The Hacker and The Heroes

N.U.C.L.E.U.S

A/N: Sorry for republishing the previous chapter- I changed her program's name from S.H.I.P to N.U.C.L.E.U.S. Also, this chapter is longer than previous ones, which is something I am working at getting better at.
_______________________________________________________
    BY the time the duo had reached Nadia's office, she was ready to throw herself from the window to escape Stark's incessant arrogance. She had never in her life been so grateful to have mastered the ability to block out people's thoughts. Simply imagining what Stark's stream of consciousness held causes Nadia to involuntarily shudder. Naturally, Nadia would never allow her irritation to manifest itself onto her face. That would, after all, give Stark the upper hand. So, instead of reacting with anger when Stark next asked, "Are we there yet?" she calmly opened the door to her office and bid him enter.

    Stark looked around himself at her office. It was relatively barren and had varying pops of color- from the red stress ball on her desk to the lavender she had growing on the windowsill. The desk had four monitors on it, and he could see an impressive NAS (Network Attached Storage) tucked underneath her desk. He could faintly hear its fan humming, and he could identify a coffee scent hovering about the entirety of the workspace. Above all, however, it was immaculately clean.
    The billionaire didn't know what he had been expecting- really, he didn't think he had been expecting anything in particular- but this, this wasn't it. Maybe he was expecting a dark leather theme to match her jacket (and her scathing personality). Perhaps he was expecting a classic "tech cranny" full of motherboards and blinking lights. Instead, he basked in the airy environment and felt oddly calm.

    Nadia moved over to the desk-space to boot everything to life. Her world was stored within this mainframe. Of course, she had a backup up elsewhere, and she had her own system at home, but this- this was the center of it all. She could tear apart entire organizations from the inside out with the keyboard that laid before her. She barely acknowledged Stark walking around her office randomly picking up the knick-knacks she had collected over the years, but when he walked behind her to look over her shoulder, it felt intimate. Someone else was trying to peer into her universe. Someone else was seeing her carefully collected inner thoughts splayed out on the screen before them.

    Stark thought she was lovely. He could see her brilliance painted out on the screen. In this moment, seeing the glossy blue of the computer reflected in her brown orbs, Stark decided he hadn't ever beheld someone as beautiful as she. These were odd thoughts for The Billionaire- they almost seemed unprompted. Almost as if they was inserted into his mind as a gift from some unknown force. He was used to lusting after women, sure, but this felt different. It startled him how suddenly these feelings had arisen. They were illogical. He knew that. He couldn't- shouldn't feel this way towards someone he just met, but he simultaneously felt himself wanting to surrender to the feeling. It felt right. Whole.

    Nadia found the N.U.C.L.E.U.S program and opened it up. Her hands had minute tremors running through them as she turned the monitor it was on slightly more towards Stark.
    Stark furrowed his eyebrows at the intricate code laid out on the screen. "What is it?" He questioned.
    "It is N.U.C.L.E.U.S" Nadia began. "A cross-database referencing system designed to search every electronic storage space held on planet Earth. I am working on making it interdimensional as well. Ideally, it will be able to comb through all databases within the span of a minute- two at the most. The reason it's name references a nucleus, however, is due to the DNA aspect of it. It can take any DNA sample and then be able to A) identify it, B) locate the being, and C) tell you who their soulmate it. The only downside is that the person must exist in one of the databases it searches."
    Stark's eyes widened and his heart quickened. For years mankind has been attempting something of this scale! The ability to find soulmates is undoubtedly not a new concept. Still, up until this point, no one had managed to find a comprehensive way of doing so. Some would consider it blasphemous- an attempt by humankind to fiddle with the universe's divine plan of having soulmates meet at predestined times, but Stark didn't care about that. He rapidly exhaled and asked in a single breath-
"Have you tried?"