Chapter 6 #2
I traced meaningless patterns against my knee, trying to erase the phantom sensation of his shoulder brushing mine. One second of contact, and my nervous system had overloaded like faulty wiring. “I’m not equipped for this.”
“For what?”
“Whatever this is.” The admission felt like pulling teeth. “Attraction. Interest. I don’t know the procedures.”
“There aren’t procedures. That’s the point.”
But there had to be. Everything followed patterns—algorithms, formulas, rules. My stomach twisted at the thought of stepping outside those lines. “All aspects of life have procedures. Social interaction follows predictable pathways based on cultural norms and psychological principles.”
“He was trying to make conversation with you this week, Charlotte. Showing interest. You know, like ordinary humans do when they find someone intriguing.”
I set my mug down harder than necessary. “I don’t want him to find me intriguing. I want him to leave me alone so I can finish the defense algorithm and get back to my actual research.”
“Your actual research will still be there when the crisis is over. But Ty Hughes won’t be.”
“Good.”
“Charlotte—”
“I have to go.”
“You’re going to the facility, aren’t you?”
I looked at my laptop, at the errors that weren’t fixing themselves, at the clock showing 11:22 a.m. “No.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not lying. I’m…considering my options.”
Darcy sighed. “HR specifically told you not to come in on weekends without permission.”
“HR makes a lot of suggestions.”
“They’re not suggestions. They’re policies.”
“Policies that seem arbitrary when we’re facing a potential national threat.”
“Everything’s a crisis with you. Last month, it was the buffer overflow in the tertiary systems. The month before that—”
“Those were actual problems that needed immediate attention.”
“On a Tuesday, sure. On a Sunday? The workspace will still be there tomorrow.”
I closed my laptop with more force than necessary. “I’ll think about it.”
Darcy let out another sigh before we said goodbye. We both knew I wasn’t going to think about it. I was going into work while Ty, and whatever reaction I was having to him, wasn’t there.
Twenty minutes later, I was in my car, heading toward Vertex.
The Sunday afternoon traffic was light, mostly families heading to late lunches or early dinners.
Ordinary people doing ordinary things. I’d never quite figured out how to be ordinary.
Even as a child, I’d preferred the predictability of mathematics to the chaos of human interaction.
Numbers made sense. People remained a mystery.
The Vertex parking lot was nearly empty, just a few cars belonging to the guards and the building maintenance crew. I parked in my usual spot, grabbed my access badge, and headed for the employee entrance.
The moment I stepped out of my car, a weird feeling started. The prickle along my spine, the hyperawareness of being watched. I glanced around the lot but saw nothing unusual. Just empty cars baking in the afternoon sun, the industrial air conditioning units humming their constant white noise.
Paranoia, probably. HR was likely monitoring weekend access logs, preparing another lecture about work-life balance and the importance of avoiding burnout. As if burnout was worse than having the Cascade Protocol weaponized because I couldn’t solve the defense problem fast enough.
I badged into the building, the electronic lock chirping its acceptance. The lobby was dim, emergency lighting creating long shadows across the polished floor. Raymond wasn’t at his desk—weekend guards operated from the monitoring room on the second floor.
Another badge scan at the elevator. Another at the entrance to the research level. Each checkpoint recorded my presence, added another line to the access log that HR would undoubtedly review. I’d deal with the consequences later. Right now, I needed to work.
The hallway to the main workspace was silent except for the ventilation system’s steady exhale. My footsteps echoed despite my attempts to walk quietly. That watched feeling intensified, making me glance over my shoulder twice before reaching the main doors.
I held my badge to the reader, entered my secondary authentication, and waited for the locks to disengage. The room beyond was dark, equipment in standby mode, screens sleeping. I flipped the lights, squinting as fluorescents flickered to life.
My workstation was exactly as I’d left it Friday afternoon, after I’d cleaned up the coffee spill—organized chaos that made perfect sense to me and probably looked like a disaster to everyone else. I powered up my machines, all three monitors coming alive with login screens.
As I settled into my chair, that feeling of being watched finally faded.
This was my space, my sanctuary. Here, surrounded by the gentle hum of processors and the familiar glow of screens, I could breathe properly.
No social conventions to navigate. No attractive contractors with whiskey-colored eyes making my brain short-circuit. Just me and the algorithms.
I pulled up the countermeasure repository, ready to tackle it with a clear head. Finally. Maybe I could isolate the problem in the interrupt sequence or find a workaround for the—
The screen filled with error messages.
File not found. Data corrupted. Invalid checksums.
“What?” I refreshed the repository. Same errors. I tried accessing the backup branch. More corruption warnings.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up file after file. The entire interrupt sequence—corrupted. The frequency modulation algorithms—unreadable garbage. The testing protocols—destroyed.
“No, no, no…” I navigated to our redundant backup systems, the ones that were supposed to be isolated from the main network. Corrupted. Every single copy.
How was this possible? Everything had been fine when I’d left Friday afternoon. I’d run a full diagnostic before leaving, saved everything properly, verified the backups. The files couldn’t just spontaneously corrupt over the weekend.
A whole week of work gone. We were back to square one—no, worse than square one because now I had to figure out what happened before I could even start rebuilding.
I slumped back in my chair, staring at the error messages. This was going to take all night just to assess the damage, let alone start recovering what I could from memory.
Damn it. I was going to be here until dawn.