O Lord & the Queen - Elizabeth Stevens Page 0,2

the ‘p’.

“You don’t need more coffee or the toilet yet.”

“I sure don’t.” I mean, I could always do with more coffee.

“And you’re not leaving yet?”

I shook my head. “Scotty’s beaming me up.”

His eyebrows drew together for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Why?”

Jackson was the kind of guy to be laser-focussed. He took ignoring social mores to a whole new level. Normally, I applauded him his quirks. Just then, not so much.

“Who knows? Maybe Olafson’s firing me?” I chuckled humourlessly.

“He shouldn’t do that. You’re the best here.”

I nodded and pointed at him in agreement. “No. Thank you. If he tries it, I’ll remind him of that.”

Jackson gave me a nod as he went back to his computer screen. “Do.”

“Good talk,” I mumbled to myself and headed for the lift.

It felt wrong and weird to hit the up arrow but, like the adult I was, I did it.

As the doors closed in front of me, I felt a twinge of something unpleasant wash over me. It was like my whole life was about to change and I was not prepared for it.

“No one’s trying to kill you,” I reminded myself as I rode up the building. “This isn’t a crime novel…”

2

Nico

I woke with a jump and heard a familiar voice talking at me. I was willing to bet the voice belonged to the foot that had kicked me awake.

“Coffee…” I rasped as I pulled my face off my desk and sat up, and opened my eyes.

A mug was waved past my face and I rubbed my hand over it in an attempt to wake up. All that served to do was further disrupt my glasses, so I had to right them before having any hope of seeing anything with my still-sleep-laden eyes.

“Remember that time you weren’t going to sleep for a month?”

“What God forsaken time is it?” I asked, my voice no better than it had been before.

“Eleven. I don’t have time for you to wake up. I need you functioning now.”

My chair went out from under me and I looked up into the no-nonsense face of Chaos.

“That was not excellent, dude,” I said. “You want me functional, give me the good stuff.”

“Get up and get to the War Room, then you get the coffee.”

“No, no, no!” I whined as he walked out and I grunted in annoyance.

I dragged myself off the floor and pulled my half-awake, tired arse to the War Room after the much faster promise of coffee. Everyone was already there.

I picked up my tablet and followed the boss to the War Room, and found the others already there waiting for us. Hawk and Rollie were fighting over pastries, and Tank was pouring more coffee.

“Okay, let’s settle down, shall we?” Chaos said, sounding like a weary school teacher coming up to the end of term.

“Aye, aye, boss man,” Rollie said, spraying icing sugar on the table.

I took my seat and buried my head behind my tablet as per usual. Some days, I wasn’t even doing anything exciting – I could just be refreshing emails – but they didn’t need to know that. Let them think I was doing something on the dark web that protected some small corner of the world from harm.

“Here,” Tank said, sliding a napkin over to me. “Saved you one.”

It was the thought that counted in this scenario since I was the only one who liked the yellow iced doughnuts. Was it my fault if I’d taken a particular shine to that fake banana flavour as a kid and never grown out of it? At least it meant I always got two doughnuts to every one of their nasty strawberry and boring chocolate ones.

“What’s so pressing you got the nerd up before noon?” Tank asked.

“Olafson needs us on a new job and he needs it yesterday,” Hawk said, more perfunctory than usual.

“What’s that got to do with him?” Rollie asked, kicking his head in my direction.

“I agreed to function in exchange for coffee. I don’t see coffee,” I mumbled pointedly.

Something wet and cold hit my face and I looked at Rollie. Slowly, my blinking turned to a frown.

“Do you want me to rig your place to blow?” I growled. “Because I fucking will.”

“Can we not antagonise Nico before he’s alive on the outside as well, please?” a sweet voice said, and I looked up to see Bert walking in with a tray of coffee.

A part of me felt instantly better.

“Shouldn’t you be at uni?” Hawk asked his little sister.

She smiled. “Yes, but I heard