Chapter 4
Charles called out softly, "Mom."
But he didn't argue back.
He moved to shield Vivian behind him.
I noticed that gesture.
It felt like a heavy weight was slowly settling on my chest.
The music in the lobby suddenly got more lively.
A staff member called out, "Mr. Graham, the next product story is about to begin."
Charles glanced at the screen.
I followed his gaze.
The big screen came to life, switching to footage of the Z17 Prototype's development.
The first photo was of the lab.
I recognized that desk.
There was a crack on the corner, from when I banged it while moving the server.
The second slide showed a model curve.
That was a screenshot from my sixth version.
The third slide showed Vivian standing next to the prototype, smiling.
Subtitles slowly appeared on the screen. [Z17 Initiative Lead: Vivian.]
The applause broke out again.
I gripped my pen so tightly that the edge of the cap dug into my palm.
A faint sting kept me sharp.
Charles turned to me, his voice barely above a whisper. "Evelyn, hang in there for now."
I kept my eyes fixed on Vivian's name up there.
He let me hang in there.
After six years, all it took was a moment of patience for someone else to erase my name.
I didn't storm the stage.
I didn't snatch the mic in front of the cameras.
Charles probably thought I was taking it.
He let out a sigh of relief, turned to talk to his mom for a moment, then quietly told his assistant to get Vivian some water.
I stood by the backstage computer, my pitch deck tucked under my arm, and logged back into Cloudspire Technologies' internal server.
The password prompt popped up.
I typed in my admin credentials.
The loading icon spun for what felt like forever.
Then a message flashed on the screen. [Insufficient permissions for current account.]
That message cut right through me.
My eyes prickled for a second.
I clicked on the permissions details and saw that all I had left was reading public data.
The core codebase, test library, and prototype library were all grayed out and locked.
It was insufficient permissions.
I'd used this account to set up Cloudspire Technologies' very first internal server.
Back then, the company didn't have a proper server rack. The server was perched on an old wooden table, and every time the fan spun up, the whole room would buzz like a beehive.
I was so worried about the hard drive overheating that I'd spend the summer hugging an electric fan beside it.
Charles used to laugh, saying I looked like I was brooding over a nest of glowing eggs.
I shot him a glare and said, "This thing holds Cloudspire's soul."
Cloudspire Technologies kept growing, getting bigger and bigger.
But today, my permissions didn't make the cut.
I tried the backup entry point.
The remote access channel to the core lab was blocked as well.
The system logs showed it happened at 9:17 this morning.
Two hours before the launch event.
Action taken by the administration super account.
I stared at that timestamp, my fingertips slowly going cold.
By the time Charles came back, I'd already opened the local cache.
The Z17 demo files were still there, along with the author logs.
Every commit record clearly showed my name. [Evelyn Shaw]
[1:47 AM: Fixed the Z17 Prototype's recognition bias.]
[3:12 AM: Rebuilt the latency prediction system.]
[5:26 AM: Compressed the Z17 model's size.]
I took screenshots of every record and saved them to my external drive.
Charles stood beside me.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Just checking how much of my work is still left," I replied.
His face darkened a little. "Evelyn, don't say things like that."
I turned to look at him. "I pulled seventy-two hours straight to get the Z17 version working, did you know that?"
"I know," he replied quickly.
"Then why did you put Vivian in charge of it?"
Charles went quiet.
The demo video up front kept rolling.
Vivian was explaining the model's business value in that gentle, clear voice of hers.
She delivered it flawlessly as if she were reciting lines she'd memorized.
But she left out the most crucial part: the core logic behind it all.
She talked about Z17 as if it were some fancy gift, all wrapped up and perfect.
But I knew every crack hiding underneath.
"Charles, if you're going to let her present it, at least let her get what she's talking about," I said.
He frowned, "Come on, Evelyn, it's a team effort. No need to get so hung up on who did what."
I was stunned for a moment.
He thought it was a team effort, huh.
That made me feel colder than anything else tonight.
I met his gaze directly.
"When the system crashed, who was the one holed up in the server room for two days straight, fixing everything?" I asked.
He looked away. "Talking about it now won't change anything."
"The day before the funding pitch, when the investors demanded extra technical due diligence, who wrote that forty-thousand-word report?"
"Evelyn."
"When the third Z17 prototype failed, who rebuilt the whole model from scratch?"