CHAPTER 1
LYN
Another horrible dayin the best bioengineering lab in the cosmos…and I should be grateful, but I'm not.
“He is the actual worst, and I stand by that,” I mutter, reaching my hands up to tug on my curls. “Like you know the old saying ‘those who can't, teach?’ With him it's more like…some who teach shouldn't.”
My best friend Riley snorts as he comes back to the table and slides into a seat next to our other friend, Thalara. “You need another beer,” he says, passing one to me.
“Are you sure?” Thalara asks in a soft, sweet voice. “She's already talking in word sushi.”
“Wordsalad, Bubbles,” Riley gently corrects her with a playful nudge of his shoulder. “How many have you had?”
She blushes bright pink. “Not that many.”
I take the beer and shake my head, wrapping my fingers around the cool mug and letting the condensation drip over my knuckles. “It's just…the guy is brilliant, but I feel like I can't get anything right with him. I'm doing things here that would blow my advisors back at Stanford out of the water—and he acts like I'm playing with blocks in a daycare. I'm literally trying to rewirebrains and he's like, “You're too clumsy for this, Walker, you don't belong here.”
“I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong,” Riley says, holding his hands up in surrender. “He's the whole reason I'm not in Engineering anymore. The guydrove me out.”
“You decided you'd rather build submarines,” I scowl, then cock my head. “Should I switch to building submarines?”
“No,” Riley says.
The last member of our little hang slides into the seat next to me, already in on the conversation. “He's just nervous you'll be better at it than he is,” Orin grins, showing off sharp teeth.
Riley rolls his eyes dramatically. “Wrong. Iknowshe'd be better at it. Like…come on, Lyn, let me have this one thing.”
I laugh, the sound coming out bitter. “You can have submarines, Riley. I’ll stay in my lane. My frustrating, soul-crushing, brain-rewiring lane.”
Orin taps his claws against his glass, the sound like a coin dropped into water. “What’d he do this time? The usual, or did he come up with a brand new way to ruin your day?”
“The usual,” I sigh. “He tore apart my prototype in front of the whole lab, called my interface ‘amateurish,’ then thanked me for the learning opportunity. Like I’m his cautionary tale.”
Riley winces. “Oof. Public dissection. That’s rough.”
“It’s not like I messed up the math,” I say. “We were testing a neural patch built off translator tech—trying to help people whose nerves don’t know how to stand down. Pain’s basically a translation error, right? The body says ‘danger’ when it means ‘habit.’ I’m teaching the signal a new language.”
Riley whistles low. “That’s...actually brilliant.”
“Itwasbrilliant,” I mutter. “Until Professor Dickhead decided to ‘improve’ it by rewriting my entire code string and calling mine naïve.”
“Everyone’s calibrations are naïve when you’re a genius,” Riley says.
“Iama genius,” I drawl, grinning despite myself. “He’s probably mad he didn’t think of it first.”
Thalara tilts her head. “Or maybe he respects you enough to argue with you like an equal.”
“Or maybe he just doesn’t like the idea of a human from Oklahoma fixing a problem no one’s solved in fifty years,” I say, taking another drink. “If translator implants can teach a mouth to understand twelve alien dialects, they should be able to teach nerves to shut up.”
“Sounds to me likeyournerves need a break,” Orin says. He gestures at my beer. “Drink more, Walker. You're stressed.”
I shoot him a look, and I can see it in his eyes—drinking isn't the only way he thinks I could de-stress right now. Orin and I hooked up a few months ago, and he's been hinting at doing it again ever since.
“I just need some sleep,” I mutter, drawing a line in the sand. “And…a different supervisor. And maybe some very good weed.”
Riley snorts into his drink. “Weed’s cheaper than therapy, but harder to expense on a grant.”
Thalara’s eyes widen, scandalized and delighted all at once. “You can expense therapy?”
