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I shook my head. “What — did you forget your tracking device on him?”
Her eyes widened, and I chewed on my lip. Zella had gotten to me more than I’d thought.
Zella turned to Amy, cutting me out of the conversation. “Did you guys hang out this weekend?”
Amy leaned in, whispering loud enough that my dad probably heard it in his lab. “I spent the night.”
Zella’s eyes bulged. “What?”
“I went back to his place Friday night. We were working on some of those simulation issues we’d come across. It got late. I crashed there. It was all very innocent.” But the way Amy raised her eyebrows left no doubt in anyone’s mind about what had really gone on.
I was glad I’d pinned a smile to my face because it would have slid to the floor right then. Our almost-kiss hadn’t meant anything if he’d been busy hooking up with her the night before.
“Are you guys back together?” Zella asked.
“Not officially. But it’s only a matter of time.”
I envied the absolute belief in her voice, even as it crushed the tiny flicker of hope I’d let myself feel. It was better this way. I didn’t need a boy distracting me while I tried to find my place at QT.
“What’s a matter of time?” Asher asked as the lab doors slid open. He dumped his bag on the desk and dropped into his chair. It was like he was a magnet, our attention immediately drawn to him.
Amy and Zella exchanged sly glances, and Amy said, “Only a matter of time until you showed up. We were going to send out a search party.”
“Good thing I’m here then. We have a lot to talk about, don’t we, Lexie?”
Amy’s head snapped in my direction, but I ignored her. “Yeah, Asher and I spent most of the weekend together. Working.” I resisted adding an eyebrow wiggle, though part of me wanted to see what Amy would do.
She frowned. “So you were here, Ash? Is that why we couldn’t hang out?”
He nodded and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head. “We had some unexpected issues come up with the validation project.”
Zella went still, her hand paused above the tablet she’d been typing on. “What’s wrong? We delivered the simulation last week. We should be right on target.”
Asher lowered his arms and sat up. “Lexie and I ran into a bit of an issue. She realized there might be a problem with Avery’s formula, and when we ran the numbers, we discovered she was right. Your simulation worked perfectly. If Avery’s experiment is created with his calculations, the whole thing will implode, destroying QT and killing thousands of people.”
Zella let out a soft gasp, her gaze flying to mine. I wanted to snap at her that, yes, finally there was proof I belonged at QT, but Asher cut us both off before we could say anything. “It gets worse. We ran the numbers through the Project Infinity machine, but we didn’t get the same results. And before we could figure out what was going on, someone wiped our experiment.” He paused, frrowned at us. “The simulation you guys built is gone.”
“No!” Max shot to his feet. “It took more than two weeks to finish. What the hell were you doing?”
Asher held up his hands. “It wasn’t our fault. The network had been programmed to search and destroy. What we don’t know is who programmed it or why.” Asher rested his chin in his hands. “The question now becomes what do we do about it?”
“We tell Danvers of course,” Amy said. “If there’s something weird going on, she needs to know.”
Asher shook his head. “That’s not an option right now.”
She stared at him. “Why not?”
“I want to take care of this without involving anyone at the top until we know more about what’s going on. Anyone else have a suggestion?”
Max leaned against the table where Asher and I’d almost kissed, and I pressed my fingers to my cheeks to hide my blush.
“Does this mean we can’t rebuild the simulation using any QT computers or any computers connected to the network?” Max asked
Asher nodded. “They’re obviously scanning for these parameters. If we try this again, we’ll need two simulations. One based on your original. The other created from the simulation we found on the project computers.” He frowned at Max. “My question is why we didn’t use that simulation as our base in the first place.”
The tips of Max’s ears turned pink, as if he’d been caught doing something bad. “I figured we’d get more recognition if we could show we built the simulation from scratch rather than reusing the work of the project team.”
“Thank god you did because otherwise we would never have found the problem. Unfortunately, I’m afraid Lexie’s discovery puts us all at risk. Someone’s going to great lengths to keep those numbers secret.”
“How do you figure?” Amy asked, shaking her head. “It just seems like a mistake to me.”
“Then why would both of the project simulations give us the same results using different numbers? No, someone’s rigged it so everything looks like it’s working correctly.” He paused and leaned forward. “Someone is trying to sabotage this project.”
Amy frowned. “But why? It just doesn’t make sense. Everyone at QT wants this project to be successful.”
“If we knew that, we’d have a better shot at stopping them. In the meantime, we have a decision to make. Do we keep researching this on our own until we have the proof? Or do we tell someone at the top and risk them shutting us out?”
Zella, Max, and Amy all started arguing with each other and with Asher. Max gestured wildly, while Amy gave up playing with her hair and instead pounded on the desk. Asher watched them all with a smile tugging at his lips, and his gaze met mine briefly before sliding away.
“You’ve been pretty quiet over there, Lexicon.” He’d pitched his words low enough for only me to hear them, but everyone else froze and turned to look at me.
“I think we should talk to my dad. He’s leading up one of the project teams. He could help.”
Asher raised an eyebrow. “He could also be the saboteur.”
I knew he was thinking of what we’d found in Branston’s files, and a surge of annoyance flooded through me. “No way. It isn’t possible. He loves this job and QT more than anything.” More than me, I wanted to add, but that would have sounded pathetic so I kept my mouth shut.
