Chapter 4

The track manager called me, stammering excuses before finally spilling the truth.

"Look, Ms. Clark, I'm truly sorry. Astra Tech just signed an exclusive annual retainer with us. One of their strict conditions was that we terminate any business with your entity. Our hands are tied..."

"Understood."

Barely a second after I hung up, Liam bolted into the room.

"Boss! Server breach attempt!"

"Someone’s trying to punch through our firewall," Liam’s fingers blurred across his keyboard. "It’s a sophisticated attack, but our core servers are holding. Their target seems to be our demo telemetry datasets."

My stomach dropped.

"Execute emergency protocol. Air-gap the master repository right now. Trace the origin IP."

"Got it." Liam’s voice turned deadly cold. "IP traced. It's coming straight out of Astra Tech's corporate R&D network."

Leo slammed his fist onto the desk. "Are you kidding me?! Those shameless bastards!"

I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Calm down."

I grabbed my phone and dialed our legal counsel.

"Counselor Campbell, I need an immediate preservation of evidence filing against Astra Tech. They just attempted an intrusion into our private servers. We have the originating IP logged. Serve them a cease-and-desist right now."

Hanging up, I leaned back against my chair.

My mind drifted back six years.

We had just closed our first funding round. Julian was over the moon, treating the whole squad to a celebratory dinner.

Someone at the table had asked what we'd do if competitors started playing dirty.

Julian had raised his glass high and announced, "We let our tech do the talking. We never stoop to cheap tricks."

Later that night, tipsy and flushed, he whispered to me, "Evelyn, don't worry. No matter what happens in this life, I will always be the person who has your back."

Always.

Six years.

Turns out, his "always" had an expiration date of six years.

"Boss," Liam's voice snapped me back to reality. "What do we do about the track?"

I rubbed my temples.

Just then, my desk phone rang from an unknown landline.

"Hello, is this Evelyn Clark?"

"Speaking."

"Hello, Ms. Clark. This is David Miller from the City Department of Transportation's Tech Division. We noticed your public launch is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Are you still looking for a closed-course demonstration facility?"

I froze. "Excuse me?"

"The Transportation Department just completed safety certification on a smart-grid test track on the south side of town. It hasn't opened to the public yet.”

“Our leadership is very keen on cutting-edge autonomous mobility and wants to back genuine innovators. If you need it, the facility is yours to use. Free of charge."

My throat tightened. "Thank you, Mr. Miller."

"Don't mention it, Evelyn. We're betting on your talent. Send your team over for logistics. Let's make it happen."

As I hung up, Liam and Leo looked at me with bated breath.

"We have our track," I said.

The room erupted into cheers.

I turned to look out the window.

Maybe, just maybe, integrity still counted for something.

Maybe when you build something truly magnificent, the right eyes will see it.

At two in the afternoon, Julian held his media briefing at Astra Tech headquarters.

Leo attended undercover, live-texting me updates.

[Boss, more than half of Astra’s presentation deck is based on our old technical roadmaps! He's literally projecting the unreleased Level 4 architecture you drafted!]

My knuckles whitened around my phone.

[Press Q&A started. A reporter asked what he thinks of emerging startups.]

[He said he welcomes healthy competition, but warned that 'desperate people hyping unfinished lab experiments' are a disgrace to the industry.]

[He heavily implied your name. He didn't say it outright, but everyone knows he means you.]

The texts kept rolling in.

The AC hummed in the room, but my spine felt like it was on fire.

"Boss, you okay?" Liam asked cautiously.

"I'm fine," I replied calmly. "Pull every single archived technical document from my time at Astra. Every timestamped commit, every git history log, every email thread, and every meeting transcript."

"What are you planning?"

"We're adding an extra segment to our keynote."

"What kind of segment?"

I met his gaze.

"I'm going to show the entire world who the real liar is."