Satyr Play 02 Pt. 01

As he stepped out of the elevator, his eyes widened in surprise. The dully lit corridor was no more. In its place was cream-colored walls with lovely art. Warm hardwood floors gleamed, and what caught his eye was the lighting. It was indirect, but he swore there was sunlight splashing across the ceiling here and there. He wondered how they did that. Maybe it was solar tubes piping real sunlight from the floors above?

Two of Mr. Duncan's security personnel stood guard in the large, pleasingly lit vestibule before large dark oak double doors. He smiled and nodded to the men, who returned the greeting while opening the doors for him. He felt a little weird with this treatment as he could open doors for himself. He wondered at VRL's seemingly over-the-top emphasis on security. He had to admit, though, that the staff seemed to take comfort in their presence instead of being intimidated by the silent sentinels. He'd never seen anyone cast a worried look in their direction.

Of course, he hadn't been present when these same men collected the guilty parties his new security protocols detected moving corporate data onto unauthorized devices.

That had only happened on two occasions, and the message was received. Don't fuck with VRL. With the spies identified and removed, the office settled into a positive and comfortable environment.

Beyond the doors was a big room with a large round table in the center. Chairs circled the table with a laptop docking station before each. Some execs sat in their assigned chairs while a group stood by the sideboard, pouring themselves a cup of coffee, tea, orange juice, or spring water. There was a selection of cookies as well.

Today's would be his first executive meeting as Henry Gable. During his time at VRL as Stanley Garin, there hadn't been an executive boardroom to have the meetings in as he'd been busy converting it into the new server room. Instead, Camila had one-on-one or small group meetings in her office. He hadn't attended any of the group ones, so this was a novelty for him.

"Henry! Good morning!"

He smiled as he turned to face Sigrid Gunderan, VRL's head of Human Resources. Tall, broad-shouldered, and powerfully muscled, she lost none of her dazzling femininity for her size, in his opinion. The woman's blue eyes flashed with happiness as she smiled at his enthralled gaze. Her long blond hair was pulled back in her complex, lovely braid, bound by the gold cylinder swinging behind her.

"Good to have you," she said.

"How was the HR Conference? Florida, right?" he asked.

She grimaced and shivered. "I have no idea why those hotel conference rooms have to be so damn cold! I get it! The state is sunny and hot, but that doesn't mean they must overcompensate by setting the thermostats so bloody low inside!"

He grinned at her, then made a pouty face of false sympathy.

"Don't make me bite that lower lip," she growled quietly for just the two of them to hear.

A flush appeared on Henry's face as he glanced at the others.

She gave him a playful grin and headed over to her seat.

Henry smiled to Eve Summerly, their new CFO. For a second, he wondered if he was smiling at Anna Summerly instead. He couldn't tell the twins apart as they looked, spoke, behaved, and even dressed identically. Aside from this one eccentricity, they were excellent at their jobs. The Accounting Department staff were all very happy with their new leader and her personal assistant.

The previous CFO had been a tyrant apparently and embezzled from the company. When Henry was Stanley, he'd somehow helped flush him out, though no one had ever explained how he'd helped.

Honestly, he didn't want to know as it probably involved magic, and he was still uncomfortable thinking about how intimately linked he was to the stuff.

The co-conspirator in the embezzling was Henry's predecessor, Mr. Hokensev, the former CIO. Their conspiracy led the company into a terrible technical debt with antiquated and cut-rate computer systems and a failing network. Camila Villamor, VRL's CEO, brought Stanley into the company to save them from that fate by taking on the role of CIO and personally designing and building their new systems from the ground up. In short months, he'd replaced almost all of their hardware and network technology and some of the software, as well.

He smiled and sighed as he could almost feel the happy hum of VRL's new server room on the penthouse level all the way down here in the basement.

"That's a smug smile if I've ever seen one."

Henry turned to see where the snarky comment came from and looked into the smiling eyes of their head of Security, Mr. Duncan. Henry had finally discovered the man had a first name, Roy. While he'd been invited to use it, he still felt uncomfortable addressing the intimidatingly large, red-bearded man so informally. The dark suits he and his team chose to wear just increased the impression of size and danger.

"No, it was just a happy one!" He gestured to the well-appointed boardroom. "This is a much better use of this space."

"Yes, I'm sure your precious machines are enjoying their lofty new home while we're stuck down here in the muck," the big man grumbled.

Surprised, Henry gave a short bark of laughter. He looked around again at the lush appointments. "How could this be considered muck? It's gorgeous!"

"Ay, but ever since I heard you moved the servers to get them above sea level, it gives me the willies to be down here!" he complained. Roy rolled his big shoulders and made his way to his chair.

Henry looked at the table and wondered where his position was. He spotted a man with salt and pepper hair and dark-rimmed glasses waving at him and pointing to a chair beside his. As he walked over to the chair, he recalled meeting the man while doing the upgrades when he was Stanley. The man held out his hand, and Henry shook it.

"Hi, Frank Caprelli, Operations," the man said with a broad smile.

"Hi, Henry Gable, CIO."

"Shit, do you ever look like Stanley!" the man gushed. Then he leaned forward a little to address the woman on Henry's other side. "Roz! Doesn't he look like Stanley?"

The woman in question gave Frank an exasperated look, then aimed an apologetic smile at Henry. "I'm so sorry for your loss. If Frank weren't such a boob, he'd be sympathetic too."

"Oh shit, ya," Frank said as his smile dropped away. "It sucks that you meet your brother just to lose him so quick."

"It's okay. I mean, it's not, but, you know," Henry waffled. He wasn't good at this. Still, he got a relieved smile from Frank and a warmer smile from the woman who was Siobhan Whelan's boss, if he recalled correctly.

"I'm Rosalind Wingham, Marketing and Communications," she said as she shook his hand.

"Nice to meet you," he replied.

She passed her eyes over his features as she reminisced. "Your brother wasn't with us for very long, but he did some amazing things for the company. We're all in his debt."

Henry smiled and nodded as he squirmed inside. He felt weird hearing this praise and didn't know how to react. He just did his best and stayed silent. That seemed good enough.

He looked around the table and saw Myron Glickman was next to Rosalind. He led the Auditing Department. There was also an external auditing team, but they didn't attend the executive meetings.

In the next chair sat Akshay Bhatt, Head of Compliance. Henry hadn't spoken with him yet. Then Mr. Duncan, Sigrid, two empty chairs, Eve Summerly, Noah De Hann, VRL's in-house legal counsel, whom he hadn't spoken with, and back to Frank.

The far doors pushed open, and Camila entered, striding forward with energy and purpose. Her eyes locked on Henry's for a moment, and he felt the heat in that look all the way down his torso to his balls. There was just the hint of a smile on her lips, and his mind flashed back to their reunion when he returned from Ireland. He had no doubt she was thinking of it now, too.

She was every bit as gorgeous as she'd been the first day he met her in this very location, not that long ago, truthfully. Raven-haired and stunningly beautiful, from her dark eyes to her sensual lips, and curves to drive a man to distraction. She stood six feet tall in the designer two-inch heels she preferred. Her crisp business suit spoke of style and sophistication. Her keenly intelligent gaze demanded your respect and attention, yet the raw sensuality she exuded promised—ah, Henry had to turn his mind from that.

His eyes caught motion behind her, and he was surprised to see an unfamiliar face. The woman was maybe five-foot-eight, and her suit jacket, crisp white blouse, and skirt spoke of fine tailoring and money, as did the ring on her right hand. The sheer quantity of large, shimmering diamonds clustered on that one piece of jewelry was daunting. Henry's ears picked up the gentle tones of the dozen or so fine gold wrist bangles she wore.

She was of Indian descent and truly lovely with an odd intensity. Her skin was cinnamon-toned, and she kept her gleaming, straight black hair loose. It hung down to just above her ass. Her features were fine, with dark brows above dark brown intense eyes. Gold framed rectangular glasses perched on a slim nose adorned with a small gold stud on the left side. Henry thought she might be wearing the glasses in an attempt to tone down the intensity of her eyes which almost, almost seemed to be glowing faintly. She wore deep red lipstick on her full lips, which were frowning slightly at the moment.

Henry picked up the distinct impression that she wasn't exactly happy to be here.

Camila gestured to the chair next to the CFO for the new woman, then took her own. The CEO addressed her people.

"Good morning, everyone. I have two introductions to make before we get started. I know I mentioned most of this in the note I sent out last Friday, but I'm making it official here. I'd like to welcome Henry Gable, brother of our dear departed Stanley Garin. He will take over as our CIO, and we look forward to working with him."

There was a polite round of applause while Henry smiled and nodded, experiencing a surreal out-of-body sensation of watching people he knew, welcoming him for the first time. He wasn't sure how many of VRL's executives were members of the Hidden Races, so following the rules, he acted like no one was and kept his mouth shut!

"Next, I'd like to introduce VRL's new external legal counsel. Mahati Chandra will be taking over Walter Zhou's efforts on our behalf. She will also work with Noah and his team."

There was another round of applause, which received the merest acknowledgment from the lawyer.

Camila glanced at the woman questioningly, but Mahati simply raised an eyebrow slightly in return.

"Okay, let's get started," Camila said, turning her gaze back to the team.

Henry was excited to be involved in his first executive meeting, but that enthusiasm quickly waned as the discussion turned to a recent review of risk analysis and fund management.

"Henry? We keeping you awake?"

He jolted in his chair as he'd been falling asleep. "NNN! Sorry, I didn't sleep well last night." He blinked at the others. "Too excited about my first day of work."

That generated a burst of laughter from the others, and his face pinked up.

The conversation continued, but Henry concentrated on staying awake this time.

Finally, Camila finished going through her agenda and sat back to smile at Sigrid. "Time for question period. If you have anything you'd like to say or questions to ask, fire away. We'll go around the table, starting with Sigrid. Take it away."

The blond smiled at her friend. "I only have a request for everyone to follow up on the email I sent last week regarding the vacation offenders. These people haven't taken their allotted vacation days, and that's an issue for them and us. Please speak with your staff identified on the report and get them to use up those outstanding days. Thank you." Several people made a note to do this.

"Mr. Duncan?"

"Everything is good. We're getting in a shipment of thermal imaging cameras this week, and to ensure coverage, we'll be running extra shifts while the old cameras are replaced. We'll try to keep the overtime to a minimum." He included that last part for the CFO as she looked at him questioningly. She nodded happily.

As it was his turn, Akshay just shook his head, as did Myron next to him. Rosalind smiled at Camila and over at Henry. "One of our Junior Marketing Associates observed that our marketing kits are outdated in that they fail to reflect the modern company that we've become. With our state-of-the-art network security and all the improvements to manage our client's data, we can and should present these features in our marketing material."

Camila frowned. "Won't drawing attention to our network security just make us a target?" She looked to Henry.

He glanced over at the hopeful expression on Rosalind's face, then back to Camila. "It might. Our firewall addresses most current hacking methods, but we're still partially vulnerable to DoS attacks—"

He immediately caught the annoyed look on Camila's face. "A Denial of Service attack. A flood of meaningless requests that tie up our connections to prevent legitimate traffic from reaching our servers. To mitigate this vulnerability, we've got redundant connections through three providers. The 'N' Dimensional Labyrinth in our firewall is configured to identify and isolate DoS attackers into a holding pen, rerouting valid traffic inwards and responding outbound through the alternate connection. Customers on the affected inbound connection will experience a slowing of their access purely due to the increased volume. I—This has been tested, and according to Stanley's records, it works."

He clamped his mouth shut as he'd almost slipped.

"So... are you saying you'd be comfortable with letting Marketing publicly make claims of our security measures?" Camila pushed.

Henry looked over at Mr. Duncan, whose face showed his disapproval. He knew the man was right, but there was also something to be said for tooting your own horn to drum up business. He caught Roy's eyes rolling as the man read the smile coming to his lips.

"Yes. Let me know when it reaches the public, and I'll keep an eye on the traffic analysis tools to see if there's any subsequent uptick in suspect traffic," Henry said to Camila and Rosalind. The Marketing exec grinned happily at him, and he heard Mr. Duncan sigh.

"Henry, do you have any questions or statements for your first exec meeting?" Camila asked.

"No, I'm good. Thanks!" Henry replied with a smile.

Frank had nothing to add or ask, and it went to Noah, who welcomed Mahati and learned they'd be meeting in the afternoon.

Then, it was Eve's turn. She looked at Henry with a hopeful smile. "I've been asked to find out if you were aware of some programming Mr. Garin was doing for the Investment Managers."

"Yes. I'll be completing that work," Henry said with a nod.

Eve's smile widened. "Excellent. We assume you'll need time to get familiar with the code and to grasp the changes Mr. Garin had intended, so when should I tell them you plan to roll out the changes?"

"It should be ready in a week or two," he said.

Eve blinked in surprise. "A week or two?"

"Are they in a hurry? I don't think I can do it any quicker than that," Henry explained with a concerned expression.

"No! No, that's quick enough! It's just sooner than I expected," she exclaimed.

"Oh, well, I'm a quick study, and I like programming... and stuff," Henry said, stumbling to a halt.

Fuck, he hated this.

Eve flashed him a smile, then indicated to the CEO that she had nothing further to say.

Attention turned to their new lawyer as it was her turn to speak. "If the meeting to discuss VRL's in-house business has concluded, I would like to speak with Ms. Villamor, Ms. Gunderan, Mr. Duncan, and Mr. Gable privately please."

Camila frowned but nodded. "Meeting adjourned. Thank you, people."

The executives not mentioned in Mahati's list stood and made their way out of the meeting room, a few glancing back at her as they left.

When the door closed, Camila pressed a control on the table before her, and there was a detectable pressure change in the room's air.

"Okay, we are in private mode, and the door is locked," Camila stated, turning to look at Mahati. "I had hoped we would have a more civil relationship with our new external counsel. You've been abrupt to the point of being rude, and I don't know where this attitude is coming from."

Mahati looked down at the table's surface and seemed to be collecting herself. She took off her glasses, folded them, and placed them on the desk before her. When she looked up at Camila, Henry once more swore he could see a slight glow in her eyes as the whites were so bright compared to her dark irises.

"Please make no mistake. I am not VRL's legal counsel by choice but by necessity. There has been a shocking disregard for our laws perpetrated by this very group. The Hidden Races Council is well within its rights to take steps to sanction every one of you but especially Mr. Gable." She finished by pointing an accusing finger at Henry, who stared back at her in surprise.

"I was appointed your legal counsel by the Hidden Races Council to ensure our laws are upheld and we contain the chaos that has ensued since the arrival of Mr. Gable, or rather, Mr. Garin," Mahati said tersely.

"Well, now that we know we're all just a big happy family, Henry lad, come sit next to me. There's no sense in you being off all alone over there," Roy said, gesturing for him to move.

Henry stood and walked over to sit in the chair next to the big redhead, who smiled at him. Henry saw that Sigrid and Camila were smiling at him as well, but the CEO's expression turned grim once more as she turned back to Mahati.

"If we'd broken any laws of the Hidden Races, we'd already be in custody or dead. If you're here to try to intimidate us with vague accusations, don't bother. We've been dealing with far bigger fish than you in the last few months. We're a little tired of it and would like to get back to living normal lives. Thank you very much," Camila said with steely calm.

Something flared in the eyes of the lawyer. "Fish? You compare me to fish?!?"

She suddenly stood, forcing her chair to roll back. There was a flash of light, and in the place of the lovely Indian woman stood something Henry had never encountered before.

Her head and upper torso were still human-shaped—except for her second set of arms. From the waist down, however, Henry's mind had to give up on his old human preconceived notions of normal and reality and just accept that the coils of a very large snake could complete someone's lower half.

"The Nāga, to this day, are revered as gods! We defined the very laws we live by today! We've held the highest positions of authority in every level of the Hidden Races Council since its inception!"

Camila relaxed back in her chair. "Am I speaking to one of the original Nāga?"

The lawyer shifted on her thick, muscular coils. "What? No, I am the great-great-granddaughter of—"

"We've had to deal directly with Baba Yaga and Queen Mab. They trump the great-great-grand-daughter of someone important." Camila interrupted, and Mahati's mouth snapped shut. Her eyes suddenly began to glow, and everyone was up and out of their chairs, walking backward away from the enraged female. Glamor's dropped, and a Succubus, Valkyrie, and Werewolf faced off against the Nāga.

Then there was Henry.

He continued to sit and stare at this new, amazing being. He was more than a little mesmerized by the shimmering colors of the sari she wore over her upper half and the gleaming deep green, blue, and gold-flecked scales on her snake lower half. Her lustrous black hair rose and fanned out behind her head, much like a cobra's hood.