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“They knew,” I swore.
Adrian dropped the broom he was holding. It clattered to the kitchen floor, as Jax’s hands balled into fists.
“Who else knew what you were doing?” Jax demanded angrily. “Besides us?”
“I… I don’t think many people, really,” I breathed.
“Think hard.”
In my devastated state, I wracked my brain. “Well, Sophia, for one. But she knew very little, and she’d never—”
“Who else?”
I thought some more. “Obviously I’ve been on message boards,” I told them. “I brainstormed with other programmers about certain parts of my overall system, but I was always anonymous. And I was careful to never mention anything specific.”
“What about that YouTube channel you’ve been following?” Preston asked. “The kid who was doing a lot of the same things you were.”
“What about him?”
“Well, you were worried he was maybe stealing your designs.” He squinted thoughtfully. “Think there was some way he could’ve been?”
“I don’t see how,” I shrugged. “My machine was never connected to the internet, not even once. It’s always been air-gapped. There’s not even a network card.”
Everyone’s gaze slowly dropped, and my dread deepened. Everything I’d worked for; tens of thousands of hours of blood, sweat and tears. All of it — gone, in the time it took for me to go out for dinner and drinks.
FUCK!
I could rebuild the prototypes in a quarter of the time it took to do them originally, maybe even less. Rewriting the code would take much longer. In my heart, I knew I didn’t have it in me to do either. Especially with the looming deadlines I’d set, in the form of meetings with SONY in San Mateo, and Valve just outside of Seattle. Shit, I already had plane tickets.
But no, it’s not that I couldn’t rebuild everything, I just wouldn’t. Especially since the people who’d taken my work most likely knew exactly what it was, and therefore, planned on taking it to market way before I ever could.
“Holy shit,” Preston said suddenly. “It’s gone.”
His words came out sort of strange. I looked up to find him staring into his phone.
“What’s gone?”
“The whole channel!” he exclaimed. “That YouTube kid you showed me, who was doing the haptics stuff.”
He reached out and handed me his phone. Sure enough, the entire channel had been deleted.
“What does that mean?” asked Adrian.
“It means he’s involved at the very least,” said Preston.
“Good,” said Adrian.
“Good?” My brow furrowed. “How can this possibly be good?”
“Because a minute ago we had nothing,” Adrian explained. “And now, at least, we have a place to start.”
He slipped the phone from his pocket and began tapping away. As Preston did the same, the roller coaster in my stomach began its uphill climb again. Just over the rise, far off in the distance, I thought I could see something: the faintest glimmer of hope.
A heavy hand slipped over my shoulder. I looked down the massive arm that hand belonged to, and found Jax was actually grinning.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” I challenged him. “How can you be—”
“Because we’re going to fix this,” he said, his voice full of confidence. “I already know it.”
