This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Austen Osworth
Reading group guide copyright © 2021 by Austen Osworth and Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Osworth, A. E., author.
Title: We are watching Eliza Bright / A.E. Osworth.
Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020053570 | ISBN 9781538717639 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781538717622 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3615.S93 W43 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053570
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1763-9 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-1762-2 (ebook)
E3-20210309-DA-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety-One
Chapter Ninety-Two
Chapter Ninety-Three
Chapter Ninety-Four
Chapter Ninety-Five
Chapter Ninety-Six
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Chapter One Hundred
Chapter One Hundred One
Chapter One Hundred Two
Chapter One Hundred Three
Chapter One Hundred Four
Chapter One Hundred Five
Chapter One Hundred Six
Chapter One Hundred Seven
Chapter One Hundred Eight
Chapter One Hundred Nine
Chapter One Hundred Ten
Chapter One Hundred Eleven
Chapter One Hundred Twelve
Chapter One Hundred Thirteen
Chapter One Hundred Fourteen
Chapter One Hundred Fifteen
Chapter One Hundred Sixteen
Chapter One Hundred Eighteen
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
Chapter One Hundred Twenty
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three
Discover More
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
Discussion with A. E. Osworth
About The Author
To and for my community, my people,
my collective voice
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Chapter One
Normally, we wouldn’t see her. On any other day, we would see only the city and its more standard occupants. Windy City. Every detail of it. The buzz-crackling of electricity in the power lines, the flickering neon signs on bars and lazy lights in shop windows closed for the night, the tooth-splitting bright fluorescents winking in offices sixteen stories above us. Cars speeding along four-lane drives or crawling down one-way streets. Strange public art no one asked for. Our own reflections in the buildings’ glass windows; sun bounces off those windows during the day and the streetlights take over at night. A man-made jewel, always glittering. And of course,
we would see each other. The city is never empty. So perhaps less like a jewel and more like a galaxy. Constant motion. The bakeries are where we meet; the coffee shops and street corners; the stoops on buildings we know and those we’re only dimly familiar with; the walking lanes on bridges, the docks, the old factories, the parks. We are all over every part of it, and we are talking to each other. Or fighting with each other. Or laughing with each other. Or laughing at each other.
Even the most villainous among us would, in the end, choose to protect the city. If you see something, say something, and all that bullshit. Well. We would say something. Because we love it here. It is a novel place. Endless space.
Normally, we wouldn’t see her. She would be hidden, visible only to her friends. But then we do. And here is where we start: a shadow stalks Circuit Breaker. A tall silhouette stands out against the reflecting, refracting sea of electric stars echoed in the windows. It looks like a paper doll cut from deep space; the outlined figure is where light goes to die. It is Black Hole, and we know him well. A supervillain. He punches at nothing and she appears, falling to the ground. She is a stereotype. Tall and enboobened, her figure tightly hugged by her ever-present supersuit in burgundy and black, with a shock of blonde ponytail atop her head; her mouth is pert and perfect. She is such a stupid character; we gasp when she appears. It is like sighting a rare bird, even if she is a dumb cunt. “What the shit?” she says from the ground and scrambles to her feet as fast as she can. She puts her hands up, ready to fight. Electricity gathers around them; her superpower. Generic. She is angry. Good.
Two others appear next to her. They are just as exciting to witness, just as rare. The first, a Black man we know as Runner Quick. Where Circuit Breaker’s even curvature epitomizes symmetry, Runner foils her with his imbalanced body: his legs are massive, muscular. To understate it, he can run. He can run around the world and not even feel winded. He adjusts his goggles. His scarf blows in the wind; he is in love with the way the orange streetlamp light backlights it, how it glows, the sound it makes as it snaps in the breeze. He knows its red silk looks great against his brown skin. He becomes aware that he is now more visible and puts his hands on his hips like he is posing for a magazine.
The third figure is ugly and she says something shrill: “Now that was fucking uncalled for, what the motherboarding Christ was that about?” It is Chimera the Protector. Chimera, like Circuit Breaker, is another sort of balanced creature, though she looks cobbled together by a chaotic God with no sense of aesthetics or respect for anyone who must lay their eyes upon her. Her hairy ape arms are large enough to be another set of legs. Curled up on her back like two sleeping animals rest a pair of large, black bat wings. All this melds elegantly into a gold-skinned androgynous head, angular in the face with hair as black as clear ice on tar. The result of these disparate parts of people and animals is a hero reasonably good at almost everything: strength, flight, brains and brawn. Skill points in all the right places. When it comes to beauty, she’s like a taunt, unconcerned, in our direction. We would rather see Circuit Breaker naked.
Black Hole drops to the ground as another supervillain saunters up next to him. Doctor Moriarty. We know him well too. A perfect gentleman. His blonde hair is neatly parted and swooped as if he is an advertising executive; he wears a grey suit, a pipe peeking from his front jacket pocket. His gun, oversized and expensive, glows a brilliant green and purple. He laughs maniacally. A deep mua-ha-ha. Like he’s been practicing.
We start to show up in earnest now: people in nondescript suits and glasses, pencil skirts and sensible flats, librarian sweaters. Though we are dressed as our alter egos, we know each of us is a superhero or maniacal villain; every last one.
We hear Chimera say, “Really, Lewis? Really?”
“Suzanne!” says Doctor Moriarty. “You’re not supposed to use real names in-game.”
It is not as though the illusion is shattered. There’s not, if we’re honest, truly an illusion. It simply is. Guilds of the Protectorate is a skin on top of our reality. A dual truth. Just as real as meatspace. We live in a time where almost everyone has at least two bodies, and the second life is far more thrilling than the first. We are watching Circuit Breaker get the punch to the back of the head she deserves; we are watching Eliza Bright, who is controlling this avatar from her apartment in New York City. Both are true.
Fight!
theyr gonna go
i think they work here
runner quick op
black hole ftw
10/10 would staff brawl again lollllllll
We clamor. We type and shout and hoot and scream and we do it so loud that the shutter click is almost inaudible. Zoom in on one of us, the psionic private eye prone to walking through walls. He wears a trench coat and a close-cropped high-and-tight haircut. In Windy City, he’s known as The Inspectre. He doesn’t carry a gun; he carries a camera with a cartoonish flashbulb. He deals in secrets, information. We know who to talk to when we need dirt on rival guilds, secret cabals, Avenger-esque bespandexed groups. We wonder how he keeps track of it all—it can’t be due entirely to his character stats, he’s too fast. He appears anywhere the Fancy Dog Games employees appear, at any time of the day or night. He is always replete with facts and rumors about the company, the game itself. So many questions: Does The Inspectre ever sleep? Does he have a brain that catches facts and keeps them like fireflies in a jar? Does he have a wall full of photos with red string between each face? Is he, perhaps, actually an investigator-for-hire in the “real” world? Is he more than one person playing on the same account? We will eventually come to know exactly who he is, but for now, let’s maintain the suspense. The telling is half the fun.
Runner Quick says, “Y’all?” and turns outward to face us. The group notices our presence. Not The Inspectre’s, per se, but the truth is we don’t need him tonight. We are all watching. And it dawns on each of them, even Black Hole and Doctor Moriarty, that our involvement in any fight could go either way. “Maybe cool it?” Runner continues. Circuit Breaker drops the electricity around her fingers.
“Fine,” she says, and the group slams the invisibility function back on. Friends only. To the rest of the world, Circuit Breaker and her cronies may as well not exist. We groan and our frustration shakes the glass and the cabs and the very sky above us. We begin to disperse, to wink into our own invisibility or to sign off. But not all of us. Never all of us. We’re always here, on the internet, eyes trained on our cast. On Twitter, Reddit, even in Windy City, we can find out a lot. And what we don’t know, we can guess; or we can ask; or we can invent.
Chapter Two
Let’s jump to the next morning: Eliza is the first one of the three-person team to arrive. She gets in the elevator, ascends to the fifth floor, one above where she used to work in the Quality Assurance department. Fancy Dog takes up two floors in a larger office building. Three, if we count the existence of the test floor (which we aren’t supposed to know about yet). Preston Waters moved his company in and renovated the shit out of that place. He transformed what was once stodgy cubicles and solid walls with cheap doors into a glass and wood open-plan paradise; now it looks clipped from a brochure for the latest, hottest startup. Perhaps because this is, in fact, the latest, hottest startup. Those few walls that exist are lined with framed art of classic superheroes, villains, and contemporary reimaginings of comics past. We are so jealous from our shitty day jobs, our challenging high-stakes careers, our school desks, and we stalk staff selfies on Twitter, repost to subreddit, swoon; what wouldn’t we give to work there.
Eliza is exhausted, having not slept all weekend. Fancy Dog Games has a tradition—when someone new joins a team, he picks something to do, a new feature with a pie-in-the-sky design document or an update or a fix. “To keep everyone on their toes,” the CEO says. Eliza is coming off the nonstop weekend of Red Bull and heavy metal coding playlists. She wants to prove herself; it doesn’t matter that work is hectic. Given the confluence of Holiday and
the huge secret project we shouldn’t know about, the one that will be announced shortly, she wasn’t required to partake in this particular tradition. But here she is anyhow, having volunteered. An overcompensation for being new or self-taught or shitty at this or the girl. Or all of it. Being a hero in the hope no one will notice ineptitude of any kind.
She rush-completed her part of a brand-new feature, a massive fucking lift, in a mere seventy-two hours and then stayed up late to play the very game she works so hard on. Even we acknowledge it’s impressive, if compensatory for other shortcomings. She powers on her computer, a new workstation with different software and a view of the city if she turns and looks over her left shoulder, which she does and grins. She is so proud of herself—she said she’d rise in the ranks and she is well on her way. Her first hours on the three-person development team will be marked with a splash. She is going to kick ass at this. Kick ass and take names. Or perhaps she won’t even take names, she won’t have the time for it; she’ll be one big ball of forward motion, rocketing toward her goal, toward the reveal and release that we aren’t supposed to have a clue about. She takes a deep breath, signs herself on to the server and stares at the screen.
//80085. Fleishman will fix.
Below is a section that she is responsible for: code that allows players to bone each other in the game, a feature we’ve requested since time immemorial, an update we’ll all later call the sex patch.
She scrolls down and sees //80085 scattered throughout, on all her code, everything she’s done that weekend. There are some other comments as well, in the sections that aren’t hers: //JP section, consent (y/y, n/n) and //team two plug in here and //VD point values lol. But only on hers does she see the mysterious code number, always associated with the word “fix.”
This is her first assignment—they’d asked her what she wanted to do, and she’d picked this. Already it is borked. She is mortified.
Eliza allows herself a moment to feel the sour cry-feeling behind her face. Imagine: a pout on her rodentish lips. When Eliza was little, about second grade, she was on a class trip to the Museum of Natural History. This kid, she can’t remember his name, pointed at one of the prehistoric rat skulls and started calling it Elizasaurus. She stood there, looking at the rat skull with its pushed-forward teeth, and wanted to refute the claim somehow. But when she put her hand on her mouth to check, she found she couldn’t think of anything to say. The boy wasn’t wrong, after all. Eliza is a six on her very best day.