Rogue Trip

Laura VanArendonk Baugh

“A little help?” called Angie. “I’m down sixty-four hit points! This thing is killing me!”

Cassandra didn’t look up from the figures on the table. “I know! That’s why I’m about to hit it in the head with a mace!”

“Cassandra, you’re the cleric! I want some healing.”

Cassandra glanced at her character sheet. Morningstar or broadsword? She should have buffed the sword. “Quit your whining, I’m busy.”

Angie’s voice was insistent. “Healing?”

“Fine, fine.” Cassandra raised a hand overhead, still looking at the map and figures on the table, and pointed at Angie. “Cure moderate. Take…” She rolled two dice. “Twenty-two points of health back.”

The GM frowned. “Hold on, her character’s twenty feet away from you. You can’t cure from there.”

“I took the Faith’s Reach feat. I can touch from range distances.”

“Thanks,” said Angie. “Now I can run away screaming.”

“And leave the cleric alone in the front line?”

“There shouldn’t be a cleric in the front line!”

“Shut up, you.”

“Right, then.” The GM sighed. “You’re that kind of cleric. This is going to be a rough game.”

Cassandra noted the three other players watching her dubiously across the table. “Look, guys, I said I didn’t want to play a healer. Told you that up front.”

“But we needed a healer,” answered one, in the obligatory black t-shirt and with a character name placard which read Delfinus, Ranger. “And we already had a paladin. An oracle seemed like a nice compromise for you.”

Cassandra resigned herself to being a good team player. “Okay, I’ll heal. But you’ve gotta call out if you need help, I’m not tracking your statuses.”

“Thanks,” said Phineas Honorious, the paladin. “So, I’m gonna hit this thing in the head with a plus-two broadsword.”

Angie threw Cassandra an apologetic look as the game progressed. She was the one who had wanted to play this scenario and had asked Cassandra to come along so she wouldn’t be at the table with no one she knew. While con games were generally friendly, Angie had been burned a couple of times as a lone female and preferred to play with backup.

Cassandra mouthed, You owe me.

Angie put on a sad face and nodded.

But Cassandra didn’t care that much, not really. If rolling up an oracle was the worst thing she had to put up with this weekend, it would be a good weekend. She could always use the character in a home game later, where she could beat on things instead of being the party’s primary healer. Benjamin liked playing healers.

A lot of the kids liked playing healers, actually. It made sense, in a way.

After four hours, they’d entered the final battle with the Minotaur Lord, and Cassandra’s oracle stayed at the rear of the party delivering long distance heals. She was pre-rolling Cure Moderates when one minotaur broke free of the attack formation and rushed the party’s flank.

“Hold on!” called Phineas Honorious. “I’m coming! Can you just retreat, get some distance so you’re safe?”

“Retreat?” repeated Cassandra incredulously. “I’ve got a morningstar! Mace to the face!” She rolled. “Does a thirty-one hit?”

“It does indeed,” confirmed the GM. “Roll damage.”

“But if you attack, you can’t heal,” protested Honorious’ player.

“You’re a paladin,” she replied. “Man up and lay on hands. Damage is… forty-three.”

“It looks bloodied,” said the GM. “Phineas Honorious?”

“I guess I lay on hands to heal myself,” he grumbled.

“Delfinus?”

“I’m going to take Precise Shot and…. Oh.” He looked down at his die. “Rolled a one. I’m going to drop my arrow, apparently.”

“Sorceress Willow?”

Angie grinned. “I cast Hideous Remorse.”

They both rolled, and the GM sucked a breath. “Ouch. Okay, the minotaur stops dead and begins to think about the terrible things it has done. It begins punching itself in the face.”

Angie grinned. “All yours, Cassandra.”

When it was her turn again, Cassandra repeated, “Mace to the face. Twenty-eight to hit.”

“That will hit,” he confirmed. “And the minotaur goes down. My figurine, please.”

When the carnage was done, and the character sheets were being tucked into binders and dice returned to bags, Cassandra nodded toward the GM. “Hey, thanks for throwing me a bone.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “The Minotaur Lord was going down anyway, and it’s not like pulling one minotaur out for a flank attack was going to break the scenario experience. And you were a good sport about rolling up an oracle instead of playing the character you brought.”

“I’m just glad I could afford to switch characters,” she said. “My rogue just got her last game to make her playable for Sunday.”

“Oh, you’re in the debut game? Hellraisers?”

“Yep! I spent five months leveling my nine stars into ten so I could be eligible, and then I pounded F5 like a jackhammer until the lottery opened. Was the fifth entry. Danced like a pop idol when I got the email that I’d won a table spot.”

Playmor Games’ program recognized gamemasters for games run, helpful forum posts, newbies assisted, and other gaming community service. GMs were tiered by stars, one to ten. Only ten-star GMs would be eligible to run their flagship new scenario, debuting Sunday at XP Expo.

“Excellent! I’ll be there, too.”

“Cool! Maybe we’ll be at the same table.”

“Could be.” He glanced at Angie. “Are you playing Hellraisers too?”

She shook her head. “No. But I’ll catch a home game, after Cassandra plays.”

“Sweet. See you Sunday!”

Hellraisers Menace would open Playmor’s new multimedia role-playing game concept. Like Paizo’s Pathfinder Society, the Playmor scenarios took place within a larger, interconnected world, and players could participate anywhere in any reported game while tracking and leveling characters. But Playmor went further, linking tabletop RPGs with online events and revealing new pieces of world, story, and game scenarios depending on how successful players were in achieving scenario goals and how they played through each game. New geographic areas were unlocked only when player characters actually mapped them, factions and alignments shifted according to aggregate player actions, and players could vote online to sway their fictional councils’ decisions. It was going to be amazingly complex and organic and real world-building beyond even ordinary RPGs.Everyone was talking about it.

Adam was boggled. There really wasn’t any other word for it. “Racist? What?”

Jatan made a pained face and tapped the computer monitor. “The report is you made racist jokes during the game design panel.”

“Racist?” Adam repeated. “What kind? I mean, I’m bi-racial myself.”

“Really? You don’t look—”

“That’s not the point! What was it I’m supposed to have said?”

Jatan checked the screen. “Came in through the con’s mobile app. It says you put on an ethnic accent and talked in broken English.”

Adam opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times. “I talked in my pixie voice,” he managed finally. “Like, a stupid little pixie character voice. That’s not ethnic. I always thought it sounded like an angry Munchkin on helium, if anything.”

Jatan raised his eyebrows. “Maybe it’s not as innocent as you thought. It’s not so hard to slip into something accidentally. Let me hear it.”

Adam hesitated, and then he cleared his throat. Then in a nasal falsetto he offered, “I can whack you with Stick of Feel Better for—hold on, need to take shoes off. For twelve points!”

Jatan snorted. “That’s not any ethnic accent I can place. You sound like a Jawa using a voice changer.”

“I know! I mean, not about the Jawa, but I know that voice is not mocking any ethnicity or culture which exists in our world. Who thought that was a racist joke?”

“You know, it might not even be a legitimate complaint. Maybe somebody’s just trying to make headlines, or maybe they didn’t mean you—although I can’t think of anyone else at that panel who would be doing racist impressions, either. Anyway, I believe you’re innocent.”

“That’s great,” Adam said, “but that won’t help if it hits Tumblr.”

“Cross that bridge when you come to it,” said Jatan. “Maybe it won’t be a thing. How’s the Hellraisers setup coming?”

“Ugh,” Adam answered efficiently.

“That good, huh.”

“The booth stuff is here and setup is going fine, but not all the merchandise made it. The remainder—including all the special edition Hellraisers modules—is somewhere in Missouri, because the truck had a flat tire. The games can’t go on sale until after the Sunday event anyway, but that’s a lot of related merch that isn’t on the shelves now and it’s a headache no one needed.”

“Ouch. But hang in there. Plenty of time for the truck to make it.”

“Hope so.”

Jatan hesitated and tipped his head to look at Adam. “Bi-racial? I’ve known you three years and I didn’t catch that.”

“Well, now you know. Hate to run, but if you’re done giving me the bad news, I’m going to see how setup got on while I was in the panel.”

“Do that. See you later.”

Adam turned toward the vendor hall. The line to enter was queued neatly against the wall, where costumed characters, bearded guys in black t-shirts, and girls carrying superhero bags leaned against the wall or sat on the floor to play card games. The line extended down the hall and wrapped around the convention center, contained by masking tape lines on the brightly-patterned carpet. In just five minutes, the doors would open and thousands of attendees would flood into the vendor hall, bolting for their favorites, trying to snatch limited editions or hot items before quantities were depleted.

Adam hated crowds, but doing cons was essential if he wanted to advance in the industry. Maybe he could get a bit of elbow room at the booth.

He lifted his vendor badge to show the woman at the door, who nodded before allowing him to enter. Soon, he hoped, he wouldn’t have to show his badge. That was his private dream, his personal milestone to mark success, that he would be recognized on sight so his badge was superfluous.

He was getting closer. He’d just spoken on a game design panel at one of the most prestigious game conventions on the continent. He was a primary writer on one of the most ambitious projects ever seen in the gaming community. When Hellraisers Menace took off as it should, he would be credited for his work alongside one of the top names in the industry, Lee Cole, lead designer on the Hellraisers project and enthusiastic supporter of Adam’s contribution. He was so close. Maybe at next year’s XP Expo he’d be striding into the vendor hall with just a nod to the grinning door watchman. So close.

The Playmor booth was visible from across the hall, with its tall banners waving all the way to the ceiling. The company had spared no expense. XP Expo—or simply XPO in the fan vernacular—was key in the industry; visibility here was worth tens of thousands of dollars in catch-up marketing elsewhere.

As he approached, however, the booth looked lopsided. Games and accessories filled two-thirds of the space, displaying Playmor’s extensive catalog of products. The remaining third was an empty wall of signage and two empty tables. That was where the limited edition early release of Hellraisers Menace was supposed to be displayed, along with related merchandise like t-shirts, themed notebooks, buttons, and stickers. “Any word?” Adam called as he approached.

Brenda, the marketing chief, waved him absently to silence as she continued a conversation on the phone. “Okay, well, let me know when you hear something. Any time, I don’t care about business hours. We’re on convention time here, anyway, twenty-four hours a day. Thanks. Bye.” She clicked to end the call and looked at Adam. “You’ve heard?”

“About the truck? Yeah. But it should be here soon, right? Before Sunday, anyway?”

“So they tell me. I hope they’re right.” She shook her head. “But even so—you saw all those people waiting outside? About half of those people are going to come to this booth as their first or second stop, trying to pick up Hellraisers product, and we have to tell them to come back later.”

“Ow,” said Adam. “That’s not going to go over well, especially not for people who lined up for hours.” He frowned. “I wonder if we could send someone to make announcements to the line, explaining the truck was delayed, so we don’t get the full onslaught here at the booth? It wouldn’t make anyone happier, but it’d be a lot easier to explain with people lined up and listening.”

Brenda brightened. “And we could have the line volunteers do it. Send in a different messenger with the bad news.” She glanced at her watch, “Or not. No time.”

Across the hall, the doors opened and the swell of sound grew as the crowd surged inside. “Do not run!” shouted a few door guards, but their voices were quickly drowned out. Adam turned to see the tide entering, sweeping along the aisles and eddying at major vendor booths.

“This is not going to be fun,” said Brenda.

The booth staff spread across the front of the booth’s entrance, hands raised to slow the rushing shoppers. Enrique, the sales manager, climbed atop a play-testing table and waved for attention as the confused crowd slowed. “I’ve got good news and bad news for you,” he called, and the crowd quieted to better hear him. “The bad news is, the truck with most of our Hellraisers product had trouble and is stuck two states over. So as you can see, we don’t have our product here yet. But—!” he shouted as groans and rumbles of discontent rose. “But, it’s being repaired and we should have everything arriving soon. We don’t know exactly when—but the games will be ready to go on Sunday, we’re sure.”

“What about the other stuff?” called a voice. “Limited edition figures and stuff?”

“They’ll be here,” promised Enrique.

“But do we get a ticket for being here now?” came the response. “I was in line three hours so I could be early enough to get the special figurines. If we come back later, we’ll lose our place. Do we have to line up again and keep losing time? Are you doing a list or tickets or something?”

Enrique hesitated. “We can make a list,” he said. “For the limited edition figures only—we can’t have a list for every product. We’ll take five hundred names, and you have to pick up and pay before noon on Sunday or we release your option to someone else. Does that make sense, sound fair to everyone?”

The crowd mostly nodded, and Enrique gestured for one of the booth staff to bring a clipboard. Adam turned to Brenda. “That wasn’t quite a debacle. We can get through this.”

Brenda looked at him and exaggerated crossing her fingers.

The next forty-five minutes were busy, with Hellraisers hopefuls squeezing into a makeshift queue as others purchased separate Playmor products from the various product lines. Adam was not technically supposed to be booth help, but he could hardly have walked away from Brenda in this time of crisis. He did what he could, pointing shoppers to items they couldn’t find in the press of bodies or answering whether the mud elementals were found in kit number three or number four.

The crowd was everywhere, suffocatingly close, and he could feel himself sweating. It had been a long time since he’d felt panicky in a crowd, long enough that he’d thought he was over it, but he was definitely sniffing about the edges of a freak-out. He swallowed, and it felt as if he were pushing past a marble. His hands were slick as he handed a gamer in a Spiderman suit a set of color-coded dice.

It was that stupid panel, that ridiculous complaint about him, he realized. And then the stress about the truck. He loved being on a panel, he needed that kind of exposure for his career, and a complaint like that could kill his chances in the game world. The delayed product wasn’t his problem, not really, but it was a Hellraisers problem. If Hellraisers flopped after all this hype it wouldn’t be Lee Cole, legendary game designer, who would be blamed, nope, and Adam Sullivan would never work in game design again.

On top of all that, he was standing in a room with literally thousands of people shuffling elbow to ribs around him, so that he couldn’t get out even if he tried, and he was trying not to think about that. He rubbed his hands on his pants.

A tall redhead in a Firefly shirt, with her hair in a ponytail, wriggled past him to stare at the empty wall, marked only with posters and price tags on empty bins. “They can’t be sold out already,” she protested in hopeful disbelief to a shorter brunette. “Surely not.”

The brunette frowned. “I told you we should have come here first.”

“It’s not sold out,” Adam said. “Word’s going around, but the truck was delayed, so the Hellraiser product isn’t in stock yet. It’s coming.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Really? Ouch. That’s gotta be rough at XPO. Is there a list to get on, for rainchecks or something?”

Adam pointed. “He’s taking names in order for the limited edition figurines, but that’s the only list. Everything else, it’s come back later.”

She stared at him. “You’re kidding me.”

Adam was so tired of explaining this and of dealing with people and of being in this hall. “Not kidding. No reason to make that up in this kind of mob. I’ve been repeating it for a solid hour now.”

“So you work here,” she realized. “And you expect all these people to just keep coming back every hour or two in the hope that the truck has arrived, and when it finally does, stuff goes to the people who were lucky enough to guess right?” She shook her head, her ponytail swaying. “This is ridiculous.”

“It’s going to work just fine,” he said, more out of a need to counter her than any real conviction. “Stuff happens. No one at Playmor is responsible for a flat tire. People need to recognize that.”

“I didn’t say Playmor was responsible for the truck trouble,” she returned. “I meant this is going to kill sales. The momentum can’t take that kind of hit.”

“Haven’t you heard of supply and demand? It might work even better, making the game scarce.”

“But there’s not a scarcity of games,” she said. She gestured about them to encompass the whole hall. “We’re standing in the Mecca of games. Thousands of games, from a couple hundred companies. Sure, Hellraisers is a big deal and people want it, but if people just can’t get it, they’re going to buy something else. And if that was their game budget, if their demand isn’t elastic enough to buy extra games, then Hellraisers is going to lose their sales.” She shrugged. “I was an Econ minor, sorry.”

If Hellraisers didn’t sell, then Playmor lost a ton of money, a ton of prestige, and the budget for the expansions Adam was hoping to write. “A book can’t predict everything in the real world! You can’t just predict how people act and react and what they’ll buy! You can’t actually influence people’s decisions like that!”

She stared at him. “Then why even do marketing and this booth at all?”

Enrique came by to retrieve a new sheet for his clipboard. “Wow,” he confided to Adam as he passed. “We’re holding, but it’s a madhouse. Can’t blame them, though.”

“But are you going to have the Hellraisers games and product in this weekend?” asked the redhead.

“It was just a bad tire. I don’t know why it was even this much of a delay, but I guess they’re specialty tires or something. Yes, we’re expecting it soon.”

The brunette spoke. “Can we add our names to the list?”

“Certainly.” Enrique lifted his clipboard. “What figures are you interested in?”

Adam saw his chance and decided to slip through the crowd. He needed a break. Brenda would understand. He wasn’t supposed to be here anyway.

“Hey, can you help me? I’m trying to find the new Hellraisers books.”

Adam choked back an exasperated sigh and began explaining for the thousandth time.

The man with the clipboard finished Angie’s figurine order and turned to Cassandra. “And what’s your name?”

“Cassandra,” she said. “Cassandra Highland. Aptly named, today.”

He wrote that down. “Oh? How aptly named?”

“Cassandra was a prophetess in Troy,” Angie explained. “And her curse was, her predictions were always correct but no one would ever believe her.”

“The advantages of the public school system no longer teaching a classical education,” Cassandra said. “You can make fun of people right to their face, and they don’t have the literature classes to get it.” She looked after the rude salesman, but he had his back to her and was talking to another gamer about the missing truck. “But he’s not listening, so he won’t have a chance to not get the joke.” She looked back at the man with the clipboard.

“So you said this wouldn’t work….”

“…And he didn’t believe me. Even though I’m right.” She shook her head. “No offense to you, I know it’s not your fault. No one’s fault. But you can’t build that kind of hype and then not have product available. People get upset, they go find something else to buy.”

He frowned. “We’re doing the best we can.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I said it was unfortunate it happened at XPO. And I said an order list would be the best way to handle it.”

“We can’t have a list!” snapped the first salesman, turning back. “There are thirty thousand people here, and we can’t hope to track everyone down if we take names. All product, including Hellraisers Menace, will be sold first come, first serve.”

“But I, and a lot of others, came first.”

“You know what I mean. You can pick up a game after the truck arrives.”

“But what about people with scheduled events? You could take names and have a pickup deadline, or the games are released again. You could charge extra for shipping if they’re not collected.”

“We’re not stupid, we thought about those options,” he said. “But the truck is already late, so by the time we have stock, the turnaround for a pickup deadline is going to be really short. If we might need to ship, that means we need to run different credit card payments or take extra cash, and we won’t have the customer present to authorize the card or to pay the additional amount. It’s much easier if we just do a point-of-sale transaction, you pay for the game and walk out with it.”

“But I have con events scheduled!” she said. “I left this time open to come to the vendor hall.” She thought of the hopeful eyes waiting for her, and of going home to disappoint them. “I spent months working to ten stars!”

He blew out his breath and all but rolled his eyes. “Elitism isn’t a thing here. And nobody’s impressed by a girl with ten stars. I don’t care if you have ten stars or two, you can’t just demand a game.”

Cassandra started to retort and then caught herself. “That’s not what I meant, that I deserved special treatment for being a girl GM. It had more to do with my dedication to getting to this game. It’s a pity you don’t have a similar dedication to getting your game to gamers.” She turned. “Come on, Angie, let’s go find someone who will sell us a game without making it a gender issue.”

“No, look, I didn’t mean—I should have said—”

She pushed past him into the crowded aisle, and Angie followed.

They’d gone about five steps when Cassandra whispered, “Hideous remorse,” and flicked a hand over her shoulder. A second later there was a satisfying slap of flesh against flesh.

“He just hit himself in the forehead,” Angie whispered, peeking back.

Cassandra nodded. “Yep.”

“You have got to be kidding me! This isn’t happening!”

Adam looked up from his rubbery chicken strips, purchased from a convention center vendor in lunch desperation, and braced himself for this new crisis. “What are we talking about?”

“The truck is still in Missouri,” announced Brenda.

“What?!”

She squeezed her phone in a stranglehold as if it was at fault, a modern killing of the messenger. “The truck. It’s still in—”

“Missouri, I heard you. But why? I thought they were fixing the tire?”

“They fixed the tire, but then the driver slipped getting into the cab and fell. And broke his leg. Compound fracture in his shin or something.”

Adam stared at her, trying to work his mouth around some suitable profanity.

“I know, right? Like, what else could go on this weekend?”

Lee Cole cut in. “Can’t he drive with his other leg?”

Lee had stopped by the booth to schmooze with fans and answer some general questions about the Hellraisers line. Adam had put off his mediocre lunch for a while just to take the opportunity to stand beside him, two fellow game writers in the Playmor booth.

“Lee, he’s on codeine. No, he can’t drive. If he tried, he’d probably end up in a swamp in Florida or something instead of XPO.” Brenda threw her eyes to the ceiling as if accusing the fluorescent lighting of treachery. “And then the EPA would fine us for introducing role-playing games to the gators.”

Adam closed his eyes and took a breath. “Where’s the truck?”

“Far Reach, Missouri. Wherever that is.”

Adam pulled his own phone and began tapping as Lee grumbled about Missouri and drivers and logistics. “Can’t they transfer the boxes to air freight? The freight company should pick up the extra cost, but even if they didn’t—”

“She says that’s not possible,” Brenda interrupted. “Something about needing additional authorization that they can’t complete on a weekend. Trust me, the office is so going to hear about that come weekday business hours, but in the meantime, she says the driver’s sitting in the cab to keep the cargo safe. We don’t need it safe, we need it here!”

“What we need,” Lee declared, “is our own driver.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” cut in Adam. “Look, it’s ten hours to Far Reach, Missouri. That’s twenty hours round trip. Plenty of time to get the games and get back by event start Sunday.”

“You have a curious definition of ‘plenty,’” Brenda answered. “Hellraisers Menace games start at eleven Sunday morning. It’s almost noon now.” She gave him a dubious look. “And it’s not going to be twenty hours, anyway, not even if everything is perfect. You’d have to stop for gas. And toilets. And probably food and drink. Plus, that truck is not exactly a sports model, so it’s not going to be a record-setting trip back. That’s going to be twenty-two hours at best, at the very best. And since nobody wants to drive twenty-two hours straight—especially not in a cursed truck which will probably flip over and explode if you get drowsy—you’ll need nap time as well.”

“That’s what energy drinks are for.”

“Lee, we are in enough trouble already. If a sleepy driver crosses the line and crashes head-on into a minivan full of soccer kids, it’s not going to do us any good. Or the kids.” She shook her head. “And we’re at a con, in case you forgot. Everyone’s running on half-empty already. It can’t be done.”

“Two drivers,” Adam suggested. “One naps while the other sleeps. When no one’s sleeping, they talk to stay alert. It’s the Cannonball Run, with a truck full of special edition RPGs.”

Brenda brightened. “That would be fantastic,” she said. “Who can go with you?”

“What, me?” Adam gestured to his chest in surprise. “I didn’t volunteer to—”

“I didn’t ask you to volunteer, I told you to go.” Brenda pointed at Lee. “Lee has a half dozen panels this afternoon and tomorrow morning. I cannot handle the burning building that is this PR crisis from a truck cab in Missouri. And don’t ask me to list all the reasons we can’t send the teen volunteers or the sales staff. You, on the other hand, have already finished your panel and have nothing else booked before the big event on Sunday.”

“Brenda, I’m a game designer, not a truck driver.”

“And McCoy is a doctor. But more important, you’re not even a game designer if you don’t have a game.” She paused and took a breath. “Adam, look, it’s an unusual situation. We have to take on unusual tasks if we’re going to get through it. I know you think you can just walk over to End Run Games if Playmor gets egg all over our face, and maybe that’s true, but I can’t, not after a marketing disaster on this scale. Throw me a bone. Go get the truck.”

There really wasn’t much of an argument to make. She was right; his single panel was over, and he had no more official duties until the Hellraisers Menace debut game started—and that was going to be never, not at XP Expo, unless they got that truck. “Okay,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be obstinate, I just was caught off guard, that’s all. Get me an address and some Red Bull.”

“You can take my car; it’s a Prius, so you can stretch longer between gas stops. Leave it in Far Reach. I can get a transport company to retrieve it for a few hundred dollars, which is a cheap price to get out of this disaster.”

“You want me to drive the truck back? I don’t have a commercial license.”

“Then don’t get caught.” She pulled her phone from her pocket to check the time. “Twenty-two hours if you push hard; that means you have to leave in the next half hour. We need a second driver, stat.”

Adam thought back. “I saw Frank Marzetti over at the authors’ section,” he said. “He might be able to go.”

“No, he’s guest-DJing the dance tonight.”

“What about Amy Lade? She’s just signing autographs.”

“You pull Amy away from the fans who paid for pictures, I’m not responsible for the consequences,” Brenda warned.

“Fair enough.” Adam frowned. “What about Michael Armstrong? I’m pretty sure he’d be free, he shouldn’t have that many panels.”

Brenda shook her head. “Michael is narcoleptic. He’s the last person we want on this kind of stretch run.”

Adam acknowledged this with a nod. “True. Okay, who else have we got here?”

Brenda made a little O with her lips and started thumbing through her phone. “I was talking earlier with a GM who is really keen on getting a copy. I mean, everyone is, but not everyone offered to help if I needed someone. And I think this counts as needing someone.” She found the information she wanted and started a text. “Though it’s a pretty big help.”

Lee was looking at Adam and reading uncomfortably into his mind. “It’s okay if you’re not here, rubbing shoulders and being seen,” Lee said. “Your name is on the manual. And we’ll tell everyone that you’re out saving the day.” He grinned. “When you bring back the only limited edition copies of Hellraisers Menace, just in time to save the debut, you’ll be a hero. You can’t write that kind of publicity.”

Adam nodded. He had been thinking about losing face time at XP Expo, where he had been hoping to network and play off his new credit as a Playmor designer and one entrusted with the Hellraisers project. But while networking with industry pros was important, fan recognition was key, too, and if the—if a designer himself rescued the game with an epic nonstop cross-country drive, that would be newsworthy.

Brenda looked up from her phone. “Okay! She’s on her way.”

“She agreed?” Adam was surprised. “That fast?” A gamer would want the new Hellraisers Menace, sure, but enough to give up the rest of the con without hesitation?

“Well, I didn’t exactly explain the whole thing,” Brenda admitted. “But she’s coming here, and we can pitch it then.”

Adam was skeptical, but he said nothing. Any chance of help to save Hellraisers…

“Hey!” A red-haired girl in a Firefly shirt jogged toward them, a backpack over one shoulder. Adam turned toward her and his stomach sank.

“Cassandra!” Brenda beckoned her over. “You got here fast.”

“I was just two aisles over, shopping for dice. What do you need?” She glanced briefly at Adam and then back at Brenda, studiously dismissing him.

“The truck with the games is in Missouri, and the driver has a broken leg. It’s not going to get here unless someone goes and gets it.”

Cassandra’s eyes widened. “You want me to drive to Missouri?”

“Not alone. We’ll have two drivers, one driving and one napping. With gas and toilet stops, the games could even be here to start on time tomorrow.”

She nodded and swallowed. “Okay, I’m in. I’ve got a toothbrush in my backpack, so I’m good to leave right away. Let’s go.”

“Fantastic!” Brenda clapped her hands. “I’m so grateful. Relieved. Everything. You and Adam can take my car.”

“Adam?” Cassandra turned her head and looked at him again, and her mouth actually dropped open a little. “You? You’re Adam?”

“Um, yeah.”

She turned back to Brenda. “I can’t do twenty hours in a car with this man. He thinks I’m an elitist feminist jerk, and two of those are bad things.”

Brenda turned to Adam with a look which simultaneously managed to be both incredulous and accusing. “Adam? What on Earth?”

“It was a misunderstanding,” he said. “I was frustrated and caught off guard and—”

“And thus he spoke without a filter,” interrupted Cassandra, “letting his real opinions shine through. Look, I’m willing to help, but this is kind of unfair. It’s not even riding with a stranger with no history, it’s riding with someone who already dislikes me.”

“I don’t dislike you!” Adam tried.

“Well, I dislike you,” Cassandra retorted. “That’s enough. Brenda, I’m sorry, I really am.”

Brenda panicked, Adam could see it, watching her single best chance of retrieving the games fading. “Wait!” she tried. “Look, Cassandra, I’m not gonna lie, I’m desperate. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise. I’ll comp your copy of the game, I’ll set you up with swag and merch, just please, help me.”

Cassandra hesitated. “Swag?” she repeated, as if against her will.

Brenda seized the opportunity mercilessly. “What do you want? Books? Mats?”

Cassandra licked her lips. “I have twenty kids in my gaming groups. Can you cover all of them?”

Brenda didn’t hesitate. “T-shirts, plushie figures, and special edition Hellraisers Menace dice in Hellraisers Menace tote bags. And if you give me two weeks’ shipping time, twenty special edition dice towers.”

The pain in Cassandra’s eyes was evident. Adam watched her argue with herself, her eyes flicking from him to the plush figures hanging on the booth’s back wall and then to him again. Finally he saw her swallow. “Okay,” she relented. “I’m in. Where’s the car?”

Denial

The jerk took the first driving shift. Cassandra kicked off her shoes and pulled out her phone. “I’ve got navigation up,” she said. “Take a left out of the vendor lot and head south. We’ll pick up the interstate in about two miles.”

“Right.” He checked the rear mirror and started to reverse.

He should actually turn and look, Cassandra thought uncharitably.

But they backed without incident, and he turned the car toward the lot exit. An awkward moment stretched long.

“So,” he said finally. “I’d like to apologize.”

Cassandra did not look at him. Did he think he could just sorry his way out of being a misogynist dude-bro? Because he couldn’t.

He glanced at her, perhaps to see whether she was receptive, and seemed disconcerted by her lack of attention. “Um. I was upset, with all that was happening with the booth and the game, and I thought you meant you were—but anyway, the real point is, I did not mean that your gender had anything to do with it. I swear.” He glanced at her again and then back at the road. “I swear to Palingar.”

She snorted despite herself. “Palingar would be the worst deity to swear by,” she said. “He’s the patron god of storytellers and thieves.” A suspicion occurred to her. “And was that supposed to be some sort of geek cred test, to see if I actually know the game system?”

He shoved his head back so that it bounced against the headrest. “I do not think you are a fake geek girl!” he barked. “Those words never left my mouth. Never even crossed my mind.”

She looked at him. “You’re the one who just said them aloud.”

He braked at the stop sign and thumped his forehead against the steering wheel. “This is not happening.”

“Quit wasting time,” she said. “We don’t have time to emote at stop signs. We’re on a countdown.”

He sat up and hit the gas.

Anger

Cassandra stared out the windshield, letting her eyes blur as mileage posts flashed by. This was inconceivable. Of all the things she could have imagined at a gaming convention, all the ways XP Expo could have gone wrong, this was not something which would have occurred to her.

This was Playmor’s fault, obviously. They were a great company, sure, lots of innovation and ideas, but they clearly didn’t have a handle on business or logistics. How else could they arrive at one of the biggest game conventions in the country without their new game? Seriously, it was just ridiculous. There was no excuse for this.

It was a flat tire, they’d said at first. But that should have been an easy enough fix. Even a big truck can get a tire changed in less than a day. Then the story was that the driver had a broken leg. Like that even made sense. How would a truck driver break a leg, sitting in a truck cab, waiting for a tire to be repaired? No, something else was going on here.

Okay, that didn’t exactly make sense, either. Why would Playmor lie about the game’s delay? Sure, it was generating a lot of talk around XPO, but not the kind of talk that sold games. More the kind of talk that made people go back to standards like Wizards of the Coast and Paizo, who right now looked a lot more reliable than Playmor.

It was a stupid publicity stunt, if that’s was it was. Really stupid. Look how many people were upset right, angry about being burned on their event tickets—tickets they’d had to win in a lottery, a lottery to which they had to earn entrance. People put hard hours and real money into just earning a spot in the lottery. Even if Playmor hadn’t meant to hold back the game at the last minute, they owed those gamers. People had trusted them. Promises had to be kept.

Cassandra’s promise had to be kept.

She turned toward the window to hide her clenched jaw and waited for the hot salt in her eyes to fade. She swallowed against the lump in her throat.

No, no time for tears. Not in front of Andy or Adam or whatever his name was. He would just think she was a weepy female fake gamer who cried because she wasn’t getting the game she wanted. Jerk. And he worked for Playmor. No wonder the company was having problems.

Jerks. All of them, jerks.

Bargaining

Adam pulled into a gas station and fished a credit card from his wallet. Brenda had told him to turn in his receipts for reimbursement.

Neither Adam nor Cassandra had spoken for two hours. But he had to break the silence sometime, and the gas stop provided a modicum of excuse. “I’m good to keep driving,” he said, trying to sound casual. Had he pitched his voice too high? It made him sound nervous, or defensive. That wasn’t what he wanted. Too late now. “I mean, it’s only been a bit over two hours. I’m not tired yet. But if we’re going to switch later, you might want to grab a nap. So you’ll be fresh when we change. Anyway, do you need a restroom break? A snack? There’s a convenience store here.”

He was rambling. His voice had come out too high and he was rambling. This was going to be the longest road trip in geek history.

“Boring conversation anyway,” he mumbled to the gas pump.

When he looked up, she was heading into the convenience store, backpack over her shoulder. He wondered if she carried it with her because of some esoteric girl reason, on her period or wanting to touch up makeup or needing to swap secret packages hidden in the restroom, or if she didn’t trust him enough to leave it in the car.

He finished pumping gas and pocketed the receipt. She returned, bearing two candy bars. That made sense, he mused to himself. She’d be driving at night, and extra snacks would help her to stay awake. It made sense to stockpile when she had the chance.

But as she slid into the front seat, she turned and faced him. “See this?” she said, holding up a king-sized bar. “This is yours—if you promise never to quote Han Solo again.”

“What?”

“Han Solo. I heard you. And Han is a totally different type than you, a badass rogue who is also lovable. You’re not a lovable rogue, you’re just an old-school bitter misogynist. So you don’t get to quote Han. And if I have to bribe you into it, I will.”

He looked at her, and for a moment he couldn’t decide if she were serious about paying him to keep quiet, or if she was trying to make a joke to semi-apologize but hiding it behind more irritation just in case he was still angry with her.

Because he was angry with her. She had no right to embarrass him in front of Brenda like that, and especially not when her accusations weren’t even true.

He looked from her to the candy bar. “You know that I’m not a misogynist, right?”

She pulled the candy bar a little closer to her.

“No, really—what did I say to make you think that?”

“You think I’m a fake geek girl! You think I don’t have any business gaming, much less as a GM!”

“Really? Is that what I said?”

“No, you said—” she hesitated. He watched her think, watched her eyes flick as she replayed the scene in her mind. “You said no one’s impressed by a girl GM and I shouldn’t get special treatment.”

“Right. But not giving you special treatment is not misogynist. That’s being fair to everyone, to all the gamers who won play tickets. In fact, treating you as a GM equal to all the others is kind of the opposite of misogynist.”

She digested this. “But I thought you meant —”

“It’s obvious what you thought,” he said. “To be perfectly fair, you’ve probably heard it from some other guy before. But you didn’t hear it from me. And you’re not going to.”

She looked at him, considering. Then she extended the candy bar. “I didn’t hear a single Han Solo quote in that entire defense.”

“I don’t think I did, either.”

She snapped the candy bar into his outstretched palm hard enough to sting. “Okay. Probation.”

“Are we in negotiations?”

She frowned in consideration. “Diplomatic talks.”

“I’ll take it.” Okay, your worship. But he didn’t say it aloud.

Depression

Cassandra rolled her head from side to side, stretching her neck. The dotted lines flicked down the road, blurring into a stream of tiny progress markers.

The marketing woman’s Prius did not appear to be equipped for streaming radio. Cassandra’s music was sadly lacking, as she had replaced her phone a week before without swapping the SD card and her data plan would not permit streaming for twenty hours. This meant they were limited to Adam’s playlist, which was mostly Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and as far as Cassandra could tell, a smattering of lesser-known emo bands. She could handle these in small doses, but after seven hours, she was getting close to gnawing off her own arm, only it wouldn’t help her to escape.

It figured. He was kind of cute, with his wavy black hair and dark eyebrows and those chocolate-bar eyes. That’s probably how he had gotten through life so far, depending on his looks to carry him despite his social ignorance. Even Cassandra had to admit that if she’d seen him across a game table, instead of hearing him rant at the booth, she would have tried to strike up a conversation.

Well, see what conversation had brought. Not worth it.

She was a little tired. Probably dehydrated, considering the snacks and caffeine she’d had. Gas station convenience stores weren’t a bounty of healthful foods. She should have that too-brown banana she’d found at the last stop to see if it improved her alertness and general outlook.

Turning Point

“What do you do?”

Adam jerked his head up, startled at the first words in a couple of hours. “What?”

“Sorry, were you sleeping?” Cassandra looked at him and then back over the steering wheel.

“No, just zoning. Why do you ask?”

“It’s the standard American greeting, right along with What’s your name, and we’ve been together nine hours or so and haven’t gotten that far.”

Adam nodded. “Hi, I’m Adam Sullivan, and I’m an accountant.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “No jokes, please, if you’re not going to be original.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Econ in school, remember? At least you got a job out of it.”

“What do you do, then, when you’re not freelancing in supply-side commentary?”

“I get a paycheck for bussing tables,” she answered. “But that’s not what I do. I mean, I hope that’s not what they put in my obituary, that I cleaned up dishes. I spend more of my time with sick kids.”

“Oh?”

“I volunteer at the children’s hospital.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t quite sure how to follow that up. “So, have you always worked with kids?”

“Only the last couple of years, really.”

“How’d you get started?” That was good, showed interest and kept his own half of the conversation light.

“Just signed up one day.”

Well, so much for that.

“How’d you get into games?” she asked, her eyes on the road. “Natural outgrowth of number crunching?”

“Do you mean playing or writing?”

She looked at him. “You’re a writer?”

He realized she had no reason to know. “I’m a co-writer on Hellraisers Menace.”

“No kidding?” She seemed to consider this. “How’d you swing that? What else have you done? Sorry, but most writers aren’t very face-famous.”

“Oh, and I’m not that famous even by name,” he admitted. “Someday, I hope.”

“So how’d you get into games?”

“Games saved my life,” said Adam, surprising himself. He hadn’t meant to answer quite so honestly, but as he heard his own words he realized, if he wanted her story, he would have to give her his. Honesty seemed the best way to draw out honesty.

“It sounds like an exaggeration,” he continued, “but I think it actually might be true. I got into some rough stuff when I was in middle school, with bullying and such, and it didn’t do me any good. We didn’t have the zero-tolerance thing, and I can’t decide if that was a blessing or curse. I feel like at the time I would’ve given anything for somebody else to step in and take care of my problems for me, so I really see where that looks like the best option. But on the other hand, I had to learn to cope, which was a good thing, and I had to find a way to do it that was better than what my friends could offer—or my so-called friends.

“So there I was, the only kid of color in the nerd club, but it was okay, because those people were more like me. None of us were cool. None of us were the jocks or the popular people. Hey, we felt lucky to even be in the yearbook. But we were a group, and we saw each other every week and we were always there for each other, every week. And when the Lich Queen tried to take your buddy’s head off, the rest of the group came to save him, and it started to feel like maybe that could happen in real life too.”

He glanced over and she nodded, eyes on the road.

“So like I said, it sounds stupid and made up, but I think my life would’ve been really different without tabletop games.”

She nodded again. “Yeah, I can see that. Wow.”

“So I wrote my first scenario when I was in high school, and it was awful. Like, you don’t even understand how terrible and cliché this was. But hey, it was my first try, and I think everybody starts with that, y’know?” He pushed at his hair.

Cassandra giggled. “Pretty sure.”

“My group laughed a lot about it when we played it, but then they told me to do another one, and then I did another one, and then I did another one. And then in college, I wrote a couple for my college gaming group. And those actually weren’t so bad. It was like I had gotten most of the derivative and awful out of my system by then. Not all of it of course, there are always new mistakes to make, but it was better.

“Then my junior year of college, I actually sent a scenario to a game company to look at. They didn’t take it of course, but it was the first time I thought, Hey, I could do this. I was getting my degree in accounting, so why couldn’t I mess around a little bit with games on the side?

“I graduated, and I got a ‘real’ job, and I found a new gaming group, and finally I felt comfortable enough to write a scenario for them. And they liked it. I wrote another one, and they liked that one too. And I sent one off again, this time for a contest, and it didn’t win but I got a nice note back saying, This was one of our favorite non-winners, send us more sometime in the future. That was like heaven had opened and dumped music and sparkles all over me. I was good enough that an actual game company liked it too! I started thinking, what if I can do this?”

He was fully into his story now, probably boring her, but it was too late to stop. She didn’t look too bored, not really, because staring at the road was normal while driving, right?

“So I kept on doing accounting by day and gaming by night. And I kept sending scenarios out. Then Playmor bought one of my scenarios. That was my first sale and I went a little giddy, and that fueled me right through the next one, which also sold.”

“To Playmor?”

Oh good, he wasn’t totally boring her, maybe. “To Playmor again, yes, and another one to End Run, just a quick demo game. I started setting new goals, and I started writing bigger things, and I started trying to promote a little bit at conventions, and things kept going until, well, I finally got hired on the Hellraisers project. Which was frakkin’ amazing, I’m not gonna lie.”

She laughed. “I’ll bet. That was a pretty big announcement, even before we knew all the details.”

“So what about you?”

“Oh, I was always a gamer. Grew up watching Mom and Dad play on weekends.”

“Now you play with the kids at the hospital?”

“Well, that’s kind of a weird situation.” She bobbed her head from side to side, considering. “I mean, it’s got some backstory.”

He gestured at the road. “We’ve got nothing but miles and time.”

“Okay, then. It’s not like you know anyone involved.” She took a breath. “I had a friend, a really good friend, who got pregnant. She had her baby, a little boy, and things were cool. But she was really busy with the baby, you know how it goes.”

“Of course.” He didn’t know, but it seemed the right answer, and anyway it was reasonable to suppose babies were time-sucks.

“She had lots of new friends now, women from the hospital classes and mommy chats and babysitting trades and stuff, so we weren’t seeing each other as much, but that wasn’t such a big deal. I’m not really the jealous type.

“But about six months after Lucas was born, Carly emailed me to say she was pregnant again and that—well, that we couldn’t be friends. For a while, she said, as weird as that sounds. That she was busy with her kid stuff and I probably wanted to be busy with video games and work and things, and we didn’t have anything to talk about.”

“Ouch.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“She said she still wanted to be friends, but not while her kids were young. That we could talk again when her kids were all in school.”

“So, she just put you on hold for a few years?” He stared at her. “Can you do that with a friendship?”

“That was three years ago. She’s six months pregnant right now. So that’s eight years of storage time so far, longer if she has another.”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“So I got locked in carbonite, waiting to be thawed out whenever she decided she could have non-mommy friends again, and I got a little freezer-burned. I mean, we used to talk about games and books and movies and all kinds of stuff before she had kids, so it was pretty cold to say now we had nothing to talk about just because she had kids and I didn’t.

“But the worst part was, people saw we weren’t hanging out and assumed we’d had some sort of fight. I didn’t tell anyone about the email, of course, and I guess she didn’t tell anyone either. Word started going around that I hated kids and wouldn’t hang out with her now that she had them.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

“I started getting lots of passive-aggressive comments about needing to accept kids, and needing to be understanding of devotion to a cause greater than myself, and needing children to support me someday when I’m old, and all kinds of stupid stuff. I couldn’t tell anyone about her freezing our friendship, because it seemed mean and petty to say that about her even if it was true, and anyway how do you explain your best friend dumped you because she had new mommy-friends? And not even dumped you, but actually thought she could just put you on pause for years and expect to pick up again like nothing happened, like you’re some sort of video game instead of a person? That’s cold. All the comments kept coming and finally, in a fit of rage and desperation, I signed up to volunteer at the children’s hospital, just so I could post about working with kids and shut down some of the child-hater stories.”

“You need new friends.”

“Don’t I know it? But I got some, because the kids turned out to be pretty cool, and some of the nurses there too. I ended up organizing some gaming groups and we started playing.”

“That’s why you need the new Hellraisers module.”

“For Danny to play. While he still can.”

He sensed the heavy truth behind her words. “Danny’s one of the kids?”

Cassandra pressed her lips together. “You’ve got these kids and they’re living in the hospital. These kids don’t have the option to go out and play soccer, or to go for a walk in the park, or to go for a hike. These kids play games because they can’t do anything else.

“But while they can’t leave the hospital, they can go literally anywhere in the universe. Places we can only imagine. So they can’t go to a playground, but they can fight a Dark Master of the Skeleton Soldiers or solve a series of cult murders or find a lost ninja kitten or something, and that helps.

“So games are a mainstay for these kids. When I saw how much it meant to them, I kind of made that a focus of my volunteering. And then the Hellraisers announcements started coming out, and the kids just went crazy. It was almost all they could talk about.

“And this one kid Danny really, really wants to play the Hellraisers scenario. But Danny’s not doing well. He’s… really not doing well. For a while we weren’t sure Danny was going to get to play Hellraisers even if I made my ten stars and brought the game back from XPO.

“But he rallied and he pulled through, and his mom told me she thinks it’s at least partly because he has something to look forward to, to hang on for. I’ve been working so hard to make this happen, to bring it back for him and we were all going to play the scenario together. Then the game wasn’t there, it wasn’t at XPO. And it wasn’t going to be at XPO. And I just kind of went crazy, because all I could think of was going back and telling those kids, and telling Danny, that I didn’t have it, that we weren’t going to be able to play. I didn’t know how I was going to do that.”

She took a breath. “So yeah, I was kind of bitchy and more than a little over-sensitive. And I’m sorry. It wasn’t really about you, it wasn’t entirely about the things you said, it was about a lot of things. Things that you didn’t have any way of knowing about.”

In that moment he realized he wanted to get it right, wanted them to be friends. “I think,” Adam said carefully, “a lot of times people get angry because they care. We get into trouble when we get angry at the wrong things because we care about the right things.”

“That’s a good way to put it,” said Cassandra. She gave him a smile, and it looked sincere. “Pretty deep. You should put that on a t-shirt.”

Adam took a breath. “Truce?”

“Truce,” answered Cassandra.

He nodded once. “We’re good?”

She turned and tipped her head to regard him. “We’re good,” she said, and there was another smile in her voice.

Adam felt a warm little quiver run through him at that smile. “Look,” he said. “Playmor has a pretty strict policy about not sharing releases ahead of time, for obvious reasons. But life is not as clear as policy would like it to be, and whatever condition Danny has, it probably doesn’t care much for Playmor’s written policies. We’re going to get these games! But whatever the worst-case scenario might be, your kids’ hospital is getting games too. And I’m going to come and GM for them personally.”

Cassandra looked at him, her eyebrows lifted.” You don’t even know what part of the country I live in.”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t think that should make a difference. I’m traveling already, to try to hit different conventions, so I’ll just consider this an additional tour stop. Then I can pretend I have a tour.”

“That would be very cool,” said Cassandra. “The kids would really like having a game writer there too.” She grinned. “And I’d like you to come.”

The warmth spread into a glow.

Acceptance

Cassandra glanced at Adam, sleeping against the passenger window, and allowed herself to wonder.

Okay, so he was kind of cute. More importantly, he’d called her out when she was wrong and then hadn’t held it against her when she admitted her mistake. Then he’d offered to GM for the kids, and that probably wouldn’t happen for any number of logistical reasons, but at least he’d thought of it.

She didn’t want to use voice-to-text while he was sleeping, but she wished for a moment she could send a message to Angie. Hey, that guy, he’s not so bad as I thought. And he’s cute. Where do I go from here?

But, she thought as she glanced at him again, she didn’t think she needed a friend’s aid. This road trip seemed to be working just fine on its own.

No, she hadn’t thought XP Expo would go anything like this. But unplanned wasn’t so awful, after all.

“Where are we?” Adam sat up from leaning against the window, checked surreptitiously for drool, and looked out the windshield.

“Somewhere west of Columbia,” Cassandra said. “We’ve got to be getting close.”

Adam reached for the phone and checked the navigation. “Yeah, real close. The truck stop is about five miles ahead.”

“Good thing you woke up; I might have kept going right into Kansas. I’m starting to feel a bit brain-fuzzed.” She took another drink from the can beside her. “I still can’t believe they just left the truck without sending another driver. And a broken leg? How does that even happen? Okay, it can happen, I mean if you had bone cancer or something you could break your leg just walking, but they didn’t say he had cancer, though I guess they might not know about the cancer yet, you know, just that his leg broke when it shouldn’t have, and maybe they’ll figure out the cancer later. Am I rambling? I think that’s the energy drinks.”

“Yeah, you are. But you and the caffeine are right, it really doesn’t make any sense.”

Signs blazed the truck stop’s location, and Cassandra pulled into the broad parking lot. “Seems an odd place to stay with a broken leg.”

“Well, he can’t drive, and he can’t stay in the hospital forever. Might as well stay with your truck until help comes. DPS Trucking, there it is. Head that way.”

They noticed a man approaching the DPS truck, wearing jeans and an over-sized shirt showing three howling wolves throwing their muzzles to the white moon sitting just over his pectoral muscle. His gut hung over the snap of his jeans. He looked up as they pulled alongside the truck, one hand clutching a cup of coffee, the other a package of jerky.

“Hi!” called Adam. “We’re here from Playmor, to pick up this truck. Do you know where we can pick up the keys?”

“Keys?” The man hesitated, surprised and a little nervous. His eyes flicked from Adam to Cassandra to the truck, as if measuring distances.

“Where’s the driver?” asked Cassandra.

“I’m the driver,” he said. “And I’m not handing over my keys.”

“What?” Adam looked at his legs, clad in jeans without visible braces or crutches.

“Your leg’s not broken,” observed Cassandra.

“I didn’t think it was.” The man looked back and forth between them. “Do I know you?”

“You don’t know us per se,” said Adam, “but we’re with the company whose merchandise you’re hauling. Playmor Games. We came to collect the cargo after your delay.”

“My delay?” The driver sounded more than a bit indignant. “I’m just following instructions. I thought there was a problem at your end.”

“Our end?” Cassandra glanced to Adam and then back at the driver. “I think we had better back up and start over.”

“My name is Adam Sullivan.”

“Tom Alonso,” said the driver suspiciously.

“Nice to meet you, Tom. As I said, I’m with Playmor Games. And we got word yesterday that your truck had trouble, a flat tire. The delay was a problem, but we were dealing with it, and then we heard later that you couldn’t drive at all because of your broken leg.”

“When you say you heard this,” said Driver Tom slowly, “where did you hear it from? Because I sure as hell didn’t call in any such thing.”

Adam looked at Cassandra. “Well, Brenda told me. I presume she got the information from somewhere. Could it have been a miscommunication on the part of DPS?”

Cassandra looked dubious. “A flat tire and a broken leg and codeine is a pretty massive miscommunication,” she said. “And it doesn’t explain why the truck is sitting here in Missouri if there’s no problem.”

“I’m sitting here in Missouri,” said Tom, “because I was told there was a problem on site and you couldn’t take delivery. That you would pay the penalty for keeping the truck tied up while you got things sorted and found a new place to put the cargo.”

Adam frowned. “That is also quite a miscommunication,” he said. “One that strains credulity well past the usual breaking point. Who told you this about our problems?”

“My dispatcher. She called me yesterday and said there might be a change of address and to delay a bit so I wouldn’t have to backtrack. And then she called me back and told me just to stay here until further notice.”

Cassandra shook her head. “This smells like conspiracy,” she said. “I don’t usually go for that sort of thing, but this doesn’t smell like anything but wrong.”

Adam gestured at the truck stop parking lot. “So you’ve just been parked here for the last day waiting for someone to tell you to move?”

Tom nodded. “I’m just the driver. I followed the dispatcher’s instructions. If the dispatcher says to change destination or hold cargo, then I change destination or hold cargo. I don’t have any contact with the customers themselves.”

Cassandra nodded. “We’re not blaming you, Tom. Clearly something else is going on here. But at first glance, it sounds like the misinformation might be coming from your dispatcher, if she’s telling you to wait and telling Brenda that you can’t go at all. But what possible motivation could a dispatcher have to delay a shipment of games to a convention?”

“Hold on a minute,” said Tom. He pulled out his phone and began thumbing across the screen. “Every one of those changes she called in to me. That’s not too unusual, but now that I’m checking, I don’t see anything logged onto my truck records.”

“What does that mean?” asked Adam.

“It means there’s no official record of her telling me to kill time,” answered Tom with new heat in his voice. “It means if your company filed a complaint with my company, the records would show that I simply failed to make delivery. That I stayed in Missouri, drinking cheap beer and eating stale taquitos at a truck stop for thirty-six hours, instead of making miles and making time. It means Elaine was probably setting me up to take the blame for whatever she was doing to delay this truck. Screwing us both over at the same time.” His face was hard. “This could cost me my job!”

Cassandra was incensed. “That’s just low! Burning you to cover her tracks as she killed Playmor’s debut event and ruined the weekend of a hundred ticketed gamers! Who would do such a thing?”

“Well, clearly Elaine Buczkowski, for one.”

Adam tipped his head as if trying to hear better. “Say that name again?”

Tom repeated the name.

Adam nodded once, his face angry. “I wonder if this Elaine Buczkowski is any relation to Randy Buczkowski, the marketing VP of Combine Games?”

Cassandra looked at him. “Combine Games has a big presence at XP Expo this year. And they have a launch this weekend, too. You don’t think somebody would seriously sabotage an entire launch just to try to get a leg up?”

“XPO is a pretty big event,” said Adam. “It can set a company’s tone for the whole year. Playmor has been getting a lot more media attention than Combine Games. I can’t say it’s the kind of thing I would have thought of myself, but it’s possible someone else did.”

“Then then we have to get these games over to XPO,” said Cassandra. “Beat them at their own game, so to speak. Save the day for all those gamers.”

“But I can’t move the truck without dispatch,” protested Tom.

Adam shook his head. “As far as the records go, dispatch never told you to stop the truck. You got time to make up.”

Tom slammed her fist into the palm of his opposite hand. “Damn it, you’re right. Elaine might burn me yet. We’re already too late.”

Cassandra shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. That’s why Adam and I drove out here. These games have to be on-site by ten o’clock on Sunday morning. We can just make it if we take off right now.”

“You mean drive straight through?” Tom looked dubious. “There are laws and GPS tracking. There’s no point in me saving myself from Elaine if I cook myself under driver regulations.”

“Drivers can rotate,” said Cassandra. “And that’s what we’ll do.” She held up a hand as he started to protest. “This isn’t a full semi which needs weeks of training. And I do have my CDL if it comes down to it.”

“Do you now?” asked Tom.

“You do?” Adam repeated.

She nodded. “I got it two years ago to run food pantry donations and also a big passenger van for the hospital. I don’t use it much, but if we somehow get stopped, I’m legal.”

“Well then,” said Adam, “let’s finish this conversation in the cab at seventy miles an hour.”

Tom opened the cab, and they piled in. He punched information into the navigation system. “You want before ten a.m.? Okay, we’ve got nine and a half hours to make a ten hour drive plus fuel stops.”

Adam made a sound of frustration. “I don’t suppose either of you happens to have a TARDIS handy?”

Tom tapped the screen. “We run five miles an hour over the speed limit all the way back. Just enough to make up time, not enough to attract the cops’ attention, because a speeding ticket costs way more time and we’d never make it up. Traffic should be light overnight. We run shifts, keeps the driver fresher and we can push a little bit harder in traffic.”

Cassandra nodded. “It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses?”

“Exactly. Let’s do this.”

Tom took the first driving shift, as he was the only one who had not driven that day. The cab was roomy enough for the three of them to share the bench seat, and Cassandra buckled in beside Adam. “Sorry to be anti-social,” she said, “but I need to get some sleep if I’m going to drive again in a few hours.”

But she couldn’t sleep. Tom’s old-school country music was a soft drone, not terribly disturbing, and she was tired, but she was not sleepy. She rolled her head back and forth on the seat back, trying to get comfortable.

“Something wrong?” asked Adam.

“Too much caffeine,” she said. “And my neck isn’t designed to fit on this curve.”

“Well,” he said, drawing out the word almost reluctantly, “I can’t do much about the caffeine, but I can ball up a jacket and you can brace it against my shoulder. If, you know, you’re okay with that. Just so your neck isn’t getting a kink before you have to drive.”

Cassandra hesitated. Was he just being a gentleman, which was okay, or was he offering something more than a pillow, an initial physical contact which might lead to, say, holding hands?

She was okay with the second option, too.

Adam was just about to speak, probably some apologetic retraction or a joke to relieve the awkward moment, but she beat him to it. “Yeah, I’d like that. Thanks.”

He rolled his jacket, taking care to fold the zipper inside, and held it as she settled against the jacket and the seat. “Is that better?”

“A lot better. Thank you.”

She felt him nod. “Now ignore those energy drinks and get some sleep.”

She managed to drowse, her mind swimming with caffeinated dream images of orcs driving nonstop through a medieval village, trying to outrun a Jeep full of underpowered clerics. She woke when the truck stopped. “Where are we?”

“McDonald’s. Or Illinois. Whichever you meant.” Tom got out of the cab. “I’m going to hit the restroom and get a breakfast sandwich, and you can take over.”

She nodded and pushed her loose hair back. “Is that a billboard for the world’s largest wind chime?”

“You can ring it, if you want to,” called Tom over his shoulder as he walked toward the fast food restaurant.

“No time,” said Adam. “We’re cutting it really close already.” He held up his phone. “If we get out of here in the next five minutes, and stay five miles above the speed limit all the way back, we’re going to hit the convention center about forty-five minutes before game time.”

“Lemme hit the restroom and get an egg sandwich, and we’ll roll,” said Cassandra.

Tom was reluctant to turn his truck over to Cassandra, she could see it in his eyes, but he said nothing as she handled the wheel and gear shift. The truck wasn’t so much longer than what she’d driven for the hospital, and once on the interstate itself, the curves were wide and gentle enough that it was fairly easy to handle. After a half hour of gradually decreasing vigilance, Tom finally leaned away and went to sleep.

“I’m really glad you came along on this run,” Adam said after a few minutes. “And not just because you can drive the truck.”

Cassandra felt herself smiling. “Yeah, this isn’t what I expected, but I’m okay with it. It’s going to make a great story.”

“I’m a writer,” Adam said. “I like great stories.” He bobbed his head for a moment, as if trying to decide whether or not to continue, and then he said with an exaggerated drawl, “So, you think a GM and a guy like me could ever….?”

Cassandra turned and gave him a facetiously stern look. “You’re in danger of reneging on our candy bar deal.”

“I already ate that candy bar. Right now I’m working on getting you to offer me another.”

“Manipulative little nerf herder, aren’t you? I think—oh, no.”

A sea of red brake lights shone in front of them, punctuated by red and blue flashers.

Tom, woken by the change in speed, reached to punch some navigation buttons. “Take the next exit, if it’s not clear by then,” he said. “There’s a state highway. It won’t be quite as fast, but it’ll move faster than this parking lot.”

The next exit was twelve miles down the road, and the accident (an overturned truck, Adam reported as he checked Twitter) was blocking all lanes. Tom crossed his arms and leaned back, passive with the well-learned attitude that there was nothing to be done until the road was cleared. Adam fretted quietly, checking his phone and the navigation regularly as if a new route might suddenly appear. Cassandra tried not to think about what this was doing to their schedule.

Finally a lane was cleared, and they began creeping forward. Adam started recalculating, and once Cassandra was safely through the confusion and the speedometer needle was climbing again, he said, “This is bad. No reason to stop, but we probably can’t make it.”

Cassandra glanced at him. “You sound pretty level.”

“I’m still in denial. It’s a character trait.” He tapped the phone screen. “If we keep ten miles an hour above the speed limit and don’t get stopped, we’ll get in about twenty minutes before game time.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“No, because a truck full of product in a parking lot is not the same as unloaded product in a game hall.” He shook his head. “And really speeding won’t get us enough time to make a difference, even if we could risk time lost for a traffic stop. We can’t just teleport the games into the room.”

“Drive the truck in,” said Cassandra.

“What?”

“Open the loading docks to the vendor hall, clear a path to the Playmor booth, and drive on in. They’re in the back anyway, right?”

“Yes, the biggest booths tend to be in the rear. But—”

“They clear a path from the loading dock to the back of the Playmor booth, and then the truck is unloaded directly into the booth and directly into the hands of the event GMs. The GMs carry their own materials into the event room, and they are responsible for checking them back in at the end of the event. You were going to do something like that with the GMs anyway right? That keeps all of the inventory controlled for later sale, but we don’t lose so much time in unloading.”

Adam looked thoughtful. “I’m sure there are a hundred or so regulations against opening the loading dock and moving a vehicle while the vendor hall is open.”

“So we say we’re sorry afterward and send the convention center some flowers. Convention centers like flowers.”

Adam snorted. “Let me talk to Brenda.”

They were only minutes from the convention center when Adam found it.

It started with a Twitter mention, when someone had finally tagged his username late in the discussion.

I guess missing Hellraisers Menace isn’t going to be such a loss—apparently new writer @ASulln is racist, per XPO chatter. WTH, Playmor?

Adam clicked back to see the ongoing conversation, his stomach suddenly hollow and sinking, and saw more references and mentions. No one seemed to be reporting first hand, they were all quoting what they’d heard, but it was enough. More than enough. This would end him, end his game career and probably a good chunk of his personal life.

“What’s wrong?”

He looked at Cassandra. He hadn’t said anything, but he supposed there had to be some visible reaction to finding out your reputation was roadkill. He wasn’t sure how to tell her—but it was very important that he tell her first, before she stopped driving and checked XP Expo social media. “I just found a rumor about me. I’d heard about it before, but we didn’t know where it came from and I was hoping it would just blow over and disappear. But it looks like it’s gaining traction.”

She frowned. “What kind of rumor?”

“That I made racist jokes during an XPO panel.”

She screwed up her face. “What? That’s ridiculous. Even if you were racist, you seem smart enough to keep your mouth shut in public. Not that I think you’re racist, anyway. But surely someone videoed the panel? Seems like it’d be easy enough to disprove.”

Adam shook his head. “It was a morning panel, made up of people like me. Not exactly headliners, and it’s unlikely there’s a lot of continuous video. Even so, no one wants to watch an hour of video to prove someone’s innocence, not when it’s so much faster to retweet the worst. I love social media, but it’s not always the best vehicle for strict truth.”

Cassandra took a hand from the steering wheel and squeezed Adam’s wrist. “Games first,” she said. “Shorter time frame. Then we tackle this.”

He felt a little warm glow of relief through the worry. She was on his side, and she’d said we. She’d taken it on as her challenge, too. She was right; the games had to come first right now. He could fight—might be fighting—the rumor for years to come.

“Oh, here’s the exit,” she said. “Tom! This is where you take back the wheel. I can do these city streets in a pinch, but I’d rather hand off to an expert, and the convention center’s all yours.”

“This is where Elaine says I didn’t show but where I actually deliver right into the client’s own booth,” Tom said smugly. “With pleasure.”

They couldn’t drive to the booth itself—not even Brenda had been able to make that happen—but she had bullied a few convention center workers into opening one of the rear loading doors to the hall, and Tom navigated the narrow space expertly, backing the truck into the enormous room as the crowd of shoppers paused to stare and then started forward, knowing this had to be significant.

“Stand back for Hellraisers Menace!” bellowed Enrique. “GMs, queue up and have your IDs ready!”

They’d done a great job adapting, Adam realized. The GMs stretched in orderly fashion from where they were waiting at the Playmor booth to the rear of the truck, where Adam and Cassandra were throwing open the doors and Playmor booth workers were leaping inside with boxcutters. Enrique was checking out game materials and photographing each ID and scanning each convention badge’s bar code. Several con volunteers were directing GMs and their new materials away to a side door, where they would be escorted to the game hall.

By Palingar, this was going to work.

“Stop!” called a furious voice.

Adam turned and saw a man shoving through the onlookers. “Stop this!” he was shouting. “This is special treatment for Playmor and unfair to competing companies!”

Cassandra stopped passing boxes and looked at Adam. He nodded. “Randy Buczkowski, Combine Games.”

Cassandra nodded and stepped off the back of the truck as Randy reached Enrique and one of the convention center workers. “Stop this right now,” he demanded, “or I’m suing XP Expo and the convention center itself.”

Enrique held up his hands. “Randy, please, let’s be reasonable.”

“Reasonable? Is it reasonable to endanger thousands of con attendees by driving a truck through the building just so you can gain an unfair advantage in product distribution?”

“What’s unfair about it?” Enrique countered. “You’ve had your product for sale all weekend!”

But the convention center employee was more rattled by the threat of suit and, by extension, his job. “Now hold on, we can—”

“Then get this truck out of here!” Randy shouted at him. “And don’t think we don’t know where this is going,” he continued to Enrique and to Brenda, who was rushing to join them. “Everyone knows this is a ploy to draw attention from the fact that one of your writers is a blatant racist who offended an entire roomful of attendees here already. Notice how Sullivan vanished as soon as complaints started going around? Nice try. You think people are just going to forget about that?”

Adam froze. Randy Buczkowski was speaking loudly; he wanted to be heard by the crowd around him. Should Adam speak up? Would identifying himself make it better or worse?

Brenda looked exhausted and now more than a little sick to her stomach. She very obviously did not look at the listening shoppers pressing close as she answered, “You know as well as anyone else that we don’t know that, Randy. No video has surfaced from the panel, and we have just a couple of complaints with no names attached to them, and—”

“It doesn’t matter if there are names on the complaints!” Randy bellowed. “You don’t ask people who are offended to identify themselves! And there doesn’t have to be video, because—”

“Who’s Elaine Buczkowski?” Cassandra’s voice cut firmly across Randy’s diatribe.

He wheeled. “What?”

“Sister? Wife, maybe? Oh, ex-wife, wow.” Cassandra was a few feet away, looking at a phone. “Ex-wife who really needs that child support, and she could either go to court for a long battle or do you a single favor and get all the back payments at once.”

Randy stared at her. “What—how do you… Wait!”

Cassandra shook her head. “That’s a dirty trick, Randy. Really dirty.”

“You can’t prove—”

“—That you coerced your dispatcher ex-wife into ordering the delay of Playmor products to ruin their XPO launch? Oh, I think I can. I already saved the screencap.”

Randy stared at her and then, in a moment of horror, reached for his pocket. His hand came back empty.

He lunged at Cassandra. “Give me that phone!”

But she was already leaping onto the back of the truck, where Adam pulled her out of reach as Enrique and the convention center worker blocked Randy’s forward charge. Around them the crowd was gasping and starting to murmur.

“You guys want to see it for yourselves?” Cassandra called. “It’s right here, all in text messages, pretty clear once you know what it’s talking about. Give me half a minute, I’ll share it on the XPO social app and you can all see it.” She thumbed across the phone’s screen. “Just let me open up the—oh, wow, what is this?”

Randy surged toward the truck, his eyes murderous. “Give me back that phone!”

Cassandra looked up from the screen. “Randy Buczkowski, you wanna tell everyone here why there’s a sock puppet account on your XPO app? With a complaint about racist remarks by Adam Sullivan?”

Adam looked at Cassandra, realization dawning, and then back at Randy, fuming behind Enrique.

“You made it up, didn’t you?” Cassandra accused. She had been snarky about the text messages and the shipment delay, but she was furious now. “You’re the one who accused Adam so you could discredit him and Playmor Games! You didn’t care what it would do to him. And when legitimate problems get ignored, when real issues get called fake, it’s because of you and people like you. People like you make real social progress difficult!”

“You have no right to that phone!” screamed Randy. “Anonymous means anonymous!”

Cassandra grasped the edge of the truck door and leaned over Randy and the crowd, holding the phone facing outward to the crowd. “Look at yourself, Randy—dirty businessman, deadbeat dad, and perverter of social justice. Is there anything we left out?”

Randy leaped and caught Cassandra’s arm, snatching her down. She screamed and dropped the phone, scrabbling for a grip as she fell toward Randy and the concrete floor, and Adam lunged to catch the back waistband of her jeans. He yanked her back and wrapped both arms about her as he pushed back into the truck and they fell against a stack of cardboard boxes.

“Are you okay?” Adam turned Cassandra to face him.

“Guess we forgot assailant,” she said breathlessly. “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks.”

They turned back as security was closing on Randy, struggling against a dozen black-shirt clad gamers who were pushing him away from the truck. He spat a stream of profanity toward Cassandra, and she turned her head. “Tom?”

Tom the driver raised his free hand, still holding his phone up to record. “A bit shaky in spots, but I got it!”

She nodded. “Thanks, Tom! You’re awesome!” She looked at Adam. “I was just hoping to catch his reaction to the dispatcher thing, but I’m guessing this will blow up big enough to wipe out any allegations against you, too.”

Adam shook his head slowly, grinning at her. “You—you were—you pickpocketed his phone?”

“What can I say? I’m a rogue at heart.”

“Or you have a heart for rogues?” Adam put his hands on her shoulders. “I love you.”

One corner of Cassandra’s mouth lifted. “I know.”

“Adam!” Brenda called. “We need you for the Hellraisers game.”

Adam slid his palms down Cassandra’s arms to take her hands. “When the game’s over, we’re each going to go to our hotel rooms and shower and sleep. But after that, do you want to get some coffee?”

Cassandra made a face. “Ugh. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to face caffeine again.”

“There’s a smoothie place in the food court. Sound exciting?”

“Guys!” Brenda’s voice was sharp. “Come on!”

Cassandra kept her eyes on Adam’s. “A smoothie with you isn’t quite enough to get me excited.” She waited, one eyebrow raised.

Adam was ready. “Sorry, sweetheart, haven’t got time for anything else.”

Cassandra laughed. “You’re on. Now let’s go debut some Hellraisers.”

Laura was born at a very early age and never looked back. She overcame childhood deficiencies of having been born without teeth or developed motor skills, and by the time she matured into a recognizable adult she had become a behavior analyst, an internationally-recognized and award-winning animal trainer, a popular costumer/cosplayer, a tabletop gamer, a chocolate addict, and of course a writer. Find her at www.LauraVanArendonkBaugh.com