Chapter 1

My team was the only one in the company that hit its performance targets this year.

At the year-end party, the boss waited until everyone else had left, then he pulled out a big red box and had the four of us in my team draw blind boxes.

I drew a desktop tower caked in dust, an antique that looked like it belonged in a museum.

Haley Lambert, my teammate, drew a monitor covered edge to edge in scratches.

Drew Sandler got a keyboard with every letter worn clean off the keys.

Gabe Carell ended up with a grease-slicked wired mouse.

Our boss, Cyrus Griffin, clapped me on the shoulder, grinning drunkenly. "You young people love a blind box, right? It's all about that thrill of not knowing!

"Besides, this is exactly the kind of hardware the tech department needs. Consider it motivation."

That night, though, his social media told a different story: a photo of our whole team, captioned [Team snags a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus!]

I zoomed in. He hadn't even bothered to crop out the AI watermark in the corner.

The whole company liked the post.

People started messaging me, asking how much I'd actually pocketed, before or after tax.

I looked at that junker of a computer and laughed.

Since the boss had gone to the trouble of "fully equipping" our team, our next project was obviously going to make "full use" of every last piece of it.

Chapter 1

The next morning, I'd barely stepped through the front door of the office before the receptionist stopped me.

"Taylor, congratulations! I heard your team split a hundred thousand dollars!"

Her eyes practically lit up, and she was still holding half a sausage bun in one hand.

"You've got to take the whole company out for a big seafood dinner at The Captain's Table tonight, don't you think?"

Before I could get a word out, the tech department's group chat had already exploded.

Everyone was tagging me, demanding a tiny share of the bonus.

Someone else chimed in, dripping with sarcasm: [Must've just been luck. The results weren't even that impressive.]

I didn't bother replying. I walked straight to my desk.

Haley was slumped over her desk, crying, her shoulders shaking with every breath.

The antique monitor, still smeared with dried chili sauce, sat right in front of her. Its screen was covered in scratches, like something dug up out of a grave.

Drew's face was dark as a storm cloud, that letterless keyboard sitting in front of him.

The gaps between the keys were packed with some unidentifiable black grime.

Gabe had it worse. His grease-slicked mouse wouldn't even fit into a modern USB port. He sat there gripping an adapter, his hand shaking like he had Parkinson's.

These were the "hundred-thousand-dollar winners" the entire company was so jealous of.

"Taylor, there's no way we can work like this."

Drew slammed the keyboard down on the desk, and a couple of keys popped loose.

"That old Scrooge must've dumped every piece of e-waste in the warehouse straight onto us.

"And that social media post looked so real, my mom called me this morning asking if I could lend my uncle money for a house."

Haley lifted her head, her eyes swollen like walnuts.

"I told her I didn't have it, and she called me an ungrateful brat, said the second I got money I stopped acknowledging family, told me not to even bother coming home for the holidays..."

I looked at the three of them, my team, the people who'd busted their backs beside me all year long.

Something hot flared up in my chest.

But I didn't let it show. I sat down calmly and pressed the power button on that wreck of a computer.

A deafening whir tore through the office, like a tractor had driven straight into the building.

Coworkers all around us turned to stare, clapping their hands over their ears in disgust.

"What is that? Why's it so loud?"

"They finally get money, and they still won't spring for a decent computer. Cheap as hell."

That was when Cyrus walked in, his beer belly leading the way, his face flushed with satisfaction.

He was still carrying that thermos of his, steeping with chamomile tea.

He was clearly savoring the attention, basking in it like the hundred-thousand-dollar bonus really had come out of his own generous pocket.

"Well, look at everyone, all here already."

He strolled over to our team, beaming down at us, completely ignoring the pile of garbage hardware on our desks.

"Morale's looking good. Perfect timing, actually. The client's smart-city project needs to move fast."

"The core module has to go live by Friday. It's a big contract. I wouldn't trust it to just anyone, so it's got to be you, my hundred-thousand-dollar dream team, carrying the flag."

Chapter 2

The jealous looks from the coworkers around us only got sharper.

Haley was shaking with anger, on the verge of standing up to say something.

I grabbed her hand and held it down, giving her a look.

Then I turned to Cyrus, plastering on my best professional smile.

"No problem, Mr. Griffin. Since you gave us such a generous bonus, of course we'll give it everything we've got."

I made sure to stress the words generous bonus, and gave the roaring computer tower a friendly pat for good measure.

Dust billowed up in a cloud, drifting through the sunlight.

Cyrus choked on it, coughing twice and stumbling back a step.

He frowned and waved a hand. "What's wrong with this thing? Why's it so dusty?"

I explained, my expression the picture of sincerity.

"Mr. Griffin, this is the blind-box grand prize you awarded me yesterday. You said it yourself; this is exactly the hardware the tech department needs.

"I figured, since it came from the boss's own heart, I owe it to you to build the core module on it. Have to soak up some of that good fortune."

Cyrus's expression froze for a second.

Clearly, he had no memory of the drunken speech he'd given the night before, and he definitely hadn't expected me to actually use the thing.

But in his mind, as long as something could run code, it might as well be an abacus doubling as a server.

"Fine, fine. As long as you've got the right attitude. Whatever equipment you use, I want to see results by Friday.

"If you can't deliver... well. The company does have every right to claw back that hundred-thousand-dollar bonus."

With that, he shot us one last meaningful look and sauntered off, hands clasped behind his back.

"He's really getting into character now, isn't he?" Gabe muttered a curse under his breath.

Drew looked ready to smash the keyboard over the back of his own head.

"Taylor, why'd you stop Haley? This junk heap takes ten minutes just to boot up. How are we supposed to run code on it?"

"Exactly. The color on this monitor is so far off, red comes out looking like baby-diaper yellow."

I watched Cyrus disappear into his office and shut the door.

The smile on my face went cold.

"Listen up. The boss has spoken, so we're going to listen. He says the tech department needs this hardware. Fine. We'll only use this hardware."

I unplugged my own high-performance laptop, the one I'd been using all along.

Then I pointed at the wreck of a tower still roaring away on the desk.

"Drew, your code doesn't need comments, does it? The keyboard's basically unreadable anyway, so typos from typing blind are only natural.

"Gabe, the mouse is unresponsive. If you accidentally delete a few database tables or drag the wrong file, that's completely understandable too.

"Haley, just design the interface to match this monitor. If it shows white, then as far as we're concerned, it's white."

The three of them froze.

They traded a glance.

Drew was the first to catch on. He picked up the popped-off keycap and snapped it back into place, not bothering to check whether it was even in the right spot.

"Got it, Chief. This keyboard's got terrible feel, my enter key keeps sticking. If the code runs a few thousand extra lines into an infinite loop, that's really not on me."

Gabe plugged in the grease-slicked mouse too.

The cursor twitched wildly across the screen like it was having a seizure.

"Would you look at that, this mouse is way too sensitive. I try to click save, and somehow it keeps sliding over to format instead."

Haley wiped her tears away.

Looking at the monitor, half of it lit up and speckled with static, she wore the most relaxed smile she'd had all year.

"Chief, I actually think this retro filter on the display is kind of nice. Didn't the client want 'colorful black' anyway? I think I can deliver exactly that right now."

I nodded, satisfied.

Working with smart people was always this easy.

If the boss wanted to play blind-box roulette with our hearts, then I'd make sure his own heart didn't stop racing for the rest of the week.

I clapped my hands together. "Let's get to work."

Chapter 3

Between the deafening whir of the fan and the rest of that wreck of a tower, our team got to work "efficiently."

I didn't sit idle all morning, either.

On that painfully laggy machine, I wrote a small program.

Its whole purpose was to simulate the computer's "random malfunctions."

Things like an automatic blue screen every half hour.

Or an input-method glitch that quietly swapped out "Mr. Griffin" for "Mr. Scrooge" every time someone typed it.

Of course, that was just an appetizer.

The real weapon was being saved for Friday's demo.

Around lunchtime, Phil Wray, the supervisor from the team next door, wandered over.

He and Cyrus were thick as thieves, and Phil's favorite hobby was running to the boss with gossip.

"Hey, Taylor, I heard your team split a hundred thousand dollars. Why are you still eating takeout for lunch?"

He eyed the plate of barbecued pork on my desk with a smirk.

"Don't want to treat everyone, so you're playing poor?"

I took a bite without even looking up.

"Very funny, Phil. The bonus hasn't hit our accounts yet. Mr. Griffin says the paperwork takes time. Besides, we're too busy rushing to finish this project to go out for a fancy meal."

Phil pursed his lips, obviously not buying it.

"Please. Mr. Griffin already posted it on social media. How could that be fake? You people are just cheap."

As he said it, his eyes drifted over to Haley's monitor, which was flickering wildly.

"Oh, is that the blind-box prize? Looks like it's got some history to it. Mr. Griffin really went to a lot of trouble. This is what you'd call building character."

I smiled and didn't say anything back.

Building character?

Sure.

He was about to find out exactly what character-building felt like.

At three in the afternoon, Cyrus suddenly tagged me in the group chat:

[@Taylor the client wants a quick look at our progress. Send a screenshot of the current interface to the group chat.]

I glanced at Haley.

She caught on instantly.

She took a screenshot of that badly discolored screen.

The interface was supposed to be a clean, techy blue.

Filtered through that ruined monitor, it came out as a nightmarish, sickly green.

Because the resolution didn't match, the whole layout was stretched like a funhouse mirror.

The text was so blurry it looked pixelated into mush.

Haley sent me the screenshot.

I forwarded it straight to the group chat without touching a single thing, captioned: [Thanks to the professional monitor Mr. Griffin so generously provided, the color reproduction is outstanding and perfectly captures the client's vision.]

The group chat went dead silent.

A full minute passed.

Then Cyrus sent a voice message, and I could hear him seething.

"What is this garbage?! I asked for a smart city, not a haunted house tour!

"What's with all this green? Why does the font look like a pile of worms?"

I replied, calm as ever: [Mr. Griffin, that's just what the monitor you gave us actually shows. The whole team thinks it looks great, actually. Really easy on the eyes. Is it possible it just looks different on your end? Might be a problem with your phone.]

I added one more message for good measure.

[After all, we made this using the "department-approved professional hardware" you personally selected.]

Cyrus didn't respond.

Two minutes later, Phil came jogging over, out of breath.

"Taylor, Mr. Griffin wants you in his office!"