Draven Steals My Game Then Hell Takes Us novel · Chapter 2 of 17

Chapter 2: The Appraiser

Fin reads the rules to the trapped staff: seven sin trials, no cheats, no loopholes. Draven tries to take command and Fin shuts him down in front of everyone.

Fin straightened up and turned his back on me.

"Everyone against the left wall," he said. "Sit down."

Nobody moved.

A man in sales said, "We're not sitting anywhere until somebody explains."

Fin raised one hand and the man's feet left the floor.

He hung there, turning slowly, arms pinned to his sides.

He screamed once and then he didn't.

Fin set him down against the wall, on his knees, breathing hard.

"Thank you," Fin said.

The whole room sat.

I sat with them, my back against the black marble, my shoulder still aching from the fall.

The ceiling above us went up forever and had no light in it.

The only light came from the seven carved figures on the door.

Fin walked the line and counted us out loud.

"Forty-one," he said. "One more than last time."

"Last time?" someone whispered.

Fin didn't answer.

He stopped at the center of the floor and stood with his hands behind his back.

"This is the Judgement Hall," he said. "What you played was a door. It opened because it was built to open."

Draven got up.

He brushed off his olive jacket and put on the voice he used in board meetings.

"Okay," he said. "Let's all take a breath."

Fin turned his head.

"I didn't tell you to stand."

"I'm the project lead on this build," Draven said. "These are my people. Nobody talks to my team without me."

A few heads nodded. The VP nodded hardest.

Fin looked at Draven for a long moment.

Then he walked over and stood right in front of him.

"You are not the project lead," Fin said.

The room went quiet enough to hear the wind outside the door.

"You took the credit," Fin said. "You didn't write it. You couldn't have."

Draven laughed. It came out wrong, too high.

"That's a hell of a thing to say in front of my whole company."

"It is," Fin said.

He turned to the crowd.

"The one who built this game wrote it without a single cheat," he said. "No bought advantage. No shortcut for the rich. No loophole for the man with the loudest voice."

He said the last part slowly, looking at Draven.

"That's why the door opened. The game judged its maker and found him clean."

Draven's face went red from the collar up.

"This is a demo," he said. "A stunt. Andrew, tell them."

Every head turned to me.

I stayed against the wall with my hands flat on the marble.

"I don't know what to tell them," I said.

"You wrote the build notes," Draven said. "You've been on my team seven years. Tell them who made it."

The VP stood up beside his son.

"Answer him," he said.

I looked at Draven, and then at the forty faces behind him.

"Ask him what the code name was," I said. "The internal one. Ask him what I called it before he renamed it."

Draven didn't answer.

The room did the math out loud, one whisper at a time.

Fin watched all of it with no expression at all.

"Enough," he said.

He turned back to the crowd and the seven carved figures on the door glowed faintly behind him.

"Here are the rules," he said. "You will hear them once."

He counted them off on his fingers.

"Seven trials. One for each sin. Pride. Greed. Lust. Wrath. Envy. Gluttony. Sloth."

"Each trial judges you, not each other. Nobody can take your score. Nobody can buy it off you."

"Nobody can spend their way past it. Nobody can borrow a friend."

"You will be scored in front of everyone. There is no private result here."

A woman from legal raised her hand like we were in a meeting.

"What happens to the ones who fail?"

"You stay," Fin said.

"Stay where?"

"Here."

She put her hand down.

The VP cleared his throat. He had his chairman voice on now, the one he used when he wanted a room to settle.

"Son," he said to Fin. "There has to be a process. A review. Something in writing."

Fin looked at him the way you look at a stain.

"There is no writing here," he said. "There is no process. There is no appeal."

"Then what do you call this?"

"Judgement."

Draven stepped forward again.

"Then I want a seat on it," he said. "My father and I sit on the panel. We review the scores."

Fin looked at him.

"There is no panel," he said.

"There's always a panel."

Fin took one step forward and Draven took one back.

"There is no panel," Fin said again. "There is me."

The VP sat down without being told.

Draven stood alone in the middle of the floor with his hands at his sides, and forty people watched him get smaller.

He looked at me.

I had waited seven years to see that look on his face.

It lasted about four seconds.

"Fine," Draven said. "Fine. But when this is over, somebody's career ends."

Fin ignored him completely.

He walked back across the marble and the door behind him began to close.

"One more thing," he said.

He stopped in front of me and pointed.

One finger, level, at my chest.

"You go first," he said. "The Hall will see you before it sees anyone else."

The door shut behind him with a sound like a held breath.

"Andrew," he said. "Stand up."

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