Dungeon Exploiter

MegaCorp bought Joe’s company on a Monday, before Joe had finished his first coffee.

The press release went out at 9:04. It said MegaCorp was “expanding into hydration-adjacent verticals.” It said the acquisition of Joe’s startup — an app that reminds you to drink water — represented “a bold synergy across the wellness ecosystem.” It did not mention a price, but one analyst described the number as “confusing.”

Joe was at my apartment by 9:40, holding his phone at arm’s length.

“They bought us,” he said. “MegaCorp bought us. Jon. We remind people to drink water. We have a dozen employees and a beanbag. Why would MegaCorp buy us?”

Gobi looked up from the couch, where he was eating ketchup chips. “What’s a MegaCorp?”

“Nobody knows,” I said.

Joe didn’t ask. He has learned to live with me answering squeaks.

“It’s the biggest company on Earth,” Joe said. “It’s — they’re — they do —” He stopped and tried again. “They’re MegaCorp,” he finished, which is what everyone finishes with.

By Wednesday, Joe had been promoted twice.

He didn’t apply for either one. The first came with a title — Senior Vice President, Consumer Wellness Synergies — and an office on the forty-first floor of MegaCorp Tower. The second came during the meeting where he tried to turn down the first.

He told me about it on my couch, sitting very straight and blinking too much.

“I tried to refuse,” he said. “There’s a policy. Declining advancement triggers a performance review. I said I just wanted my old job back, and they said that showed leadership, and now I have a second title. Jon, I’m one more complaint away from the C-suite. I’ve seen what happens up there. There are no beanbags.”

“What’s your manager like?”

“That’s the other thing.” Joe lowered his voice. “He keeps asking about you. Casually. How’s your friend. The F-rank one. Does he like the freelance lifestyle. Would he be open to a conversation. Yesterday he knew about Gobi, Jon. He asked how the goblin was settling in.”

Gobi waved, on reflex. Nobody in the room had asked him anything.

* * *

They came at me directly too, that week. Everyone did.

NexoDrive tried first, and their own software stopped them — the offer generator required a rank history and a recognized method, and my file broke the template so badly the recruiter ended up on the phone with IT while I ate the complimentary muffin.

Corporation X skipped the offer entirely. The founder just posted “thrilled to welcome Jon to the family,” and I found out I’d been hired from a push notification. I don’t work there. As far as I know, I never replied to anything. His fans made welcome art anyway.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

CloseAI mailed me a free companion. Top model, a year of premium, a card that said ALWAYS BY YOUR SIDE. Gobi keeps the box under his blanket. The companion is still in it.

Rob took all of this worse than anyone.

“THREE corporations,” he said, “are fighting over YOU. Do you know what I would do for one lowball offer? I have sent myself four offers from my other accounts just to create market pressure, and NOBODY HAS COUNTERED.”

“You can have the CloseAI thing.”

“I don’t want your leftovers, Jon, I want to be POACHED. There’s a difference. It’s about being SEEN.” He stopped, because he’d heard it too.

Being seen was the one thing I couldn’t afford, and everyone in the room knew it, and Rob, to his credit, changed the subject at only slightly above his usual volume.

* * *

Here’s the thing about paperwork: I’d signed some.

Back on my first day, NexoDrive made me fill out four signatures’ worth of forms to get paid, and one of them wanted an emergency contact. I wrote Joe. Everyone writes their Joe. Nobody reads the paragraph underneath the box, because the paragraph underneath the box is never good news, and life is short.

I went and found my copy. The paragraph underneath the box was §14.

14 — DESIGNATED CONTACTS. Designated emergency contacts are classified as unpaid affiliates of NexoDrive for liability, marketing, and non-competition purposes.

An unpaid affiliate. Of NexoDrive. For non-competition purposes. Joe had been legally attached to a rival corporation for weeks, because I wrote his name in a box, and neither of us had ever known.

Then I asked Joe for his acquisition paperwork, and there it was in MegaCorp’s own standard terms, the mirror clause — the one their lawyers put in everything, because owning people only works if nobody else is allowed to.

9.2 — EXCLUSIVITY. Employees may hold no affiliation, formal or informal, paid or unpaid, with any rival corporation or its personnel.

I read the two clauses side by side for a while.

“You’re smiling,” Liya said. “You never smile at paper.”

“MegaCorp bought an unpaid affiliate of NexoDrive,” I said. “Their own contract says they can’t have one.”

* * *

The meeting took nine minutes.

It was supposed to be Joe’s onboarding review. His manager was there, along with someone from legal who had a very thin laptop. I came as Joe’s plus-one, which confused the front desk into issuing me a visitor badge that just said OTHER.

I put the two contracts on the table, side by side, and pointed at §14, and then at §9.2, and then I said the sentence I’d been saving all week.

“Which one of these would you like to breach?”

The legal woman read them. Read them again. She looked at me, then at Joe, then at the contracts, and then she said “We’ll circle back,” and closed the thin laptop.

Because here’s the trap, and I want to be fair about it: either clause was easy to waive. But waiving fine print in writing means admitting fine print is negotiable, and no legal department on Earth will put that in an email. The only clean move was to make the whole problem disappear.

The press release went out Thursday at 9:04 again. MegaCorp announced “a strategic divestiture of hydration-adjacent verticals” as part of “an ongoing focus on core synergies.” Joe got his company back, his beanbag back, and a demotion he cried about, a little, from relief.

* * *

The basket arrived Friday.

Fruit, mostly. Very good fruit. There was a card on MegaCorp letterhead, handwritten.

“Congratulations on a productive negotiation. We look forward to future engagements.”

Under the card was a single printed page. My profile — not the one I see. Theirs.

NAME: Jon

RANK: F (assigned)

ASSETS: None of note.

LEVERAGE: See attached.

The attachment was a list of names. Joe was first. Gobi was on it — “goblin, 1, unregistered.” My landlord was on it. My mother was on it, with her time zone.

There was no threat anywhere on the page. There didn’t need to be. Somebody had finally read me the way I read the dungeons — skipped the loud stats, found the quiet entry underneath that says what actually matters, and highlighted it.

Liya read the list over my shoulder. She didn’t say anything. That was new, and I didn’t like it.

I put the page in the drawer with Gobi’s ring, and went to make dinner, and counted heads at the table without meaning to.