Chapter Text
The crazy thing about doing unapproved nootropics with your coworkers is how fantastic everybody’s ideas seem until one sober person comes along and pokes holes in them all.
To Winston, the Axe Cap strategy to corner the minerals market and make geopolitical gains had sounded like a winner, from the minute Mafee had filled them in on the plan, through Rian ferreting out the phone numbers of half a dozen top Chilean bureaucrats and Axe glancing his way when one of his nicer analysts pointed Winston out as the developer of the trading tool being used to sell the most worthless of Axe Cap’s positions, right up to the moment he’d greeted Taylor with news of the play and his role in it. But something about Taylor leaving the office with the last of Mase Carb’s Vigilantrix stash and sweeping back in three minutes later, ordering everyone to turn off their terminals and go home for the night, and asking Winston and Rian to wait in their office while they tracked down Mafee gave Winston the sinking feeling that freeing up $3 billion to capture meteors and mine them for rare metals wasn’t as solid a move as they’d all thought.
“This is like being in time-out,” Rian says. She’s next to him on the couch across from Taylor’s desk, which is weird considering there are plenty of other seats and he was here first. Winston sometimes inwardly calls it the Couch of Shame, since he’s only ever sat here when his job was on the line; he wonders if that’s true now too. “Reminds me of my last job.”
“Do you think we’re in trouble?”
“Obviously we are. Otherwise I wouldn’t have compared it to time-out.” Rian frowns a little, and it makes Winston’s heart skip a beat. Well, he hopes Rian frowning is the cause. He wasn’t given a list of side effects for this stuff. “I’m just not sure why.”
“Probably because Taylor thinks Axe is making a bad move and we shouldn’t have helped him,” Winston says. “Or it’s not Earth-friendly enough to justify using Mase Carbon resources, or both, or some other thing Taylor’s thought of and we haven’t.”
“I don’t see how Taylor could think of anything we haven’t. We’re cognitively enhanced.”
“Taylor doesn’t need enhancement to be smart, that’s why they’re the CEO.”
Rian turns her whole head to look at him. “Do you always get sappy when your brain chemistry is altered?”
“Sappy?” The question — the accusation, that’s what it is — kicks his pulse up more than a few BPM. “I’m not sappy.”
“You’re defending Taylor’s intelligence to me for no reason. I know they’re smart. And before, you were staring at me and saying how I’m so impressive and we’re meant for each other.”
“Did I really say that last thing?” Did the Vigilantrix fry his memory? He desperately needs his memory to not be fried. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Okay,” Rian says. “I’m kidding. Estoy bromeando.”
That was suspiciously easy. “I feel like you only said that because I asked and not because it’s true.”
“You never said it had to be true.”
The office door swings open and Taylor strides in, followed by Mafee. “— and you know how convincing Axe can be even on a normal day.”
“I do.”
Mafee throws himself into a chair. “If you were there when he was singing the praises of this shit and on it himself, you would have taken it too —”
“I wouldn’t have, actually. But I suppose that was an editorial ‘you.’” Taylor sits down behind their desk. “Okay. I’d like to hear, from any or all of you, a coherent summary of what happened today so that it can be fixed.”
“What needs fixing?” Rian says. Winston elbows her in the side; she elbows him back. “Axe’s plan is about to go off without a hitch.”
“The plan is the hitch. Counting on a Socialist loss in Chile to pave the way to a planetary launch site there for a meteor capture mission is nonsensical, and the only reason it’s come this close to execution is that everyone else in this office is high on untested stimulants and misplaced confidence.”
“My confidence is placed fine.”
“Rian.” Taylor leans forward. “You are not fluent in Spanish. And Winston does not admire Axe so much that he would be giddy over Axe simply looking in his direction on any other day.”
“First of all, I’m right here, again,” Winston says, over Rian insisting “¡Mi hambre es bombero tirantes!” “Second, appreciating someone actually appreciating me for once doesn’t mean my brain’s fucking broken.”
“So you being obnoxious right now is just you?” Mafee folds his arms, managing to be even more annoying than he’s accusing Winston of being, the sanctimonious jackass. “I already had a headache and you’re making it worse.”
“Says the guy who fed us all uppers in the first place. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s yours.”
“I never said you had to take them.”
“You sure fucking implied it.”
“You kind of did,” Rian puts in. Winston could kiss her, which is a dangerous thought to be having for many reasons but primarily because his voice-brain barrier has been far too permeable already today. “Said we might be shut out if we went without.”
“You know what I’d like to shut out? You two and your goddamn —”
“Hey!” Taylor barks, shutting everyone up at once. Somehow Winston had forgotten they were there. “Thank you. Winston.” They turn to him. “What I would appreciate is you telling me what button I need to press to prevent this from going forward.” A crease appears between their eyebrows. “If you can.”
Winston opens his mouth to deliver the rundown, then rewinds to the end of their request. “What do you mean, if I can? What makes you think I couldn’t?”
“You’re shaking,” Taylor says with quiet concern. Winston glances down at his hands — sure enough, they’re trembling like he downed half a dozen Red Bulls instead of one pill — and realizes his heart never stopped racing. “Mafee, you said you had a headache.”
“Yeah, and I don’t usually get them.”
Taylor turns to Rian. “Are you experiencing any adverse effects?”
A shrug. “I’ve had, like, no appetite all day, if that counts.”
Winston looks from Rian, whose confidence now seems as shaky as he feels, to Mafee, who’s unwound his arms to cradle his head in one hand, to Taylor, whose jaw is tight when they say, “Okay. Go home, all of you, and rest. I’ll handle this.”