Page 260 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

By six fifteen, I know I should’ve stayed home.

Addy was asleep when I left, curled on her side with one hand tucked beneath her cheek and the other resting protectively over her stomach. The room was dim, quiet, soft in a way my life hasn’t been in years.

Three babies.

Our babies.

I stood beside the bed longer than necessary, watching her breathe. Then Captain sighed from the rug as if even he found me emotionally exhausting.

So I left, not because I wanted to, but because Bryce Biggs is still breathing free air, and that has become a problem.

The secure analysis room is colder than usual when I step inside. Jeffrey is already there, which tells me everything I need to know.

He doesn’t come in early unless there’s coffee, disaster, or both.

Today, there are six empty coffee cups on the table.

Disaster, then.

Jeffrey looks up from the console. His shirt is wrinkled. His hair looks pulled out. His expression is the worst part. A grim certainty.

My pulse slows. “What did you find?”

He exhales once. “You’re going to want to sit down.”

“No.”

“Of course not.”

“Jeffrey.”

He turns the main monitor toward me. “Cold storage retrieval came in at three forty-two this morning. Old system backups, pre-crash engineering archives, access authentication records. Some of it was corrupted. Some of it was buried under bad indexing.” He pauses. “But enough survived.”

I step closer.

On the screen is a split architecture model. Current corrupted demo code on the left. Megan’s aircraft stabilization update on the right.

I’ve seen the comparison before, but this time Jeffrey has highlighted something deeper. A signature, a way of building architecture that leaves fingerprints in logic instead of ink.

“You found the origin pattern,” I say.

“Yes.”

My voice sounds too calm. “Bryce.”

Jeffrey’s jaw tightens. “Bryce.”

The room narrows. “Show me.”

Jeffrey taps the keyboard. “This is the gala demo corruption. The patch Bryce suggested appeared to stabilize the visible behavior, but underneath it reroutes stress conditions away from the active failsafe layer into a hidden secondary loop.”

“Making diagnostics appear clean.”

“Exactly.” Another tap. “Now look at Megan’s aircraft stabilization update.”

The second model expands.

My chest tightens.