Page 83 of Duty Compromised
“Charlotte.” Frank’s attention turned to me with the intensity of someone who’d found an interesting artifact. “Ty says you have two PhDs. From Stanford? That you attended quite a bit earlier than the average student?”
“That’s right.”
“What was that like? Being so young in that environment?” The question held genuine curiosity rather than the usual mixture of awe and alienation I encountered.
“Lonely,” I said, surprising myself with the honesty. “Everyone else was worried about parties and dating. I was worried about quantum entanglement and whether my proof was elegant enough for my adviser.”
“Elegant proofs,” Leonard sighed with the reverence of someone who understood. “God, I miss those. Now I’m trying to explain the quadratic formula to teenagers who think math is what happens when their phone calculates their Starbucks order.”
“You love those kids,” Bridget accused.
“I love that they occasionally understand what I’m teaching them. There’s a difference.”
“Speaking of understanding—” Frank turned to Ty, who’d been suspiciously quiet “—how’s the shoulder? Still pretending it doesn’t hurt?”
“It’s fine.”
“He’s lying,” Donovan said, his first contribution to the conversation. “Caught him doing one-armed push-ups yesterday because the regular kind hurt too much.”
“Snitches get stitches,” Ty muttered.
“You did what?” Annabel’s voice took on what I was beginning to recognize as her medical-professional tone. “Tyler Matthew Hughes, you’re supposed to be healing, not destroying what’s left of your rotator cuff.”
“It’s been eight weeks?—”
“Six,” everyone corrected in unison.
I watched the exchange with fascination. This was nothing like the formal dinners between my father and me, where conversation followed predictable patterns and we’d maintained appropriate professional distance.
This was…alive. Messy. Real.
“Charlotte’s been dealing with some interesting theoretical challenges at work,” Ty said, deflecting attention from his shoulder. “Maybe she could explain the general concepts.”
“Please do,” Leonard said, leaning forward eagerly. “I haven’t heard anyone talk about real mathematics in months.”
So I did. I explained the theoretical framework, the challenge of creating destructive interference without triggering the very reaction we were trying to prevent. Frank asked about historical precedents for defensive technology. Bridget wanted to know about the legal implications. Annabel drew parallels to medical intervention protocols. Leonard just reveled in the equations.
They followed along. All of them. Not just nodding politely, but actually engaging, asking questions that showed they understood the concepts, if not the specifics.
“The problem,” I said, gesturing with my fork, “is that the frequency signature is dynamic. It adapts based on the battery’s chemical state. So any countermeasure has to be equally adaptive without becoming predictable.”
I didn’t tell them that the practical ramifications of what we were talking about might get thousands of people killed.
“More wine?” Bridget offered, but I barely heard her. I needed to get back to my work. This was enjoyable, but…
“You okay there, Charlotte?” Leonard asked. “You’ve got that look my best students get right before they solve something particularly thorny.”
“I need to—” I started to stand, but Ty’s hand covered mine on the table. The touch was electric, intimate, a reminder of everything unresolved between us.
“Finish dinner first,” he said quietly. “It’s not going anywhere.”
He was right. For once, the problem could wait twenty more minutes. I settled back into my chair, watching the Hughes siblings continue their verbal gymnastics. It was, in fact, helping my brain to relax and reset.
“Remember when Ty tried to help me with calculus?” Bridget was saying. “Ended with him throwing the textbook out the window.”
“It was a stupid book,” Ty defended. “Nothing about it made sense to me.”
“That’s because you were trying to memorize formulas instead of understanding concepts,” Bridget shot back.
