Chapter 305
A wave of nausea rolled through him. He pushed the blankets off and stood up abruptly, stepping away from her touch.
“I have to go,” he said, already moving toward the bathroom. “I’m going to be late for work.”
Meanwhile, at the Carson Estate, Isolde sat at the kitchen island eating a bowl of oatmeal with Effie.
Effie pointed her spoon at the counter.
“Mommy, your phone is new,” she observed.
Isolde glanced at the sleek black device resting beside her coffee mug.
𝘙𝖾𝖺𝘥 𝖿r𝖾𝗲 𝗻𝗈v𝖾𝗅𝘴 𝘰𝗻 𝗀аl𝗇o𝘷𝗲𝗅ѕ.с𝗈𝗆
“Yes,” she said, smiling gently. “New life, new phone.”
She tapped the screen and checked her messages. Only three people in the world had this new number: Arland, Harper, and Attorney Davis. And one other.
A new text sat in her inbox from Professor Eldridge Nelson.
Isolde. The audit results from your code were highly impressive. Come to the Institute today.
Isolde smiled. The silence left by Grayson’s absence was not empty. It was peaceful — the space she had needed to breathe.
She stood and packed her laptop into her leather work bag: a sleek briefcase, no longer a bulky diaper bag. Then she leaned down and kissed Effie’s forehead.
“I have a very important meeting today,” she said.
Effie looked up, her eyes wide with curiosity. “Are you going to build spaceships?”
Isolde winked at her. “Something like that.”
The Institute occupied a sprawling, high-security complex in New Jersey — a fortress of glass and steel surrounded by dense pine trees. Isolde walked through the metal detectors at the front entrance and clipped a temporary plastic badge to the lapel of her blazer. It read: Consultant.
Arland was waiting for her in the vast, echoing lobby.
“Nervous?” he asked as they walked toward the secure elevators.
“No,” Isolde said, her voice steady. “I built the core architecture for this prototype in my head three years ago.”
They rode the elevator down to the subterranean levels. The doors opened into the Main Lab.
It was an enormous room. Rows of black servers hummed at a low, persistent frequency that Isolde could feel in her teeth. Dozens of engineers in white lab coats moved briskly between workstations, clutching tablets and arguing over schematics.
Standing near a wall-sized digital monitor was Professor Eldridge Nelson — a man in his seventies with sharp, hawk-like eyes and a reputation for being absolutely ruthless. Surrounding him was a team of five male engineers. As Isolde approached, their eyes moved slowly up and down, taking in her tailored blazer and heels.
“This is the ‘Sophia’ liaison?” one of them muttered to his colleague, making no effort to lower his voice. “She looks like a runway model. Did Roth hire her for PR?”
Isolde didn’t look in his direction. She didn’t even slow her stride.
She walked straight past the group and stepped up to the main control console.
“Pull up the thermal distribution logs for the X7 thruster,” she said, addressing the technician at the keyboard.
The technician hesitated, glancing up at Professor Nelson for permission.
Nelson gave a single, sharp nod. “Do it.”
.
.