Page 17 of Duty Compromised
Charlotte never even looked up from her workstation.
Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. Everyone else made their way back to their stations. Charlotte hadn’t eaten a thing.
I grabbed my own lunch—sandwich I’d grabbed on my way in this morning—and walked over. She didn’t acknowledge my approach, completely absorbed in the code streaming across her monitors. Up close, I could see the complexity of what she was working on, lines and lines of what looked like mathematical equations mixed with programming languages I didn’t recognize. Symbols that might have been Greek or might have been something she’d invented herself.
“You should eat something,” I said.
No reaction. The lab’s white noise could drown a marching band. I tried again, closer. “Hey, Charlotte.”
Nothing. Her shoulders were tight as wire. She was laser focused on what was in front of her.
I leaned down, just enough to enter her peripheral. Still no reaction. My hand brushed her shoulder. A tap. Barely there. “Food would be?—”
She shrieked like I’d dropped a flash-bang.
Her elbow slammed into a mug the size of a paint can. It wobbled, considered its life choices, and emptied itself across her desk with missionary zeal.
Oh fuck.
“No, no, no—” She moved fast, one hand yanking both keyboards into the air, the other snatching a cardigan from the chair back and slamming it down like a sandbag. Pale blue turned brown instantly. Coffee ran for the monitors with malicious intent.
“Shit, I’m sorry—” I grabbed the entire roll of paper towels from the next station.
“What were you thinking?” Her voice shook as much as her hands. “You can’t just sneak up on people! Do you have any idea what could have happened if this reached the equipment? These systems are worth more than?—”
“Hey, whoa. I wasn’t sneaking. I said your name,” I offered, already blotting the edge of the brown tide, trying not to make it worse. “Let me help?—”
“I’ve got it.” She snatched the paper towels from my hands, her face flushed red from neck to hairline. “I just need… I need space. To work. Without distractions. Without people hovering. Without?—”
She gestured and dotted my forearm with coffee constellations.
“I wanted to make sure you eat something,” I said, aiming for gentle. “A blood sugar crash won’t help anything. It’ll just slow you down.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
I offered her my best smile. “I did. Multiple times. Starting from when I entered the room.”
“Oh.”
I took the paper towels out of her hands. Time to change the subject. “I know the code looks like a foreign language to somebody like me. It’s amazing that that gibberish is actually life-and-death stuff.”
Her head snapped up. “Gibberish?”
The temperature in the room dropped at least ten degrees. Maybe fifteen. Fuuuuuck. “That’s not what I?—”
“Of course not.” She grabbed more towels and crumpled them. “Why would someone like you understand quantum computing?”
Bull in a china shop. I didn’t need the words; I could read marquee messages when they lit across my forehead.
“I’ll leave you to it, Dr. Gifford.” I stepped back, hands up in a show of no more sudden moves around the electronics.
Something flickered—surprise, maybe, or regret; a tiny crack in the armor—but it closed quick. She slid a backup keyboard from a drawer like she’d rehearsed this exact spill drill a dozen times, triaged her desk, and rebuilt her battlefield.
I just got the fuck out.
Back at my station, my chair squeaked again like it wanted to file a complaint. I stared at entry logs until the columns blurred and tried to convince my rib cage to unclench. I was here to guard a lab, not impress the person in it. I’d screwed up day one with the coffee request and doubled down with today’s coffee reenactment. At this point, if she designed an anti-Ty perimeter, I couldn’t blame her.
My phone buzzed. Text from Ben.
