Nia met me in the lab at midnight. The hum of the server racks was the only sound in the room. She looked tired, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, but her eyes were sharp behind her glasses.
"This is way outside the scope of my grant, Jake," she said, typing furiously. "The DoD pays me to build encryption algorithms, not break into private equity firms."
"We're saving the department," I said, leaning over her shoulder. "If Richard Sterling wins this power struggle, he'll gut the university's funding. He'll kill the Sterling Tech Center before the VR lab even opens. Your grant goes away with it."
"Blue Heron Holdings," she muttered, ignoring my speech but keeping her hands on the keyboard. "Okay, I'm in. But the encryption on this is military grade. Ironically, it looks a lot like the stuff I'm supposed to be designing."
While Nia worked, I paced. My mind was still reeling from the docks. Richard had humiliated me. He had shown me exactly how small I was.
