The sound of rustling paper filled the air as agreements slid across the table.
"Here are your agreements," Mariah said briskly.
She turned to the printer, plucking two fresh stacks of documents. "And these are theirs."
"That was fast," Kendrick said, unable to hide his surprise.
"I'm sorry, were they supposed to be late?" Mariah shot back with a perfectly arched brow. "Was a stork supposed to deliver them?"
Telly glanced at Kendrick, his expression unreadable as he buried himself in the agreement.
"No, Mr. Sloan," Mariah continued, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "These are stacks of printed paper. Do try to keep up."
Mariah leaned back in her chair, her sharp gaze cutting across the room. "We are programmers. Engineers. Pioneers," she said.
"We remove the middleman when needed." She opened one hand.
"And we use the middleman when needed." She opened the other, miming balance.
"That's why we have AI," she added with a smirk, clasping her hands together for emphasis.
"Take as much time as you need," she said, her voice softening just slightly. "Your colleagues do not have negotiating power. You do. Are we clear?"
The glass door closed with a faint clunk as Kendrick stepped out, the documents still in his hands, Sarah's and Peter's piled neatly on top.
He left the department, the familiar hum of the hallway lights accompanying his steps toward the elevator. He froze when he saw Telly already there, nose buried in his own stack of papers.
Kendrick hesitated, inching closer. The silence between them felt dense, the sound of his footsteps barely audible against the rustle of Telly's pages.
He glanced at his watch, then at the window, and finally up at the floor numbers ticking away above the elevator. His hands swung idly at his sides, debating. Should he say something?
A ping broke the quiet, and the elevator doors slid open. They stepped inside together.
The occasional rustle of Telly's papers and the soft hum of the elevator filled the space. Kendrick shifted on his feet, wondering how to start.
"You don't need to feel guilty," Telly said abruptly, his tone even, his eyes still fixed on his papers.
Kendrick blinked, caught off guard. "I'm sorry?"
"The weight of the first move," Telly said without looking up. "The need for small talk—that's not my need. I don't breathe for small exchanges."
Finally, Telly raised his gaze from the document, pinning Kendrick with a steady look.
"You don't need to feel guilty, or apologize, or anything," Telly continued. "I'm freeing you from that responsibility. I'm liberating you from common courtesy."
Kendrick froze, the words cutting through him like glass.
"You don't need to get close to me for professional reasons, or technical questions," Telly said, his voice sharp, his expression unreadable. "I'm drawing a clear line right here, Kendrick—a line in the sand you shouldn't cross. Don't ask me about family. Don't ask me about my political standing, or you'll risk the professional trust I've given you."
Kendrick opened his mouth, but no words came.
"If you're unhappy, bite me." Telly's gaze didn't waver.
"And no," Telly added after a beat, his voice dropping, "you shouldn't ask what I did at the hospital. Or any place you've seen me—or will see me."
The elevator pinged, the doors sliding open to reveal their floor. Telly strode out without hesitation, the crisp sound of his heels echoing as he disappeared down the corridor.
Kendrick stood frozen in the elevator, the doors closing again as he remained rooted to the spot. It felt as though no progress had been made—only distance. With each click of Telly's heels, Kendrick felt the person he admired slipping further and further beyond his grip.
"Wow, that's dramatic," Sarah said, chewing her food, a fork suspended next to her face. "What an evil skank."
Peter, sitting beside her, gave her a side-eye. They were both across from Kendrick, who sat quietly, the noise of the cafeteria dulled by the weight of his earlier encounter.
"He really said all that?" Peter asked, leaning forward.
"I think he just wants privacy," Kendrick said, finally sipping his drink. "When your whole life feels like a witch hunt, you grease the walls you've built pretty tight."
"Witch hunt?" Sarah raised an eyebrow, her curiosity piqued.
"Failing so much on your own and then somehow getting in without a degree… that kind of thing really takes your moral for a spin," Kendrick said.
"Top of his class, running a business, and still keeping people at arm's length." Sarah twirled her fork in the air. "Definitely screams 'done dirty by life.'"
"Wonder how he treats his boyfriends," Peter chimed in.
"I doubt he even has any," Sarah said. "With a life like that, people are probably just holding onto their seats while he drives like a lunatic."
"Honestly, he's just a complex human being," Peter added, sipping his drink. "Someone whose emotions have been soaked, spun, and wrung out by life's washing machine."
"But his backside though," Sarah said with a smirk, raising her eyebrows suggestively.
Kendrick choked slightly on his drink, while Peter groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Really, Sarah? That's where we're going?"
Sarah shrugged. "I'm just saying. Drama aside, the man has assets."
After two o'clock, the meeting room had settled into a tense stillness. The projector hummed softly, its light casting diagrams and features onto the wall. The group sat behind a glass border, separating the smokers from the non-smokers.
A plume of vapor escaped Telly's lips, curling lazily upward, only to dissipate against the glass partition. On the other side, Kendrick, Sarah, and Peter kept their eyes locked on the projection, their silence weighted by the complexity of the task before them.
"Rich people want everything to be a secret," Sarah finally broke the quiet, her voice laced with sarcasm. "Sending conversations over the web? Yeah, not exactly a private option."
Kendrick leaned forward, his elbows on the table, eyes fixed on the projection. His mind churned, scanning every detail on the wall as though searching for a single loose thread—a starting point to pull everything together.
"Privacy is their selling point," Peter said, his voice hesitant but thoughtful. "If we could design something that guarantees it without looking… shady?" He glanced nervously toward Telly, who was leaning against the glass, seemingly detached.
"I'm not sure that's possible," Sarah shot back, arms crossed. "If they're rich and paranoid, they're probably expecting something foolproof, like a magic bubble of confidentiality."
Kendrick exhaled sharply, feeling the pressure mount. "It's not impossible," he murmured, mostly to himself. "We just need to think about where the data lives… how it moves… and how to lock it down."
Telly's gaze flicked toward him, smoke curling from the IQOS between his fingers. "You're overthinking it," he said flatly, his voice cutting through the room like a scalpel.
Kendrick glanced up, startled, while Sarah arched an eyebrow.
The room fell quiet again, the weight of Telly's words settling over them. Kendrick's fingers twitched, a spark of an idea forming in his mind as he stared at the diagrams.
After hours of intense cerebral exchange and heated debates over priorities, the team finally returned to their laptops. The rhythmic tapping of keys filled the room like a symphony of focus, punctuated only by the occasional sigh or shuffle of papers.
As the clock raced toward the final minutes, the hum of the printer signaled the culmination of their efforts. One last piece of paper ejected and slid into place, completing the neatly stacked proposal on the desk.
Mariah strolled into the trio's corner of the room, her sharp heels clicking against the polished floor. She sat at the head of the table, flipping casually through the printed pages, her eyebrows inching higher with each passing line.
"Wow," she finally said, her voice cutting through the quiet like a blade. "Blockchain integration, retina detection, AI layers... very ambitious." She set the papers down with a satisfied smirk. "Coding Kitsch would be screaming right now. I'm glad you left them, Arcane." Her gaze shifted toward the glass partition.
The words landed like a thunderclap.
Kendrick froze mid-typing, his fingers hovering uselessly over the keyboard. His jaw tightened as the realization sank in. Across from him, Sarah and Peter exchanged wide-eyed glances, their disbelief painted plainly across their faces.
He worked for Coding Kitsch?!
Behind the glass partition, Telly remained an unmoving silhouette, shrouded in his usual air of detached confidence. He exhaled another plume of vapor from his IQOS, the smoke curling lazily in the air. His focus stayed locked on his screen, entirely unbothered by the revelation.
Mariah's smirk deepened, her eyes flicking between the trio's stunned expressions. She leaned back in her chair, clearly savoring the ripple of reactions spreading across the room.
"What?" she said, her tone syrupy with mock innocence. "You didn't know? Arcane here was one of their stars. Until they couldn't keep up with him, of course."
Kendrick's stomach churned. Coding Kitsch. The company he had dreamed of joining, the apex of his aspirations, the symbol of everything he wanted to achieve. And Telly—enigmatic, unreadable Telly—had been there.