Free Undead and Underwater by MaryJanice Davidson

she is here with me now . . . at the scene of my ultimate triumph.”
    As God is my witness, Linus thought, entranced, I can’t think of a thing to say.
    “Moo-ha-ha-ha!” The laughter, which startled the hell out of them, got deeper and villainy-er. “Moo-ha-haaaaa! I—ack! Graaa-uk! Uk! Uk-uk!” Edward coughed, then rubbed l’il Éowyn on his throat like a poultice. “Sorry. I’ve been holding that in—”
    “Your entire life, I think,” Linus finished, triply freaked out.
    “Yes, possibly,” he admitted. “No need to hold anything in any longer. Not now. Now that we’ve succeeded. Now that we’ve moved you to act. L’il Éowyn counseled patience, and in the end, it was rewarded. All this . . .” He gestured to the gloom-shrouded computers, the chilly atmosphere, the minions lurking out of sight, watching and waiting to see who won. “She told me how to fool you.”
    “Fool her?” Linus yelped. “It took Hailey about ten seconds to figure out you were the bad guy. After she realized I wasn’t the bad guy. And also after . . .” Making out for a while, he’d been about to add, then decided against it. “And Hailey was right . . . it’s obvious. Of course the bad guy’s in the IT department! You spy on what we’re doing on our computers—”
    “You’re not supposed to surf Rotten Tomatoes or ESPN or update your Facebook on company time,” Edward whined.
    “—so you can rat us out like, I dunno, Nazi Germany or whatever—”
    “The Nazis were into animal conservation, and they were anti-tobacco. And they came up with the Volkswagen.”
    Momentarily thrown ( Really? The Volkswagen?) , Linus plunged ahead. “And when you’re not spying, you’re sneaking around and sitting in judgment because we keep crashing the network but we don’t know why, and no matter what sort of help we need, you pretty much stamp No on everything, and of course you see everything, you know everything. You control the information!”
    Hailey was staring at him.
    “Wow,” he said, surprised. “I guess I’ve got some repressed anger at the IT guys.”
    “Think so?”
    “Edward, I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve all that vitriol. Probably. God, the stress of—”
    “God is dead! Only the IT department can help you now.”
    “It’s just that sort of attitude that gets you in trouble with HR,” she warned. “As I said during your last disciplinary action, telling employees God is dead and that your department is all the God they need in their cringing pathetic lives is not appropriate workplace behavior. We’ve got a really easygoing CEO, but even she thinks telling people you’re the only God they need is uncool.”
    “You are living a lie!” L’il Éowyn went flying as Edward abruptly stood. “Hiding behind your paper identity, when you owe the world your gifts!”
    “The only thing I owe the world are taxes and, possibly, children. And then, of course, more taxes.” She turned to Linus. “My mother always said we should replace ourselves, kid-wise, and move on. So I think we—”
    “Okay, whatever you want, please don’t take your eyes off the villain,” Linus begged. “He is freaking me out .”Linus had never before sensed such overwhelming evil from a single person. Sure, everybody knew the IT guys were creepy, asocial weirdos who spent far too much time staring into screens of any sort. And, yeah, you didn’t ever want to meet one in a dark alley. Or cross one. Or engage with one in any social setting, ever. But Edward’s sheer malevolence was more than unsettling. He was a generally scary—
    “I have made you great, It Girl!”
    —nut job.
    “And in return I and all my brethren are treated with thinly veiled contempt!”
    “Then I apologize,” Hailey said in a tone that was frightening in its pleasantness. “I had no intention of veiling my contempt at all.”
    “You shut us off from society, cast us off from the world! We’re cut off from the rest of the world