The next morning dawned pale and silver, the clouds hanging low enough to swallow the tops of the taller buildings. Ariel and Holly stepped out of the cab in front of Willowbound HQ, bundled against the chill, their breath curling in the cold air.

  Inside, the lobby was warm and softly lit, the polished tile echoing faintly under their steps. The front desk security guard - a broad-shouldered man in a navy blazer - smiled the moment they came in.

  “Morning, Ariel. Morning, Holly,” he said, scanning their badges.

  Holly grinned. “Morning, Greg.” Her tone was casual, but there was a little spark in her eyes that made Ariel smile. Holly had only met Greg yesterday, yet here she was already greeting him like an old friend.

  The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, and they stepped inside. The ride to the eighteenth floor felt oddly buoyant; the mirrored walls reflected Holly’s faintly flushed cheeks, her hair catching the elevator light.

  “You’re staring,” Holly teased, leaning slightly into Ariel.

  “I’m allowed,” Ariel murmured back, the corner of her mouth tilting up.

  When the elevator doors parted, the familiar hum of the studio spilled out: keyboards clacking, muted conversations, the faint scent of coffee drifting from the break room. Today, though, it was noticeably livelier.

  Holly barely made it ten feet before the first stop.

  “Hey, you’re Holly, right?” A young woman with a Willowbound hoodie and a tablet under one arm smiled warmly. She hadn’t been in the office yesterday, “I just wanted to say welcome and thank you for what you did at the event. We all saw the way you stepped in.”

  Holly’s shoulders relaxed, her reply easy and warm. “Oh, that was nothing. Just looking out for my girl.”

  Another voice chimed in from the side; one of the game designers Ariel worked with on Act 2 systems. “You’re the reason our director didn’t get swallowed alive by the press. Seriously, you’re a legend.”

  Holly laughed, the sound low and genuine. “Legend feels like a stretch, but I’ll take it.”

  Ariel mostly watched, smiling quietly, letting Holly work her particular brand of magic. The air around her felt brighter somehow. Lighter. As if this buzzing, excited energy had been waiting for her to walk into it.

  By the time they finally neared their office, Ariel caught herself thinking that Holly had slipped into this place like she’d been here all along.

  Just as Ariel reached for the office door, Abigail’s voice carried down the hall.

  “Perfect timing.”

  They both turned to see her striding toward them, a sleek black folder in one hand, coffee in the other. She was already smiling; that practiced, confident curve of expression that told Ariel she was in “let’s make things happen” mode.

  “Holly, I need to borrow you for a bit,” Abigail said. “We’ve got the PR strategy meeting for the quarter starting in five, and I want you in the room.”

  Holly blinked, caught somewhere between surprise and excitement. “Uh…already?”

  Abigail laughed. “Better to throw you in the pool than keep you on the edge watching. And don’t worry, you’re not expected to present. I just want you to listen, get a feel for how we do things, and maybe chime in if you have thoughts.”

  Holly’s eyes lit up. “Alright then.”

  Ariel glanced at her with a smile. “You’ll do great.”

  Abigail led Holly toward the far end of the floor, weaving past glass-walled meeting rooms and little break-out areas. The PR conference room was already buzzing when they stepped in. Long table, wall-mounted screen displaying the meeting agenda, half a dozen people flipping through notes.

  “Everyone, this is Holly Sinclair,” Abigail said as they entered. “She’s joining us as PR Manager for the Director of Game Development.”

  A round of smiles and quick greetings followed. Holly returned them all, noting names as best she could: Melissa from social media, Aaron from marketing analytics, Kendra from event planning, two interns whose enthusiasm was palpable.

  The meeting kicked off with a rundown of current social engagement numbers, then shifted to event planning for the next quarter. Holly listened closely, jotting a few notes in the small spiral notebook she’d brought from home.

  When Melissa brought up the fan Q&A panel for Wispwood Haven, she paused. “We’re thinking of having Ariel answer pre-screened questions live, maybe alongside a couple of the designers.”

  “That could work,” Kendra said, “but we’d need someone to moderate in case the questions get too deep into unreleased content.”

  Abigail looked sideways at Holly. “Sound like something you’d be comfortable handling?”

  Holly hesitated for half a beat, then nodded. “Sure. I’m still learning what’s safe to share, but if Ariel’s there, we can handle anything that comes up.”

  “Good,” Abigail said, clearly pleased.

  The conversation moved on to influencer outreach, booth layout for the next expo, a tentative podcast guest appearance for Ariel. By the time the meeting wrapped an hour later, Holly had three pages of notes and a head buzzing with ideas.

  As they stepped out into the hallway, Abigail glanced at her. “So? Overwhelmed?”

  Holly shook her head, smiling. “Excited. And… maybe a little overwhelmed. But mostly excited.”

  “Good answer,” Abigail said with a smirk. “Now go tell Ariel all about it. I want her to see what she’s unleashed.”

  The door to their office clicked open and Holly slipped inside, cheeks flushed with that unmistakable post-meeting energy. Ariel was leaning back in her chair, spinning slightly as she skimmed through some Trello updates. She stopped mid-turn when she saw Holly’s face.

  “Uh-oh,” Ariel said, grinning. “Looks like someone had fun in a corporate PR meeting.”

  Holly shut the door behind her and crossed the room, practically glowing. “I may have.”

  Ariel rolled her chair toward her, stopping just short of bumping Holly’s knees. “Tell me everything.”

  Holly laughed, sinking into her chair. “Okay, so first of all, Abigail just casually drags me into the quarterly PR strategy meeting like it’s nothing. Whole team’s there: Melissa from social, Aaron from marketing analytics, Kendra from events. Even a couple interns who looked like they’d been waiting all year for this. They all know who I am, by the way.”

  Ariel’s grin widened. “Of course they do. You’re the new secret weapon.”

  “Apparently. I just sat there taking notes at first, but then they started talking about the Wispwood Haven Q&A panel, and Abigail just… throws me in. ‘Would you be comfortable moderating?’ Like that. No warning.”

  Ariel tilted her head, curious. “And?”

  “I said yes,” Holly said, still smiling, “because it’s you and me. We can handle anything. Which got me a couple nods like I’d just passed some kind of unspoken test.”

  Ariel reached over and squeezed her hand. “You’re already killing it.”

  Holly leaned back, letting out a deep breath. “Then we moved into event planning, influencer stuff, and possible podcast appearances for you. Which, by the way, we are absolutely doing.”

  “Oh, are we?” Ariel teased, smirking. “You’re the boss now?”

  “In PR? Yes. Everywhere else? …I’ll let you think so.” Holly winked.

  Ariel laughed and finally stood, moving toward the small break room just down the hall. “Come on. I brought lunch. You can tell me the rest over food.”

  They ended up at a little corner table, unpacking a pair of sandwiches and chips from the bag Ariel had stashed in the fridge earlier. Between bites, Holly continued her animated recap of the meeting. The way Kendra already wanted her input on booth layout, Melissa hinting at a special fan art feature, Aaron offering to walk her through analytics later in the week.

  “You’re making friends fast,” Ariel said around a sip of iced tea.

  Holly shrugged, pretending to be modest but clearly enjoying it. “It’s easy when everyone’s working on something this fun. And… I like that they want me involved right away. Makes me feel like I’m really part of the team.”

  Ariel’s smile softened. “You are.”

  Holly reached across the table, brushing Ariel’s fingers with her own.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  They lingered for another fifteen minutes, laughter and low conversation weaving around the clink of sandwich wrappers and the occasional passerby. By the time they returned to the office, Holly was brimming with plans, and Ariel had that quiet, proud glow she only ever got when watching Holly in her element.

  The next morning arrived with a soft, overcast haze, and the faint patter of Seattle drizzle against the office windows. Inside their office, Holly sat perched at her desk, her brow furrowed slightly as she scrolled through SharePoint documents and Slack threads. Her outfit was business-casual, but with her usual colorful flair: a navy blazer with yellow buttons and a sunflower hair clip tucked in beside her braid. She had a pen tucked behind her ear that she hadn't used once, but insisted made her “look official.”

  Across the room, Ariel was deep in a thread about Act 3 narrative flows, earbuds in and one hand scribbling notes while the other adjusted code snippets. She glanced up now and then, shooting Holly the occasional smile or mouthing “You good?” to which Holly would grin and flash a thumbs-up... and then promptly return to rereading the same paragraph for the fourth time.

  By midmorning, Holly had her feet beneath her a bit more. She was learning where files lived, how to ping the right people, what questions to redirect to Ariel, and what ones she could answer herself with a bit of charm and confidence. Her Slack presence had already started to develop a reputation: light-hearted, emoji-laden, but professional when it counted.

  It was just after 11:15 when a knock at the door broke through their respective focuses. Abigail stepped in, tablet in hand, her expression bright but purposeful.

  “Hey you two,” she greeted. “Am I interrupting anything urgent?”

  Ariel paused her music and swiveled her chair. “Nope, just wrangling Act 3 logic.”

  Holly straightened in her seat. “I was just trying to figure out if this document is a FAQ draft or a trap.”

  Abigail laughed. “Definitely both. But I’ll save you from that for a minute.”

  She stepped inside and pulled the door partially shut behind her, walking over to lean against the edge of Holly’s desk.

  “I wanted to run something by you both,” she said. “I’ve been fielding press requests all week after the photos from the expo went viral. Most of them are fluff or premature, but there’s one I think is worth doing — a sit-down interview with GamesNorthWest Weekly.”

  Ariel blinked. “That’s… kind of a big one, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Abigail nodded. “But they’re good. Local. Indie-focused. They’re not after gossip or industry drama. They’re just genuinely interested in you, the project, the leadership change… and,” she glanced at Holly with a knowing smile, “the story behind the red panda pitch.”

  Holly flushed pink at that. “Oh God. It is out there, huh?”

  Abigail smirked. “It is. And it’s getting traction.”

  She turned her attention back to Ariel. “The interview is next Tuesday, offsite, at a studio in Capitol Hill. They’ll want to talk about your leadership vision, the culture here at Willowbound, what it’s like being a woman in a director role — that sort of thing. Nothing hostile, but it’s a lot.”

  Ariel nodded slowly. “I can do that.”

  Abigail smiled. “I know. And I want Holly to prep you for it.”

  That made both women look up in unison.

  “I mean it,” Abigail went on. “Holly, I want you to coordinate the details with their team, get Ariel prepped and comfortable with the questions, even sit in during the interview if that helps. Consider it your first real PR assignment.”

  Holly blinked. “Wait, really?”

  “You’ve already proven you can handle a crowd,” Abigail said warmly. “Now I want to see how you handle a narrative.”

  There was a beat of silence. Then Ariel turned in her chair toward Holly and grinned.

  “You up for being my media wrangler?”

  Holly beamed, all nerves vanishing into excitement. “Hell yes I am.”

  Abigail laughed. “Good. I’ll forward you both the draft questions and contact info for the editor. You’ve got a week. Let’s make a great impression.”

  She stood, gave them both an approving nod, and slipped out of the office, the door clicking gently shut behind her.

  Ariel raised an eyebrow. “Guess we’re doing this.”

  Holly smiled, her heart pounding a little. “Guess we are.”

  By early afternoon, the soft patter of rain against the office windows had slowed to a dull drizzle. Inside their shared office, Ariel and Holly had settled into a rhythm. Ariel had printed out the draft interview questions and highlighted a few key sections. Now, she sat at the edge of her desk with her laptop balanced on her thighs, talking through each one as Holly took notes.

  "Okay," Ariel said, tapping the screen, "this one here: 'Describe your leadership style.' I feel like I need to come up with something better than 'Uh, I try not to suck.'"

  Holly grinned and jotted something down. "How about: 'Supportive and collaborative with a focus on clear communication and emotional safety.' Then you can back it up with examples of how you run meetings."

  Ariel blinked. "Damn. That’s good. You’re terrifyingly good at this."

  "You picked me," Holly said, pretending to dust her knuckles on her blazer. "Now, for this next one” 'What inspires your work?' We can lean into the whole nature-meets-cozy-worldbuilding vibe. Maybe talk about your favorite childhood games?"

  They kept at it, building a working doc with bullet-point responses, bolded examples, and underlined notes for tone. Holly even pulled in a few quotes from past interviews the studio had done, using them as guideposts to stay on-message. Every now and then, she stood and paced, reading questions aloud in her best 'press interviewer' voice, while Ariel answered and adjusted her language until it felt natural.

  By 2:15 PM, they had made it through nearly half the list.

  Holly leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms overhead. "We are absolutely nailing this."

  Ariel reached for her tea. "It’s weird how much I don’t hate this when I’m doing it with you."

  Before Holly could respond, the office door burst open.

  "Ariel!" came a breathless voice.

  It was the QA lead, Michael. His face was pale, eyes wide.

  "The entire QA environment just went down. No logins, no staging builds. Nothing."

  Ariel was on her feet in a flash, tea forgotten.

  "What? Did the deployment server crash? Or the integration layer?"

  "We don’t know. Everything just stopped working. I already pinged IT, but it’s not just a routing issue."

  Ariel grabbed her badge and started toward the door. "I’m heading to the server room. Keep Slack updated. If Jenkins is throwing errors, tag me in the logs."

  And just like that, she was gone.

  Holly sat in stunned silence for a moment, then took a breath and turned back to her monitor.

  She pulled up the shared interview doc and began reorganizing the structure, grouping questions by theme: leadership, culture, game design philosophy. Then she opened another window and began researching the GamesNorthWest Weekly editor, skimming through previous interviews they'd done. She noted their tone—light, thoughtful, never pushy—and started tailoring some of Ariel’s talking points to match.

  Every few minutes, she checked Slack. No new updates yet. Ariel hadn't replied to her message. But Holly kept going.

  She made a backup folder with copies of everything they had worked on, just in case. She added time estimates beside each question to keep the interview pacing smooth. She flagged a few risky areas—things they might ask that Ariel shouldn't answer yet, like specific release dates or future platform plans.

  By the time the clock ticked past 3 PM, Holly had assembled a full press prep packet. She even printed a clean version and laid it on Ariel’s desk, weighting it with a ceramic fox paperweight she'd brought from home.

  Still no word.

  She glanced toward the door, worry flickering behind her eyes.

  But she stayed put.

  Whatever was happening out there, she would be ready when Ariel came back.

  Meanwhile, two floors below, Ariel stepped into the server room, immediately hit by the dense warmth and mechanical hum of the racks.

  Cables ran like arteries across the backs of blinking units. Several engineers and IT personnel were already huddled near the core rack, hushed voices traded over the hum of failing fans and console logs scrolling furiously across a monitor.

  "Talk to me," Ariel said as she approached, her tone sharp but calm.

  One of the engineers turned. "It’s Jenkins. We think a corrupted job took down the deployment pipeline and crashed the virtual staging nodes. We've isolated it to a test artifact from yesterday’s build."

  Ariel set her laptop on an empty cart and plugged in. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she reviewed the Jenkins logs, cross-referencing timestamps and version IDs. Within moments, she spotted the job in question.

  "Okay. This one here," she pointed at the screen. "Kill the job. Roll back to the last good build from Saturday. If we isolate the corrupted node, we can bring QA back online without needing to touch the main production environment."

  IT nodded and began issuing commands.

  Ariel opened a separate terminal and started checking the environment status reports. Several nodes were hanging but not fully dead. She initiated a soft reboot on the least impacted servers first, watching like a hawk for recovery signs. After a few minutes, two of them came back online.

  "That’s something," she muttered.

  She pinged the QA lead through Slack. Rolling QA back now. ETA for full access: 30 minutes. Will confirm once nodes stabilize.

  As she continued triaging the failure, her mind was already moving ten steps ahead: debugging scripts, fault tolerance metrics, a permanent patch. She didn’t notice the minutes ticking by.

  Only when she finally leaned back and saw the cluster slowly turning green did she allow herself a breath. Still typing one-handed, she grabbed her phone and sent Holly a message.

  QA’s almost back. Sorry for the silence. You okay up there?

  Then she closed her laptop, gathered her things, and turned toward the elevators.

  Time to return to her partner, and the prep they had already nailed so beautifully together.

  Ariel stepped back into the office, rain-damp and focused. She slid into her chair and immediately opened a new email draft, typing quickly.

  Subject:* QA Environment Restored – Please Read*

  Team,

  The QA environment has been restored using Saturday’s last stable build. The issue was traced to a corrupted job in yesterday’s test artifact. Please re-run any jobs that were submitted since Saturday, excluding the corrupted one: jobID #4573-DP-TEMP. That one’s been terminated and quarantined.

  Thanks for your patience, Ariel

  She hit send, exhaled slowly, and looked up to find Holly beaming at her from across the room.

  "You were a total badass," Holly said, her eyes gleaming. "When you bolted out of here earlier, I swear, I’ve never seen someone look more heroic."

  Ariel flushed, brushing her hair behind one ear. "Holly. Do not say things like that to me while we’re at work. I swear. I will melt."

  Holly giggled and rolled her chair closer, lifting a thick folder she’d assembled. "Well, heroic or not, check this out. Finished prep packet. Interview structure, timing, flagged risk questions, and even a few snappy opener suggestions."

  Ariel took the folder and flipped through it, eyebrows rising. "Holy crap. You crushed this."

  "Teamwork," Holly said, resting her chin in her hand. "Now that the QA servers aren’t on fire, we’re totally back on track."

  Ariel gave her a mock glare. "Only I get to make infrastructure jokes, Miss PR."

  "Noted," Holly grinned.

  They spent the rest of the workday revisiting a few tougher questions and talking through how to handle curveballs if the interviewer went off script. Ariel, now relaxed again, offered to do a mock run that evening at home, to which Holly eagerly agreed.

  When the clock finally struck five, they packed up together, exchanging tired but satisfied smiles.

  One more day down. And they were damn good at this.