The invitation is waiting when Vivienne gets home from work. It’s on the kitchen table, and she stands over it, clutching a handful of mail fetched from the community box. She looks at the envelopes in her hand and then at the one on the table. It’s even in her spot, and she tells herself that Marco must have stopped home for lunch and brought it in from the door, but she doesn’t text to ask him. She knows that’s not the answer. She just wishes it was. The truth brings with it the uncomfortable reminder that their employer has the keys to their company-owned condo. As for how the invitation is at her place setting—
The front door slaps open, and Vivienne jumps. Marco calls, “Here comes trouble!” and the kids tumble in, ignoring his shout of, “Guys! Shoes off!”
Vivienne slips the envelope into her laptop bag and scoops up one child under each arm. “So, who’s going to tell me what happened at preschool?”
“After they take off their shoes!” Marco shouts to be heard over the dual cries of “Me, me, me!” Vivienne laughs and carries them into the living room, where she tugs off their tiny sneakers.
It’s just past eight. Vivienne sits cross-legged on the bed with the unopened envelope in front of her. One white vellum envelope. Her name printed on the front. It looks so simple. So innocuous.
Marco walks in and collapses beside her. “I don’t know how you do that every night. Grace wants one book, Jamie wants another, and, apparently, reading a chapter from both just won’t do, and—”
He stops, his gaze following hers to the envelope. “Fuck.”
“Exactly.”
He grabs it, rolls from bed, and walks toward the blazing fireplace.
Vivienne leaps up. “You’d better be joking.”
“It wouldn’t do any good. They say that if you burn them, they’ll magically appear in your house the next day, with one teeny-tiny scorch mark in the corner.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“I’m not sure it’s meant to be.” He lifts the envelope to the light, as if he can read the contents without opening it. “Fuck.”
“You said that. I agree, but it’s not going to change anything. Nor is burning it. Nor is pretending I never got it.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s an honor, right? We have to remember that.”
“Sure.”
She glowers at him. “Once more with feeling?”
Marco tosses the envelope onto the bed and gives her a one-armed hug. “Sorry, Viv. Yes, it’s an honor. The biggest the company offers. The chance to join the executive ranks, which you absolutely deserve.”
“So do you.”
He makes a face. “I’m a programmer. Dime a dozen. You’re the one they can’t afford to lose.”
“It would mean a raise. A big one. An actual house. Better location. Better school. More opportunities for the kids. That’s the main thing, right? A better life for them?”
“Sure.”
This time, she doesn’t tease him about his lack of conviction. She feels it, too, in the pit of her stomach.
It’s lousy timing. That’s the core of the problem. Their year got off to an amazing start with baby number three, a little girl. Then, six weeks later, Vivienne woke after a glorious five-hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep and went into Hannah’s room to find their infant daughter cold in her bed.
After that they began to talk about leaving the company.
Their jobs are perfect. The compound is great. Everything they could want is at their doorstep. But this cookie-cutter life isn’t for them. The walls close in too easily, and Hannah’s death only made that so much more obvious. As bad as Vivienne feels about abandoning the company after it’d been so good about their loss—giving them all the time and support they needed—she has to do what’s right for her family.
“Did you tell anyone we’ve considered leaving?” she asks.
Marco’s brows lift. “Are you kidding?”
“Sorry.” They both knew better.
“I bet it’s an algorithm,” Marco says.
“Hmmm?”
“An algorithm to determine who they need to retain. You’re valuable. And after…Hannah, it could be assumed we might be looking for a fresh start someplace else.”
She picks up the envelope.
“Don’t,” Marco says.
“Not opening it doesn’t change—”
“I mean…” He exhales and shakes his head.
She opens the envelope and pulls out what she knows is inside. The vellum card. The six words.
You are invited to the Game.
There’s no hint as to what the Game is. If you ask, they’ll say it’s a silly little thing. The company was founded by gamers and this is a tribute to that sense of whimsy and nonconformity.
We may be a multinational corporation, but we remember our roots, and when you ascend to our executive ranks, we don’t invite you to some boring cocktail party. No, you get an invitation to the Game.
Just a silly little thing.
But as Vivienne stares at those six words, the RSVP number on the back, she knows what her husband meant by “Don’t.”
Don’t accept.
Don’t go.
Please, just don’t.
“I hear an envelope winged its way into your condo last night.”
Vivienne looks up from her desk to see Erika Price, VP of Strategic Design. This time last year, Erika had been a skyrocketing star, two years younger than Vivienne and two pay grades beneath her. No one had been surprised when she received her invitation.
Vivienne studies Erika. She’s not sure what she’s looking for. Signs of terrible damage inflicted by the Game? The haunted emptiness in eyes that have seen too much, reflecting the memory of a horrific choice she’ll regret to her grave?
Uh…yeah. Sorry, Marco, but you’ve seen too many horror films. We both have.
Even thinking that about Erika is enough to make Vivienne smile. She knew Erika before the promotion, when she’d been a vivacious new hire, always bubbling over with excitement at some innovative design concept. She’s even happier today, newly married and expecting her first baby.
Vivienne flinches at the last thought. Ten months and she only need think the word baby for the grief to surge. Grief and guilt, remembering how relieved she’d been that Hannah slept so long, greedily seizing the chance for a little extra sleep, never even thinking of checking on her.
She shakes it off and fixes her eyes on Erika’s face, careful not to let her gaze drop to the bulge under the younger woman’s blouse.
“So getting an envelope isn’t exactly a secret, huh?” Vivienne says.
“I’m not supposed to say anything, but I had to offer my congratulations.” Erika pulls over a chair and sits. “And I wanted to see how you’re doing. People talk about the Game. Rumors are everywhere. Hey, we’re a tech firm. We’ve all seen one too many sci-fi films.”
“I was thinking horror.”
Erika grins. “That, too. So, while I can’t say anything specific, if you have any concerns, I can tell you this much about the Game.” She leans in. “It’s really kinda lame.”
Vivienne raises her brows.
“Boys and their toys,” Erika says. “I used to be a hardcore D-and-D’er. Pencil and paper. So I appreciate old school. But there’s nostalgia and then there’s embarrassingly outdated.” She whispers, “Our first joint project? Convincing the board it’s time for version 2.0.”
As Vivienne walks out of the staff dining room, she looks at her cellphone. The RSVP number is right there. Punched in and waiting. It’s been punched in and waiting for almost two hours.
Just push it. Press the button and say yes.
Marco’s overreacting. He’s worried about you. And you’re not the only one still reeling from Hannah’s death. Being overprotective is his way of coping.
She spots a woman leaving the executive dining room. Vivienne knows her. Knows of her, at least. Everyone does. Hers is the name invoked in whispers of the Game.
Just look at Fran Lee. She played the Game. Got her big promotion. And something inside her snapped. You can see it in her eyes. Her husband left and took the kids, and she doesn’t even seem to care. All she has is her job, and every year, she slips a little bit more.
She’s broken. The Game did that.
Vivienne wants to lag behind. Find some excuse to stay far from Fran Lee. Return to the dining room and grab a cappuccino to go. They really do make the best cappuccinos. Well, unless you count the executive dining room’s version. The average employee gets better food and drink—free—than he or she could buy over in San Francisco, but the executives get just a little bit better. Not merely handcrafted cappuccino from an Italian-trained barista—their cappuccino is made from freshly roasted beans, ground after you place your order.
Which is all the more reason to ignore the niggling voice that urges her to run after Fran and talk to her. Go back, get a cappuccino, and dream of next week, when she’ll taste the wonders of the executive version.
Yes, that’s what she should do, because, really, a good cappuccino is worth it. Worth just closing her eyes, strangling her doubts, and plowing blindly forward.
My life for a quality caffeinated beverage.
She picks up her pace, and she’s almost at the elevator when she catches up to Fran.
“Ms. Lee?” she says. “May I have a moment?”
Fran keeps walking. “Is it about the Game? Silly question. It’s that time again, meaning no one just stops me to chat. Let me guess—you’ve received a little white envelope. You’re concerned. You’ve heard rumors. You look around at your options to determine who best to speak to. Fran Lee. It’s always Fran Lee. Poster child for the horror that is the Game. What is it they say? That the Game broke me. Yes?”
When Vivienne doesn’t answer, the white-haired woman stops and turns. “Well, speak up, girl. If you’re executive material, you’d better put some steel in that spine and some snap in that tongue or those old boys will roll right over you.”
“Yes, that’s what they say.”
The old woman snorts. “Bullshit is what they say. You want the truth, girl? Here, unvarnished truth from one professional woman to another. Being made an executive won’t solve all your problems. It just might make them worse. But it’s the job that does it, not their foolish Game. Do I look broken to you?”
Vivienne looks into Fran’s deep-set dark eyes and thinks, Yes. In those eyes, she sees exactly what she searched for but didn’t find with Erika.
How had she mockingly put it when she’d studied Erika?
The haunted emptiness in eyes that have seen too much, reflecting the memory of a horrific choice she’ll regret to her grave.
Vivienne can tell herself she’s being foolish, but that’s what she sees in Fran’s eyes.
What Vivienne says, though, is, “No, of course not,” and Fran sniffs.
“Exactly. What you see is a tough old broad. Cranky? Yes. Unpleasant? Sure. But broken?” Another sniff. “People believe what they want to believe. How’s your marriage, girl?”
“My—?” Vivienne blinks at the change of subject. “Fine. Great, actually.” Which it is. A child’s death can drive a couple apart, but in their case, it brought them closer—in shared grief, shared support, and shared determination to be amazing parents to their two living children.
“Be careful, then. That’s the danger you face. You’ll be raised up when he wasn’t. Some men can’t handle it.”
“That isn’t an issue with us. I’ve had a better job for years.”
“Good. But keep your eye on it. Worry about that, not some silly game.”
The elevator arrives and Fran steps in without a goodbye. Vivienne watches the doors close. Then she pushes the cellphone button, makes the call.
Vivienne reads to Grace and Jamie that night. One full story each. When she gets back to the living room, Marco is hard at work coding, but a glass of Scotch waits at her end of the couch. Fingers and gaze still on his laptop, he swings his legs down to make room for her. She smiles, takes her spot, and tugs his feet onto her lap. Then she sips her drink and waits. When the tap-tapping of the keyboard pauses, she says, “I have sent my regrets.”
“Hmm?” He glances up, gaze distant, still lost in the labyrinthine terrain of his code.
“I refused the invitation. I said thank you, but I’m happy where I am.”
“You refused?” He swings his legs down. “What did they say?”
“They reassured me that my decision doesn’t affect my life insurance policy. I’m still fully covered with double indemnity for accidental death. I’m not sure why they mentioned that, but it seemed important.”
“Ha, ha. So they were okay with it?”
“Well, not exactly okay. I said I was still recovering from Hannah, and I didn’t feel I could take on an executive position at this time. I need to focus on my family. There wasn’t much they could say to that. They tried. Maybe a job change is exactly what I need, et cetera, et cetera. I politely but firmly declined, and in the end, they said I would be considered next time. No guarantees, but I’ll be considered.”
She puts down her scotch. “I don’t want to be here next year, Marco. That’s really why I decided this. I don’t want an executive position. I want to leave. To start over.”
He exhales. “So do I.”
“And…” She twists to face him. “I know it might be too soon, but I’d like…I’d like to try again. For another baby. If that’s okay with you.”
He pulls her into an embrace. “That is absolutely okay with me.”
Vivienne is being punished. With each new email that hits her inbox, each new folder that’s dropped on her desk—all of it containing fresh work, due ASAP—she knows what’s happening. She’s being buried under an avalanche of corporate minutiae, pointless little tasks that have her working through her breaks, through lunch, into the evening, with little hope of making it home at any reasonable hour.
All week, she has braced for trouble. For Erika wanting to “chat” about her decision. For a meeting with HR about a demotion or pay cut. Yet work continued as usual, and she’d begun to feel foolish for expecting a penalty. It’s a promotion, for God’s sake. They were hardly going to punish her for refusing it.
Then today came, and she realized they’d been giving her time to change her mind. But she’s shown no signs of budging, so it’s time to give her a shove.
It’s after seven when a rap sounds on her door, and she looks up to see Erika.
“Yep, I’m officially here to talk you into a last-minute reconsideration,” Erika says before Vivienne gets a word out. “But unofficially, I just really want a drink.”
Vivienne arches her brows.
Erika continues. “I have to show the board I’m taking you aside for a girl-to-girl chat. But you’ve made up your mind, and I understand why—it’s bad timing for your family. I feel bad because I’m the one who recommended you, back before…your daughter.” She inhales and then says, “I’m not going to push. I just need to fake it or we’ll both get reprimanded. So we’re going out for a drink.”
Vivienne lets her gaze drop, briefly, to the bulge under Erika’s blouse. The younger woman sighs. “Okay, I’m not actually going to drink. I’ll get a virgin cocktail, and you’ll let me pretend I’m actually imbibing an alcoholic beverage.”
Vivienne smiles and shuts off her computer.
They don’t leave the compound. Vivienne suspects Erika is being watched—to ensure she performs her duty—and going offsite would be suspicious.
Erika drives to the entertainment district and they choose the sushi place. When Erika flashes her executive card, they’re taken to a private dining room before the hostess darts off, promising a sake sampler and appetizers. And, yes, Vivienne does feel a stab of envy at that. But one flash back to Fran Lee’s eyes evaporates the pang. She’s made the right choice.
The sake sampler arrives as a row of tiny glasses. Erika takes a sip from one, savoring it before putting it comically out of reach. Vivienne samples the other three and chooses the one at the end, with the faint flavor of star anise.
They drink and chat and eat sushi as it arrives, two handcrafted pieces at a time. Whenever they hear the swish of the server’s slippers in the hall, Erika talks about work. Is Vivienne happy? How could she be happier? What else could the company do for her? Vivienne plays along. You can never be too careful in the compound.
Soon, though, she’s struggling to focus on the questions. The sake is stronger than she expected, and it’s making her sleepy. Too sleepy. She stares down at the glass.
“The sake,” she whispers, words slurring as she cuts Erika off mid-sentence.
“Hmm?”
She shakes her head sharply. “No. Sorry. I’m being…”
She can’t finish. Can’t complete the thought.
“Vivienne? Are you okay?”
“I…” Don’t overreact. Do not overreact. “I think…Too much sake.” She manages a short laugh. “Been a while.” Her words slur worse, and she blinks hard to keep her eyes open.
“Shit,” Erika says. “You think they drugged the sake.”
“N-no. That’s crazy. They wouldn’t—”
“Sure they would. Send me to talk to you. Give you something to drink just drugged enough to make you more open to suggestion. The bastards. If that did anything to my baby…” She shakes her head. “Let’s just get you home to bed, and I’ll let them know you were exhausted from overwork, and the sake hit you hard, so we barely had a chance to talk. Maybe that’ll smarten them up.”
Vivienne barely processes what Erika is saying. She wobbles to her feet. Erika takes her arm and leads her to the screen. The hall is empty. It’s late for a weekday, the place emptying fast.
“There’s an exit by the ladies’ room,” Erika says. “It leads straight to the parking lot. We’ll slip out there. How are you holding up?”
“Marco. I need to call—”
“We will as soon as you’re in the car. Let’s just get there before you fall over.”
They exit out the rear and into the dark lot. Erika opens her passenger door and helps Vivienne inside. Vivienne’s sitting in the seat, looking at her cellphone. It’s not working. Why isn’t it—
Erika gets in the driver’s seat and hits the locks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers as she grips Vivienne’s hand.
“Not your fault,” Vivienne slurs.
“Yes, but I still feel bad. I promise it’ll be okay.”
Vivienne feels a sharp prick against her wrist and she startles, gasping. Erika keeps hold of her arm and whispers, “I’m sorry, Viv, but no one refuses an invitation to the Game. No one.”
Vivienne wakes in a tiny room. She blinks and lifts her head, struggling to remember—
Invitation. Sake. Erika. Game.
She leaps up, and she’s so certain of restraints that she stumbles when she finds herself free. She rubs her face and looks around.
Tiny room. Low lights. A single chair. Something on a shelf.
She’s walking to the shelf when a piped-in man’s voice says, “Welcome to the Game. Now that everyone has arrived, you have a moment to familiarize yourself with the other players.”
A row of screens clicks on. Four other players. One she knows. Two she can name. The fourth she’s seen only in passing.
The last one raises his hand in a tentative wave and says, “Hey, all,” then chuckles. “Or maybe I shouldn’t be so friendly with the competition, huh?”
“We don’t compete in this company,” the voice says. “We work together, as you will tonight.”
Vivienne looks around for a door and sees four solid walls.
“Tonight’s game is a puzzler, perfect for our executives, who are chosen for their ingenuity, not their quick trigger fingers.”
An obligatory chuckle from a couple of the others as Vivienne runs her hands over the walls, hunting for a way out. Even the screens aren’t really screens at all, but projections directly on a solid glass wall.
“And, no, Vivienne, the puzzle is not a room escape,” the voice continues. “But your initiative is commendable. You’ll be cooperatively solving a crime. A series of seemingly unconnected murders.”
She remembers the shelf and turns to see a virtual-reality headset.
As if on cue, the voice says, “To your right, you’ll find a shelf with a VR set. Please put it on.”
Vivienne keeps hunting for a way out.
“It seems one of our players is having difficulty. Vivienne?”
The screens flicker. A live video feed appears on the far-right one. It’s Marco pacing their living room, waiting for her. The screen splits to show her two sleeping children.
“No…” she whispers. “Don’t you dare—”
“We appear to be having technical difficulties with Vivienne’s room. You’ll have lost her video and audio feed, but she is putting on her headset now.”
Three pictures—her husband and children. And then a fourth appears…of her gas stove, hissing.
She puts on the headset. The hissing stops.
“Thank you, Vivienne. We are ready.”
The virtual-reality headset pops to life, and Vivienne finds herself in a bar, watching a middle-aged guy hitting on a young prostitute. The camera zooms in, and she realizes the john is the player she knew only by sight.
“What the hell?” the man’s voice booms through the room speakers.
“Please, we ask all players to observe without comment.”
“But that’s not me. I’ve never—”
“Please observe without comment.”
The man and the prostitute move into the back alley, the camera following. He pushes her against the wall. Then he wraps his hands around her neck.
“What the fuck? That’s not—”
The man’s voice cuts off mid-word, but Vivienne can hear him shouting through the walls—shouting that it’s not him in that picture, not him strangling the young woman, not him walking away when her body falls, lifeless, to the pavement.
“You sick fuck!” another of the players says. “You sick, sick fuck.”
The man continues his muted shouts of innocence, punctuated now by pounding at the wall.
The image changes. It’s still night, but on an empty road, where a BMW idles with its lights off.
“Hey,” a woman’s voice says. “That’s my car.”
The picture zooms in to show a figure behind the wheel. Vivienne recognizes her as one of the players—Kate Lindsey, from sales.
“What?” Kate says. “I don’t remember…”
Kate trails off as a figure walks onto the screen. The car revs, and the man turns. The headlights go on, blinding him, and he dives out of the way, too slow, as the car speeds toward him. Kate shouts, “No!”
A sickening thunk as the car strikes the man. Then it reverses over him and Kate screams that it isn’t her, she didn’t do it, her car is fine—go look, it’s fine.
Vivienne reaches up to fling off her goggles, but the strap tightens and pain stabs through her skull.
The picture changes to a hallway. One she knows so well she can picture every detail of the photographs lining it.
“No,” Vivienne whispers. Tears stream down her face, pooling in the headset. “Please, no.”
The camera pulls back to show Vivienne in her nightshirt. Her eyes are blank, unfocused, as she moves purposefully toward her destination.
She turns into the nursery. Ahead is the crib.
Vivienne squeezes her eyes shut. But it doesn’t help. She still sees the picture, as if projected onto her visual cortex.
She stands over Hannah’s crib. Reaches in. One hand strokes the baby’s head. Then she takes a stuffed dog from the end of the crib.
No pillows for babies, guys. She can have one toy, but it stays out of reach, or she might…
Or she might…
Vivienne places the stuffed dog over her infant daughter’s nose and mouth…and presses down.
Screaming. Sobbing. Wailing. That’s what Vivienne hears. It all comes through the walls, though. Comes from the others. She can’t make a sound. Can’t speak. Can’t think.
No, that’s not true. She can think.
She thinks, I did not do this. Not willingly.
And she thinks, It doesn’t matter. I still did it, and I can’t live with knowing that.
The answer is simple. She will leave this booth, and she will not go home, never go home. She’ll drive to the city. Find a bridge. Plenty of them in San Francisco. Find one and jump.
“Vivienne?” the voice says on the speaker. “You saw what you did.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“We have proof that it was.”
“It was my body, but not under my control.”
“Are you suggesting we used mind control to make five people commit murder?” A dry chuckle. “I certainly hope that isn’t your legal defense. Claiming postpartum depression would be the way to go, though it will cost you your husband, custody of your children.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“No one will believe mind control, Vivienne. And, yet…if such a thing were possible, it would be quite the sword to wield, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t want to cross anyone who held it.”
She says nothing.
“If someone did wield that power, I bet they could use it for good, too. Erase the memory of what you just witnessed. Would you like that, Vivienne?”
Silence.
The voice continues, “Peace of mind would come at a price. The price of your loyalty as an employee. We would implant a subconscious terror of leaving the company. You would, at some level, understand that if you left, we’d be forced to reveal your forgotten secret. Should you try to leave, we would need to bring you back in for a reminder. I can assure you, though, that few need reminders. Very few.”
Fran Lee did. That’s what Vivienne had seen in the older woman’s eyes. Repeated exposure to whatever horror she’d committed while under the company’s control. Exposure and erasure, corroding her mind, disintegrating her memories.
“Do you want us to erase that memory for you, Vivienne?”
No. Consciously or not, she had murdered her own child. She must pay for that.
When she doesn’t respond, the voice says, “Imagine if we don’t erase it. Would you tell your husband? Inflict the horror on him? Or would you abandon him and your children? Rob them of their mother? Destroy their happy family life?”
She cannot return to them with this secret. She knows that. She can’t live with this secret. And yet, how would Marco cope with her suicide, never knowing the reason? How would her children deal with it, knowing only that their mother abandoned them?
You took one child’s life. Will you ruin the lives of the other two?
“Your choice, Vivienne?”
She doesn’t have one. She sees that. No choice at all.
“I’ll take it.”
Vivienne waits as one wall of her booth whooshes open. She steps out to see Kate, shaking her head and saying, “Well, that was lame, wasn’t it?” and one of the guys murmuring, “No shit,” as they all share a smile.
The Game turned out to be an embarrassingly low-tech virtual-reality chess match, where they’d had to lift and move giant chess pieces. Erika was right. It needed a design overhaul, stat.
The players swallow their mockery as six board members walk in. The man at the head of the group welcomes them to the team and says they’ll each receive a brief orientation, with details of their new benefit packages. Oh, and there’s one last thing…
“Here at the company, we’re always looking to retain talent. Yet we aren’t always in the best position to recognize that talent. You are the ones in the trenches, seeing promise overlooked every day. So, before you leave, I’d like you each to nominate someone for the next Game. Consider it the first taste of your new executive power.”
One of the board members takes Vivienne to a lounge. As they sit, he says, “Do you have a name for us? Or do you need more time?”
“I do but…it might be inappropriate.”
He smiles. “We’ll be the judge of that.”
“He’s talented, brilliant, and an insanely hard worker. He’s just not in a division the company often recognizes with executive promotions.”
“Ah, an innovative choice. Always the best kind. You don’t need to make excuses, Vivienne. Just give us a name.”
She takes a deep breath and says, “I’d like to nominate my husband. Marco.”