Page 81 of Conspiracies and Chemistry

After Yujun walked out, I paced my office. We’d gotten too ambitious. We’d taken on too much risk by sending two products to clinical trials at the same time. We’d sown the seeds for our own failure. And now we had no results to show.

Best case, we could get more samples and extend the trial to get the volume of data we needed. Worst case, we’d have to regroup and start over. We’d miss Dr. Perrell’s deadline. The one I’d agreed to. And she’d have a case for whatever action she needed to take to salvage the company. Layoffs. Or selling the company.

If Simon was looking down on me, he’d be flipping me off. I’d ruined what he’d built.

34

The Black Knight

From Barry Wright’s manifesto:

A satellite commonly known as theBlack Knighthas been orbiting Earth for thirteen thousand years, ever since it was launched by extraterrestrial beings.

TESSA

Fucking Harry.

It took me hours to gain some perspective on the whole shit show. But eventually, I realized that a social media post, one obviously planted by my ex, about how I was sleeping with my coworker wasn’t nearly as bad as what had happened to my employees after I sold Red Rover. And despite what the post implied, I’d never let that happen here.

So what if Maya was upset? According to West, our relationship wasn’t a violation of HR policy, so she couldn’t fire me over it. Suddenly, I realized I desperately wanted to stay. I loved working at Discovery because of the important and creative work we did. I loved working with Oliver, too, though I wasn’t ready to delve too deeply into the reasons why.

When I finally got over myself and emerged from my office, Oliver wasn’t in the lab. I knew exactly where to find him.

Still, I was surprised when I entered the game room and he wasn’t staring moodily at Simon’s framed photo. Instead, he was playingGalaxian,a true classic and far rarer than its successor,Galaga.I’d played it for hours on the ancient machine at the gas station where I worked in the tiny town where we lived when I was fifteen. He didn’t turn as I approached—probably couldn’t hear me over the hum of the spaceship and the bleeps of the alien attacks.

He played with his whole body, yanking the joystick like he was furious at it. Finally, when he was hit and there was a muffled explosion, he smacked his hand on the console and shouted, “Fuck!”

I crossed my arms. “Annoying little buggers, aren’t they?”

He whirled to face me. His skin was pale, and his brown eyes were wild and naked with his glasses tucked into his shirt pocket. “What—hi.”

“Hi.” I stepped closer. Now that everyone knew about us, how intimate we’d become, I could stand as close as I wanted. I whispered, “What’s wrong?”

Gently, he clasped my hand. “I’m sorry. The trial is fucked.”

“Are you serious?” A tiny part of me suspected he was catastrophizing, but I said, “Tell me.”

He was right to worry. As he told me about the mix-up, my skin went clammy and pale. All that work, all those promising results wasted over a mistake anyone could have made. When he finished, I wrenched my hand out of his. “You can’t seriously mean that our entire trial is ruined over a few missing results.”

“Yujun checked. The study coordinator can’t get us replacement samples for another month. And no one in the whole state has the kind of samples we need to finish it by the deadline. We’re going to miss it. All our hard work has gone to shit.”

“That’s just…just…ridiculous,” I sputtered. “We can fix anything with time and money.”

His voice went softer. “That’s exactly what we don’t have. We’re out of money. And time.”

That was why they’d brought me on, because they were dangerously low on resources. And in the end, I hadn’t been able to fix it. But this couldn’t be the end. We could think our way out of this mess.

“I shouldn’t have gone away last weekend. Not when the trial was on the line.” He was spiraling.

“It’s not your fault. There was no way for you to anticipate a mistake like this.” The words sounded hollow, even to me. I’d been a company founder. I’d made disastrous mistakes. Every one had been my fault.

“I was getting a goddamn massage while our company was swirling into the toilet! And now we’re—” He clutched at his hair.

I checked that we were still alone. Then, I gently disentangled his fingers from his hair and held his hand. “We’re going to fix this.”

When he looked at me, his eyes were glassy. “Can we?”

“Of course we can.” I hadn’t been able to save my employees, not after I’d made the tragic mistake of selling to people who didn’t care about other humans, but I was older and wiser now. We’d find a way.

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