Chapter 3

That senior who was supposed to "help clear the logs" had just wiped some access traces from the system backend.

I exported the whole page, saved it to my computer, and casually cloned a backup image for safety.

Then I opened my email, sent all the important files to my off-campus backup account, and CC'd the advisor's assistant, someone who always stayed neutral and only cared about the outcome.

Seconds slipped away, each one feeling longer than the last.

The room was so quiet, all I could hear was the fan whirring and my fingers tapping away at the keyboard.

I finally understood. When a relationship rotted away, pain wasn't even the first thing that hit me.

The first thing was a cold clarity.

With that clarity, I realized the trust I once placed in someone's hands might one day become the very knife they used against me.

At 1:17 am, I dragged the last server log into my encrypted folder.

My phone screen lit up. Benjamin had sent another message.

Benjamin: [Leyla, when tomorrow's over, let's go to your favorite barbecue place, alright?]

I stared at the message, my face blank as I changed his contact name from "Ben" back to "Benjamin Miles."

Then I created a new folder. The name was "Counterattack Evidence."

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, my heart had hardened completely.

If they wanted to steal from me, let them.

If they wanted to use my project as a stepping stone, I would set the stage for them.

And when they finally reached the top, I would pull the rug out from under them in front of everyone.

I unplugged the external hard drive and tucked it deep inside my backpack.

On my computer screen, the time ticked over to 1:29 am.

I didn't cry. I just logged back into the server and silently changed all the access permissions.

Then, one by one, I started recovering everything they thought they could wipe away.

First up was the code.

I'd set up four branches in the repo: the main release, a test branch, a refactored interface branch, and an abandoned early draft.

Benjamin often attended the front-end demos, believing the real value was in the final visualization UI. However, the crucial components that made it work were the core model and the data cleaning logic.

I pulled the full Git commit log.

Every timestamp, author, branch merge, and commit note, I packed them all together.

Just so they couldn't turn around and say we "only brainstormed together," I went back and dug up the repo's very first initialization record from two years ago. My username, my email, my original algorithm skeleton, even the typo in the earliest error comment was mine.

Next up were the lab logs.

I snapped photos of every page of the paper logs and scanned them in, then sorted the digital files chronologically. What experiments I ran on which days, how many times things failed, how I tweaked the parameters, and why I scrapped old plans, they were all recorded, clear as day.

Some pages even had coffee stains Benjamin left behind when he'd swing by the lab.

He used to think those stains were proof he was there for me.

Now, they were perfect proof he was just a spectator.

Next came the emails.

I meticulously combed through every email I'd exchanged with my advisor, partner labs, and equipment suppliers over the past two years. Every send time, attachment version, feedback comment, and update acknowledgment was stamped with precise, down-to-the-second timestamps.

One email stood out. It was a reply from my advisor three months ago.

It read: [Leyla, if you push this project just a bit further, the state scholarship and a direct PhD spot are basically yours.]

I stared at that email for a couple of seconds, then starred it and archived it separately.

Not to comfort myself. But to remind myself exactly what they were after.

The server login records were even dirtier than I'd imagined.

Benjamin was using the secondary access I'd given him, logging in from both the campus lab and his off-campus dorm.

Casey was even more clueless. She had no idea about tech and messed up the folder path twice just trying to get into the project files.

The real joke was the senior who helped Benjamin.

He thought he'd wiped everything clean, but all he did was delete what showed up on the surface. The deep audit logs were still intact. I scrolled through the timeline and saw him log into the system backend at 10:42 pm, erase the access traces at 10:44, and log out at 10:46.

The timing matched up exactly with when I was standing outside the door, catching their scheming.

I made three backups of the backend logs. One was on my local hard drive, one was on an encrypted cloud drive, and one was sent to my off-campus backup email.

Then I opened the campus access system and pulled up the entry logs for the lab building from the past three days.

Benjamin had been inside my project lab. Casey had been in there too. She wasn't even on our team.

She couldn't get through the main access gate, so she could only follow someone in. The security guard on duty that night recognized me. When I asked, he said, "That girl in the white dress? She came in with your boyfriend, said you told them to pick up some stuff."