Page 112 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

Addy rises to her feet. “We’ll be here.”

I pick up my briefcase and step closer before I think better of it. “If you need anything, call.”

“Anything?”

The question is light, but there’s something underneath it. A test, perhaps. Or maybe I only want there to be one.

“Yes.”

Her mouth curves. “Even if Captain starts a coup?”

“Especially then.”

I hold her gaze a fraction too long.

Then I leave before common sense has to intervene more forcefully.

The office is already in motion when I arrive.

Strong AeroTech rarely wakes gently, but today there’s a particular edge to it. The lobby traffic is faster than usual. Two people from systems are speaking too quickly near the security turnstiles. Someone from finance is standing by the reception desk with the posture of a person who has received an email they resent. By the time the elevator reaches my floor, I’ve already had three messages from Sara and one from Jeffrey, none of which suggest a peaceful morning.

Naturally.

I cross the executive floor and step into my office just as Sara comes through the inner door from the conference room.

“There’s a problem,” she says.

“Good morning.”

“It can still become one.”

“That isn’t a greeting either.”

“Jeffrey is waiting.”

I set my briefcase down, remove my jacket, and follow her into the conference room.

Jeffrey is standing by the main screen with one hand on his hip and the other wrapped around coffee. Two engineers from the demo team sit at the table, fearing they’ve had the sort of morning that tends to shorten careers if handled badly. On the screen behind them is a systems map for the new AI stabilizationarchitecture, annotated in four different colors, which is rarely a sign of good news.

I take the seat at the head of the table. “Explain.”

Jeffrey sets his coffee down. “The demo model is producing intermittent false positives during predictive correction.”

That isn't ideal. “How intermittent?”

“Enough to matter,” one of the engineers says before anyone else can. He’s young, capable, and currently sweating through professionalism. “Not enough to crash the sequence, but enough to trigger response layering where there shouldn’t be any.”

I look at the screen. “In the live model or the sandbox?”

“Both,” the second engineer says.

That's worse. I lean back slightly. “When did it start?”

The first engineer swallows. “Overnight regression pass flagged it at 03:14. We reran the scenario set three times. It replicated under high turbulence simulations and twice under partial control loss models.”

“Was anything changed yesterday?”

A beat. Jeffrey answers. “A visual integration patch.”