The hum of the server bank was the closest thing Theo Wilson had to a lullaby. It vibrated beneath the floor tiles of the Apex Technologies bullpen, a low and constant presence, white noise for a mind that ran best on background order. He liked this hour—ten-thirty a.m., the office mostly filled with the soft clatter of keystrokes and the gentle exchange of email pings. Most of the real noise existed in the code and, less obviously, in the muted anxieties of engineers pretending their jobs weren’t everything.

  Theo’s cubicle—glass half-walls, clean desk, three monitors arranged in a gentle arc—looked indistinguishable from those around it except for a single potted pothos and a vintage Fender sticker tucked beneath his monitor’s lower bezel. The sticker was from college, a rare gift from his brother, and the only object in Theo’s workspace that didn’t follow a clear logic.

  He leaned back in his chair, letting the lumbar support press into his spine, and squinted at the monitor’s upper right. The company’s front-facing web dashboard had a bug: on mobile, the ticker for “live analytics” lagged behind reality, cycling through two-minute-old stats instead of the real-time data users expected. The code was, as always, both the villain and the map out of the labyrinth. Theo’s fingers hovered over the keyboard—long, careful fingers, with neatly kept nails and a single callus from the fretboard of a guitar he hadn’t played in months. He preferred to think before typing, tracing the logic in his head before letting the world have it.

  He clicked to the codebase, eyed the offending lines, and made a notation in his yellow legal pad. Satisfying, the way a problem could be isolated and then, with the right pressure, dissolved.

  He was mid-edit when Marcus Johnson appeared, as if conjured by a collective sigh. Marcus never walked anywhere; he ricocheted. Even now, he arrived at Theo’s cubicle like a stone skipping into a pond—rolled up shirt sleeves, designer watch, and a grin so sharp it could have been filed.

  “Wilson, you in there?” Marcus rapped his knuckles on the glass divider, not bothering to wait for acknowledgment. “I know it’s your precious Code Communion hour, but you gotta eat, man.”

  Theo looked up and offered a dry smile. “Most people call it eleven o’clock, but I appreciate the reverence.”

  “Don’t start with the semantics,” Marcus said. “You haven’t joined us for a week. Elena’s convinced you’re plotting a silent coup.”

  Almost on cue, Elena Rodriguez peered over the opposite partition, curly hair backlit by a glare from the east windows. She had that look she reserved for student interns and emotionally recalcitrant friends—compassionate but immovable.

  “I told you, he’s just focused,” Elena said. “He only starts coups in March. It’s tradition.”

  Behind her, Darren Lee gave a halfhearted wave, holding a coffee cup with both hands as if it were a newborn. “Come on, man. My memes are piling up. You’re my only audience.”

  Theo glanced at the cluster of unread Slack notifications on his taskbar, most of them from Darren, and felt the familiar twinge—a pull between the appeal of efficient solitude and the greater gravity of a friend group he’d never quite figured out how to orbit.

  He hesitated, pen hovering over the legal pad, then put it down with a small, deliberate click. “You’ve convinced me. But only if there’s caffeine involved.”

  “Is there any other kind of lunch?” Marcus flashed his smile again and led the way, Darren in tow and Elena trailing after she shut down her browser. Theo gathered his notepad, slipped it into the drawer, and followed.

  The Apex cafeteria was less a break room and more an open marketplace of glass and brushed steel. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the concrete-and-artificial-grass plaza, where a few dedicated smokers lingered in branded windbreakers. The air inside tasted like reheated pizza, industrial coffee, and, on certain Fridays, the distant sweetness of Krispy Kremes someone in HR thought boosted morale.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  They chose a four-top near the window. Elena placed her phone, screen-down, in the center of the table—a gesture of forced focus. Marcus immediately began disassembling a turkey club, stripping off the lettuce and stacking the bacon in neat rows. Darren didn’t bother with food, just nursed his coffee and scrolled his phone, thumb moving at a pace that suggested he was only pretending to read.

  Conversation started with safe terrain—recent layoffs at the rival company, the inscrutability of the new CTO—but, inevitably, the subject turned.

  “So,” Marcus said, lowering his voice theatrically, “Las Vegas. Three months out. We’re all in, right?”

  Theo blinked. He’d known it was coming, but the certainty of Marcus’s gaze was more insistent than a Google Calendar reminder. He nodded, slow. “I already bought the ticket, man.”

  “Hell yeah, you did,” Marcus said. “But I mean, are you ready? This isn’t just a concert. It’s Mia freaking Amor. It’s era defining music.”

  Elena snorted. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s just as excited for the after-parties. You should’ve seen him at the last event, he nearly fainted when the house beats started blasting.”

  “It’s called being moved by the music,” Marcus protested, but the look he shot Theo was pure collusion. “What about you, Elena? Ready to see your favorite pop goddess in the flesh?”

  “Only if you promise not to climb onstage again.”

  “That was an accident. Security misunderstood my enthusiasm.”

  Darren looked up from his phone. “I’m only going to see whether Marcus gets tackled twice in one night.”

  Theo listened, smiling where required, but felt his focus blur at the edges. He knew all about Mia Amor—the stats, the streaming records, the six-minute monologue she delivered every show, equal parts sermon and performance art. He even liked the music, in a way that embarrassed him. But Vegas itself felt like the opposite of his world: unordered, brash, and exactly the kind of trip he would have avoided if not for the gravitational pull of his friends.

  He caught himself zoning out as Marcus and Elena debated the best strategy for getting a selfie with a pop star—something about bribes, business cards, and, in Darren’s view, feigned celebrity.

  “Theo,” Elena said, breaking through his haze. She had a way of drawing attention with the gentlest lift of her eyebrow. “You’re not just coming for the spreadsheet, are you?”

  He looked up, only half-prepared. “I—”

  She laughed, but there was something in her expression, a quiet test. “You know. For the logistics. Or the thrill of cataloging the minibar.”

  Marcus grinned. “Let the man have his rituals. But for real, you ever been to Vegas, Theo?”

  He shook his head. “First time. I figured it was overdue.”

  Darren gave him a sympathetic look, as if Theo were a stoic being marched to a baptism of light and sin. “We’ll go easy on you,” he said. “Just remember to pace yourself. You can’t organize a casino.”

  “You can if you try hard enough,” Theo replied. The words came out lighter than he expected, and the table laughed, but a small, persistent uncertainty snagged in his chest.

  Elena reached across, her fingers drumming the table. “I booked us a suite. MGM Grand. There’s a pool, so bring your swim trunks, okay?”

  Theo nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate you putting it all together.”

  “Someone has to,” she said. “You know Marcus would just show up at the airport in pajamas.”

  “They’re high-end athleisure,” Marcus said, unashamed.

  Darren finished his coffee and leaned back, chair balanced on two legs. “This is going to be wild. Just saying, if we end up in a reality TV pilot, I’m blaming Marcus.”

  Theo checked his watch, then the stream of code in his head, and tried to make sense of the feeling coiling in his gut. The conversation was pleasant, even familiar, but he’d lost the thread somewhere between the servers and the sandwich. He wondered if his detachment was obvious, if Marcus or Elena could see the slight delay in his responses, the nanoseconds it took to resurface from internal calculus.

  He pushed the thought away and rejoined the table. “Do I need to bring earplugs?”

  “Yes, but for the after-parties,” Elena said. “I’m not getting stuck next to Marcus on the dance floor again.”

  “Hey, some people appreciate my moves,” Marcus protested. “And I tip well.”

  Theo watched his friends, their banter circling and looping, and felt a small pang—something like gratitude, but also the faintest taste of envy. It was always easy for them, he thought. Or maybe it just seemed that way.

  He ate half his sandwich, let the rest sit, and made a mental note to finish debugging the code before lunch hour ended. In the final minutes, as the table’s energy crested and then ebbed into comfortable silence, Elena turned to him with a look that was equal parts challenge and care.

  “You excited, Theo?” she asked. Not teasing, not leading—just asking, like she already knew the answer and wanted him to hear it himself.

  He paused, rolled the words around, and finally gave her a nod. “Of course,” he said.

  But as the others began stacking trays and gathering trash, Elena held his gaze for a moment longer. And in the space between what he said and what he felt, Theo wondered if she saw it—the small but growing fear that nothing truly new could be fixed with code.