorry I can’t get away right now." Rafael leaned on his desk, wishing he could speed time again; this time he was eager to get past the meeting, sell the app, and get to his friend’s side.
Lance sighed again. "It’s all right. You have a business to run, just like I do. You’re usually not opposed to coming down whenever, so I figured I’d try. See you later, Raf."
"Later." Rafael hung up, sitting down heavily and staring into space. The beautiful skyline didn’t even register now. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened with Angie, but knew it couldn’t be good. Before he put away his phone, he quickly texted a couple of their other friends to make sure they knew that Chas might need distracting. Not that any of them were opposed to getting together for a drink or three whenever, but giving them a reason practically ensured their attendance. Their investments in Club Phoenix also tended to get them their liquor at cost, rather than after markup like the rest of Denver. It made it worthwhile to go to Phoenix whenever they wanted a drink.
Hmm, is it too much club to celebrate signing this contract at Phoenix, I wonder?The bar was always popular, but it was in the same room as the dance floor, which made it less ideal for conversations. They’d considered changing it, but it hadn’t seemed worth closing the club to remodel for a niche use.
Not that he really wanted to drink with any of the Apptec people, but it seemed appropriate to have a drink together. Maybe he should just pick up a bottle of something special and have it on hand for when they signed the contract. Even just a private celebration with his lead attorney and the head of the Surge project would be something.
A knock at his door startled him back to the present moment. "Come in!"
His lead attorney, Zach Slater, entered with Nathan, the head of the Surge team, close behind. "You ready?" Zach asked, raising an eyebrow at Rafael’s green sleeves rolled to his elbows.
Raf glanced at the clock again—as soon as he’d stopped watching it, time had passed normally. He moved to his closet, rolling down his sleeves and righting the bronze cufflinks that matched his skin tone. His tan suit coat hung on the inside of the closet door. Rafael slid into it quickly, straightening his appearance in the mirror there. He wasn’t much of a tie-wearer, except for important occasions such as this—grumbling quietly to himself, he pulled a bronze tie from a hanger. It would be the first thing to go when he was through with the meeting. "Let’s do this."
Chapter 2 - Ashley
The first time Ashley had seen the view from the top floor conference room at Heliodoro Software, she’d been stunned. Denver looked very different from thirty stories up, and she loved the bird’s-eye view. Now, waiting for the owner of Heliodoro to join them, she watched the afternoon traffic change as they approached the end of the work day.
"Ms. Seaver, are you even listening?" The reedy male voice drew her back from her thoughts.
She turned and fixed the older man with one of her piercing stares. Her purple heels clicked on the polished floor as she returned to the table, stopping behind her chair—she would be stuck seated soon enough—and gripping the back with both hands to hide her desire to strangle her client. "Mr. Murray. You’ve already raised these points. What makes you think doing so again shortly before we sit down with Heliodoro for the last time will get you any different response? We have already agreed on the particulars with Heliodoro’s lawyers. Trying to argue for more now will only make us look foolish." Saying 'us' was generous of her, but she was the focal point for the deal. She was so sick of most of the Next-Gen Apptec chief officers; Murray was Chief Financial Officer, which meant he nitpicked every detail of the deal they had already finished for the most part, and whined when he didn’t get his outrageous demands met. She also was aware that he had submitted a complaint to her boss at Gardner, Foster, & Morales when she was awarded lead on this acquisition, before they’d even met. Not that either her boss or Mr. Murray knew she’d seen it, but she had worked too hard to be stopped by a misogynist old man’s outdated viewpoint. Neither of his contemporaries were nearly as bad, but they had been demanding to the point of ridiculousness, too.
