Page 21 of Duty Compromised
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.
Chapter 7
Ty
I knew exactly what I’d find walking into Vertex on a Monday morning, and the place didn’t let me down. Scientists stumbling around with their third coffee like it was an IV drip, guards yawning through shift change, the low buzz of machines powering up like the building was stretching after a nap. Predictable.
I’d actually been looking forward to it. My weekend had been too damned quiet—just me, four walls, and way too much time failing to stop thinking about Dr. Charlotte Gifford.
Not that I’d admit that out loud. The ribbing I’d already taken from Ben on Friday was more than enough. She’d told me in no uncertain terms to keep my distance. Message received. Loud and clear.
The front desk guard barely glanced up when I badged into the building at seven sharp—not Raymond, thankfully. The older man’s hostility was getting old fast. The elevator ride to the third floor gave me time to reset my expression to professionally neutral.
But when the lab doors opened, the usual Monday morning quiet was replaced by something else entirely.
Charlotte was already there, welded to her workstation. Her hair had escaped whatever she’d tried to do with it—wisps stuck to her face, the rest hanging limp around her shoulders. Coffee stained the front of her pale blue blouse in at least three different places, creating an abstract map of caffeine accidents.
Even from my desk, I could see that dark circles shadowed her eyes, and her fingers flew across the keyboard with desperate energy, running on fumes and determination.
What the hell? It wasn’t that Charlotte was ever without coffee stains, but this was different.
Alex stood near her, arms crossed, drumming his fingers against his biceps. Relief flickered across his features when I entered. He rushed over to me at my desk.
“Thank God you’re here early.” His words came out hurried. “Charlotte came in yesterday afternoon. Been here all night.”
“Wait. What? All night?” Everything in me wanted to march over there and demand an explanation. “Why?”
“Corruption in the drive. The entire stabilizer project she’s been working on for the past week—gone. She’s having to start completely over.”
The muscles in my shoulders tensed. A week’s worth of work didn’t just disappear. “Gone? What happened. Was it foul play?”
Alex paced back and forth in front of my desk. “Could be a system error. These things happen with complex code. Quantum computing isn’t exactly stable technology on the best days.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Charlotte’s the best there is. She’s meticulous about backups, version control, all of it. For everything to corrupt simultaneously…” The implication hung between us.
“I need to talk to Wilmington. See if anything out of place happened here this weekend.”
Alex ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Yeah.” More pacing. “We let him know there was a problem, but…”
He trailed off. Either he didn’t expect Raymond Wilmington to know anything or didn’t expect him to do anything. Either way, that was bullshit.
I found Raymond occupying his second-floor office like a fortress, feet propped on his desk, newspaper held up like a shield from the twenty-first century. The doorframe didn’t even merit his attention when I knocked.
“What do you want, Hughes?”
“Entry logs for the weekend. Everyone who badged in or out.”
