Page 30 of Duty Compromised
Linda appeared beside me, her tablet displaying error logs from the testing suite. As one of our senior validation engineers, she’d been running the stabilizer modules through stress tests all week. “You okay? You look worse than yesterday.”
“Fine. I’m fine. Just…working.”
“The feedback loops in module seven keep throwing exceptions when I test against the new battery simulation models. Are you using the updated frequency parameters or the original ones?”
Updated. Original. The parameters blurred together in my mind, overlapping with the seventeen other critical decisions I’d made in the last hour. Each one potentially catastrophic if wrong. On a normal schedule, we were weeks away from completion.
But normal had evaporated the moment Ty explained the black-market threat. Days. We had days.
“The… I need to check. Which module?”
“Seven. The one that interfaces with the power regulation system.” Linda’s voice carried that careful patience people used when repeating themselves. “I sent you the specs yesterday.”
Yesterday. When I’d been debugging module four. Or was it five? The validation metrics she was explaining now should have been critical, but my attention fractured across too many variables. The countermeasure algorithm needed at least forty more hours of uninterrupted work. Forty hours I didn’t have if people kept?—
“Charlotte? Which parameters should I use?”
I forced myself to focus, pulling the relevant data forward through the mental fog. “Use the updated ones, but cap the frequency at 2.4 gigahertz. Anything higher causes resonance issues with the lithium substrate. The original parameters won’t account for the new thermal coefficients.”
Linda nodded, making notes. “That explains the exceptions. I’ll recalibrate.”
Great. One fire extinguished, only forty-seven more burning in the queue.
“You look ready to commit technological homicide.”
Darcy perched on the edge of my workstation, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun that somehow looked intentional rather than desperate like mine would if I tried that. As the lead systems architect on our team, she had the desk directly across from mine, close enough that we could argue about implementation details without raising our voices.
“I might be considering it.” I glanced at Ty again. Still there. Still impossibly distracting. “Actually, I might throw myself out the window instead.”
“That bad?”
“I snapped at Roger earlier. Roger! The man brings donuts every Friday, and I practically bit his head off for asking about the network diagnostics.”
Darcy scrunched up her face. “You do seem a little…tense.”
I lowered my voice. “Ty told me something at lunch. About the Cascade Protocol. The FBI found out the thieves are planning to sell it on the black market in barely more than a week.”
“What?” Darcy’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“If I don’t get this stabilizer code finished before then…” I didn’t need to complete the thought. We both understood what the Cascade Protocol could do in the wrong hands. “But I can’t work here. Too many interruptions, too many people needing things, and Ty is?—”
“Incredibly distracting with those shoulders and that whole mysterious protector vibe?”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“But you were thinking it.”
Guilty as charged, although I did not have time to deal with this right now.
“Charlotte, do you have time to—” I held out my hand to stop whoever was about to ask me…whatever they were about to ask me.
“No. Deal with it yourself, or it has to wait.”
“Oh, okay.” I still didn’t turn around to see who it was.
I looked over to find Darcy staring at me with one eyebrow raised nearly to her hairline. “You’re a mess.”
“I need to work from home.” It was the only solution. “If I can get out of here with my laptop and the project files, work through the night, call in sick tomorrow, use the weekend… I might be able to finish the countermeasure enough that the rest of the team has what they need.”
