It was already evening when Adrian stepped into the elevator, his hoodie hood half-drawn and an energy drink in hand. The hallway was quiet—only the soft hum of ambient lights and far-off traffic through the window panels.
"Hold the door, please?" a voice called from down the hall.
Adrian glanced up.
It was Elara.
He casually reached back and tapped the ’Open’ button, holding the door just as she arrived. She stepped in, slightly breathless but smiling politely.
"Thanks," she said.
Adrian gave a faint nod as the elevator doors slid shut behind them.
He stood casually, leaning against the mirrored wall, earbuds in, a half-finished can of energy drink in one hand. The mont she stepped in, he gave a nod. Relaxed. Blank.
She nodded back. Silent.
The doors closed.
Adrian pressed the button of their floor.
The silence stretched.
Elara broke it first.
"You ever play on Emberstone Burrow?"
Adrian’s brow rose half a milliter. "Once. Long ti ago. Why?"
She shrugged, arms folded tight. "Just curious."
He tapped the side of his drink, trying to sound casual. "Fire dungeon. Everything’s on fire. It’s hard. Like riding a bicycle—but the bike’s on fire, you’re on fire, and the road is lava." He chuckled, giving off the vibe of soone barely competent but oddly entertained.
She tilted her head. "That’s what you rember? Fire and panic?"
He gave an awkward shrug. "Yeah, I dunno. I just rember everything being on fire and panicking. Honestly felt like trying to put out a fire with gasoline."
She turned toward him, gaze thoughtful but weary. "I know it probably sounds weird bringing this up, but it’s just been eating at . You ever have one of those days where sothing in your job shakes you a little too hard? Like you saw behind the curtain and now you can’t unsee it?"
Adrian didn’t blink. "You talking about bugs?"
Elara didn’t answer.
Instead, she pulled her notebook from under her arm—the one she used to jot down ntal fragnts and mos throughout the day. Her work badge was clipped to the front cover, half-obscured by a bent sticky note. She flipped it around, the lanyard swinging slightly as she adjusted the notebook in her hands—unintentionally turning the badge toward him. Adrian’s eyes flicked to it. Just once. But long enough to read it.
QC AI Audit
Adrian gave the faintest smile.
"Well damn. They gave you the fun seat."
Elara leaned back against the far wall, just far enough not to feel boxed in.
"Thirty players. Confusion status without source. AI not broken. Player logs clean. No third-party scripts. No flags."
Adrian took a slow sip of his drink.
"Sounds like a mystery."
"It’s not," she said. "It was deliberate."
A pause.
He didn’t answer.
She gave a light sigh and a tired smile. "I guess today just threw off. So incident at work—looked like a normal raid wipe, but it wasn’t. Whoever did it moved too cleanly. It felt... I don’t know. Intentional. Like they knew exactly where to strike."
She gave a small shrug. "Sorry, I know that probably sounds silly. Just venting a little, I guess."
Adrian glanced toward the floor indicator. Still a few more seconds of awkward silence to go.
"Sounds like a crybaby put up a complaint because they are not good at dungeon."
She gave him a look. "No aggro. No logs. Just players quitting or vanishing. It wasn’t PvP. It was predation."
Another beat of silence.
He gave a small shrug, trying to keep it casual. "I see, so they are fighting player inside dungeon and not died by the dungeon boss. What’s so strange about it?"
"What do you an?"
Adrian shrugged, casually. Then he continue, "I an... maybe it’s just normal PvP? Stuff like that happens in chaos, right? People panic, things spiral out of control. After all, you said it was 30 players inside the dungeon. Weird things could happen in place with people that much"
Elara gave a small breath of a laugh. "I don’t get to guess. It’s my job to know. And this one didn’t feel random. It felt... like soone wrote it out ahead of ti. And I walked in at the last page."
"What if it wasn’t really a bug? What if this sothing normal you want to believe that it’s a bug?" Adrian smiled apologetically, try to be polite.
He tilted his head, voice softer now. "And are you sure it’s okay to talk like this? To soone like ? Just so casual player who barely rembers the dungeon?"
Elara didn’t look away. "It’s not really about who I’m talking to. Just one of those days, you know? Needed to get it off my chest."
She gave a short, sheepish laugh. "Sorry, that probably sounded heavier than I ant. Rough first week. Too many thoughts, not enough coffee."
"You know what pisses off the most?" she said, jaw clenched. "It’s not just that soone did it. It’s that everyone’s already moving on like it didn’t happen. Like it’s just another glitch. Just another patch day."
Adrian stayed silent. Still too relaxed. Still watching.
"I joined this job thinking I’d be catching cheats, flagging exploits, fixing broken things. But what do I get instead? A perfect ghost, using our own system against us, and a departnt that sends ssages like, ’Nice job keeping the sponsors happy.’"
She shook her head.
"It’s like the whole thing’s rotting from the inside. And the deeper I dig, the more I realize I’m not supposed to find anything at all."
She exhaled hard. "Sorry. I probably shouldn’t be unloading all this on you." She gave a weak laugh. "Just... needed to talk to soone who isn’t buried in the sa system. Even if it’s just my neighbor."
Adrian chuckled softly, easing the tension in the air. "It’s okay. Honestly, I find your world kind of fascinating—all that AI audit, system checks, control towers and whatever else you’re doing."
He said it with just enough warmth to sound friendly.
And just enough curiosity to keep listening.
"I know what I saw," Elara said. "And it wasn’t a bug. It wasn’t AI. It wasn’t so idiot with an exploit."
"Then what was it?"
She stared at him, then gave a faint, almost apologetic smile. "It just felt... intentional. Like soone ant it to happen that way."
"And not just any soone," she added quietly. "It felt human. Deliberate. Like a player who knew exactly what they were doing."
He nodded slowly, as if tasting the word. He gave her a warm, neighborly smile, but his eyes didn’t quite follow. "Sotis it’s safer not to think too hard about it, y’know?"
He finally looked at her directly.
"Scripted? Hacked client?"
Elara shook her head. "No. Clean logs. No flagged behavior. No tampering."
He gave a faint hum, like he was thinking.
"And what would you do if you caught them?"
She didn’t answer.
He raised an eyebrow. "Flag them? Call PR? Make a statent?"
"I’d report it."
"And then what?"
Elara opened her mouth. Closed it.
The elevator ticked quietly.
He smiled. "Thought so."
"You think this is funny?"
Adrian gave a small, polite chuckle, shaking his head. "No, not funny. Just... the way things go, I guess. Everything always rolls downhill sooner or later."
She took a slow breath. "You’re pretty calm for soone who says they barely rember the dungeon."
He grinned, no teeth. "And you’re pretty sharp for soone who just started her first day."
Another silence.
The elevator pinged.
The doors slid open.
Elara stepped out first.
"This conversation didn’t happen," Elara added, her voice soft—almost playful. It was the kind of line you said half-jokingly, like soone admitting they’d broken NDA by accident and wanted to pretend otherwise. She turns around to Adrian before flashed a smile, sheepish but warm. "Seriously though... thanks for letting talk. I owe you one."
"Which part?"
She stepped out first. "All of it."
He followed after a pause, slipping the empty can into a recycle chute.
As they split down the corridor, Adrian’s voice floated back casually:
"For what it’s worth, you’ve got good instincts. Real sharp. We should talk again soti."
She waved her hand, kept walking.
To Elara, the conversation had been cathartic—awkward maybe, but grounding. Just a neighbor being kind. Listening. And that was nice.
But for Adrian, the last few minutes were deeply satisfying. Elara had opened up without needing to be pushed. A breadcrumb trail laid out in soft words and half-jokes. A rare window into the inner gears of the company that once threw him out.
Elara opened the door to her apartnt, the quiet of her own hallway greeting her like a sigh. She stepped inside and closed it gently behind her, still thinking over the conversation. For her, it felt like she’d finally let so pressure off—just a neighbor chat after a long day.
Adrian continued down the hall to his own apartnt, the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
She had already told him what he needed to know.
Elara stepped into her apartnt, kicked off her shoes, and let her bag slump against the wall. She didn’t even bother turning on the lights—just the soft glow from the hallway spilling into her kitchen as she opened the fridge.
The cold air brushed her face as she stared inside, not really seeing anything. Her hand reached out, hesitated, then pulled back empty.
Her thoughts weren’t here.
They were back in the dev capsule. Back in the logs.
The NULL return. The BLANK NODE.
She leaned her head against the fridge door and let out a small breath of air, sothing like a laugh—quiet, tired, and just a little bitter.
Across the sa floor, in the dim calm of his own apartnt, Adrian watched another forum thread rise and burn out in record ti.
The theorycrafters were already gaining montum—connecting dots, arguing over chanics, speculating hard.
That was the risk of letting them see the aftermath.
But it was a risk he was prepared for.
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