HQ at night wasn't peaceful.
It hummed.
A low, constant, electric vibration—like the building itself was awake, aware, listening.
Roxanne stepped through the biometric gates with the decoy chip in her pocket and her brothers beside her.
The retinal scanner flashed green.
The heavy doors opened.
Inside, the air tasted like old wiring and colder secrets.
Cain walked ahead.
Loman checked corners out of habit.
Roxanne didn't check anything.
She already knew where she was going.
Straight to the sub-level engineering core.
Where her inventions had been born.
Where her ideas lived long before anyone knew she had them.
Where someone had apparently been working alongside her without permission.
The elevator sank 40 floors before the doors hissed open onto Roxanne's oldest workspace.
Pristine.
Organized.
Sterile.
Exactly the same as she left it.
Exactly how she wanted it.
Which is why the anomaly caught her eye immediately.
A panel on the far-left wall—one that should have been perfectly flush, unbroken—had microscopic scarring on the lock seal.
Not enough to be visible.
Just enough to scream at a Black.
Roxanne crossed the room silently.
Pressed her thumb to the panel.
It resisted.
She pressed again.
This time it opened.
Behind the panel was a hollow compartment—dusty, unused, untouched for years...
Except it had been touched.
A thin imprint on the dust.
Small. Precise. Repeated.
Finger-sized.
Someone had opened this compartment regularly, long before she knew to guard it.
Cain leaned over her shoulder.
"Someone used this to access internal wiring."
"No," Roxanne corrected.
Her voice was quiet.
Sharp.
Cold.
"They used it to access the Root system."
Loman's breath caught.
"That was here? At sixteen?"
Roxanne nodded.
"Before I moved the prototype to the Vault."
Her brothers exchanged a look of dawning horror.
Someone didn't just steal knowledge.
They watched her grow.
They studied her.
They waited.
Roxanne reached into the panel and pulled out—
Not a tool.
Not a code module.
But a folded strip of old blueprint paper.
YOU ARE READING
The lazy genius has 5 mates
General Fiction"are you guys bi or is it dote on the females type?" "she has a talent of sleeping anywhere" "congratulations on winning the genius of the year award!" "6 successful people mated together! general people should spit blood!" --------------- heh. wh...
