Chapter 7 #2
Her shoulders drew tight, hands flexing uselessly at her sides, chest heaving faster and faster as her gaze skittered around the room. A trapped animal, every exit mapped but none close enough.
“I need to—” Her chair crashed backward as she lurched to her feet. “I can’t—I can’t—”
Oh fuck. The brilliant Dr. Charlotte Gifford was seconds away from melting down in front of her entire team because every set of eyes in the lab had locked on her. Time to belly flop onto the grenade.
“Hey.” I raised my voice, easy and loud enough to cut through the silence. “Quick reminder—you are the same Dr. Gifford I asked to fetch me coffee last week because I thought you were the receptionist. So, clearly, the village idiot position around here is already filled.”
A ripple of laughter cracked the tension. Eyes swung my way, right where I wanted them—on the oversized moron who couldn’t tell a quantum engineer from a receptionist.
Charlotte’s shoulders eased a fraction, like maybe she could breathe again, though every line of her body still screamed run.
I leaned in just enough for my fingers to graze her elbow, as gentle as possible. “Come on. Let’s get some air.”
She let me guide her out, tremors running through her arm. The stairs seemed safer than the elevator—fewer chances for encounters. The rooftop garden waited above.
Morning air bit with autumn’s first attempts at dominance. She collapsed onto a bench, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Distance seemed wise, so I claimed a spot against the railing.
“I hate that.” The words came out small, defeated. “Being watched. Being the center of attention. I’m good at the work, not…not the people part.”
“You don’t have to be good at everything.”
Her laugh turned bitter. “Tell that to everyone who expects me to be some kind of genius robot. Perfect code, perfect presentations, perfect everything.”
“Perfect’s overrated.”
Her gaze found mine, studying. “You don’t get it. You’re…” A vague gesture encompassed all of me. “You walk into a room, and people just…respond. You make jokes and they laugh. You’ve probably never said the wrong thing at the wrong time and had everyone stare like you’d grown a second head.”
“Third grade. Teacher asked what my dad did for work. I said he was a garbageman because I’d seen him take out the trash that morning. He was actually a history professor. The entire class laughed for five minutes straight.”
The corner of her mouth twitched upward. “That’s not the same.”
“Seventh grade. First dance. Asked Susie Morrison to dance by telling her she looked like my mom. Turns out that’s not the compliment I thought it was.”
The twitch became a genuine curve. “Okay, that’s pretty bad.”
“High school. Gave a presentation on the American Revolution. Called it the American Revelation the entire time. Fifteen minutes of talking about how George Washington received divine visions. Nobody corrected me.”
Real laughter escaped her then, soft but authentic. “You’re making these up.”
“Scout’s honor. I’ve got a greatest hits collection of social disasters. Want to hear about the time I showed up to a black-tie event in a tuxedo T-shirt because I thought my brother was joking about the dress code?”
“He wasn’t?”
“He was not.”
Her head shook, but the smile stayed. Panic had faded from her expression, replaced by something calmer. Still exhausted, but calmer.
“Thanks. For… In there. Getting everyone to stop staring.”
“Anytime. I live to make an ass of myself in public.”
We sat in companionable silence a bit longer, city noise drifting up from the street. For the first time all day, she actually breathed like oxygen was working for her. Then came the sigh. The heavy, end-of-the-world kind.
“I think the file corruption was deliberate. The stabilizer code. Too neat. Too complete. It doesn’t look like an accident.”
My shoulders straightened. “So who could’ve pulled it off?”
“Honestly? Messing up code isn’t difficult. This level of damage takes more effort, but not genius-level effort. Anyone with clearance could’ve done it.”
“Anyone inside Vertex.”
“Yes. We’re a closed system. If it was deliberate, it had to come from someone here.”
I tilted my head. “They couldn’t just, you know, dial in through a phone line? Like The Matrix?”
Her brow furrowed. “How would a person move through a phone line? Wait—you mean physical teleportation? That violates several fundamental laws of physics unless—”
I held up a hand. “Stop. Before you crush my childhood and make me regret my movie favorites. I meant hacking remotely.”
“Oh. No. Internet access is blocked on our internal systems. It would need to be someone physically in the lab.”
I crossed my arms. “That narrows the suspect pool. Not exactly a comforting thought.”
“Or,” she added, “it could be sabotage of a different kind. A mistake someone made and tried to cover up. Destroy the evidence before anyone notices.”
That tracked too. “So no way to know which?”
“Not with this level of corruption. And right now, it doesn’t matter. We’re set back a full week. I have to rebuild.” Her voice carried all the frustration she was trying to bottle.
I pushed off the railing and held out a hand. “Then let’s get moving. You need food. I need to rattle cages.”
She eyed my hand like it was some unsolvable equation before finally slipping hers into mine. Cold. Fragile. Human. “I should get back to work.”
“After food. Nonnegotiable.”
“That’s not how I operate.”
“It is today.”
Her mouth opened to argue, and then she noticed our still-joined hands. Color bloomed at her collar as she pulled away. “Fine. But quick.”
“Quick, I can do. I’ll even promise not to confuse you with the receptionist this time.”
Her lips twitched, almost a smile. “Thank you. For the food. And…for getting me out before I cracked. And I’m sorry for what I said Friday. About you not being—”
“Don’t,” I cut in, brushing her arm. “No apologies. No thanks. We’ll just both do our jobs and get this handled.”
“Okay. Tha— Okay.”
I pushed my badge against the reader to get us back in the door, holding it open for her, ignoring how my body responded to hers as she brushed past me. I had other things I needed to focus on.
Because my gut told me the corruption wasn’t random. And if I’d learned anything in the field, it was that the thing that looked like coincidence usually wasn’t.