The hackathon floor smelled of burnt coffee and overheated processors. Day two was when things turned brutal — every team scrambling to debug, polish, and perfect before the final presentation.
Tina's laptop hummed beside her as lines of code danced across the screen, perfect and pristine. Her encryption module was airtight, but something about the system's response time felt… off.
"Lag in the hashing sequence," she muttered, fingers flying over the keys.
Ishaan leaned over. "Need a second pair of eyes?"
"Not yet," she said sharply, then caught herself. "Sorry. It's just… this part is everything. If the encryption fails, we fail."
He nodded, not offended. "Then we'll triple-check. Together."
---
They had just entered the final testing stage when Mira hurried over, clutching a USB stick. "Guys, did one of you leave this in Lab B? I found it plugged into our system."
Tina's stomach dropped. "No. Why?"
"Because when I opened it," Mira continued, "it had a replica of our project files. Someone copied our code."
"What?" Ishaan's face hardened. "Who touched our station?"
Mira's eyes flicked toward the opposite side of the room. Dev and Riya's team was huddled over their laptops, suspiciously quiet. Riya glanced over just then, offering a smile that wasn't a smile at all.
Tina's pulse spiked. Her mind raced back to high school — Riya swapping her notes for blank pages during an exam, Dev whispering cruel jokes while everyone laughed. Always taking. Always making her feel like nothing was her own.
Not again.
"I'll handle this," Ishaan said, pushing back his chair.
But Tina's voice came out sharp, almost shaking: "No. If they want a war, they'll get one."
---
By mid-afternoon, they were in the final review round. Each team was asked to present a live demo of their prototype. As Tina's team set up, she noticed the faint smirk on Dev's face. He whispered something to Riya, who chuckled under her breath.
When their turn came, Tina's hands hovered over the keyboard, confident… until the system crashed.
Error codes flashed red across the screen. The encryption module, her encryption module, refused to compile.
"What—no, this isn't possible," Tina whispered, heart pounding. "It worked ten minutes ago."
"Someone tampered with it," Ishaan said darkly, glancing toward Riya's table.
The audience was waiting. Professor Shalini's brows knitted together. "Team 7, do you need technical assistance?"
Tina's throat tightened. Her vision blurred. Suddenly the noise of the room — the clacking keyboards, the murmur of students, the hum of machines — turned into a deafening roar. Her breath hitched. She couldn't inhale fully. Her fingers shook against the keys.
"I— I can't—" she stammered.
Ishaan crouched beside her chair, his voice low and urgent. "Tina. Look at me. Hey. You're safe. Just breathe."
But she couldn't. Not with Riya watching. Not with everyone's eyes on her. It was like being 14 again, standing in the middle of a classroom as Riya laughed and everyone joined in.
Her chest constricted. Her vision narrowed.
---
"Hey, Rathod." The voice was firm. Ishaan's hands closed gently around hers, grounding her. "In. Out. With me, okay?"
She tried, but her breaths came in shallow bursts.
"Listen to me," he whispered, leaning closer. "You're not in that school anymore. You're here. With me. And this—" He tapped the screen. "This is yours. No one can take it."
Something about his tone — steady, unyielding — cut through the noise. Her lungs burned, but she forced in a shaky breath. Then another.
Her fingers slowly stopped trembling.
"Good," he said softly. "Now, let me cover you. I'll present the first part. You jump in when you're ready. Deal?"
She nodded, swallowing hard.
---
As Ishaan began the presentation, Tina forced herself to refocus. Her code wasn't broken — she could feel it. Whoever tampered with it must have left a trace.
She ran a quick diagnostic in the background while Ishaan explained the project's interface. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted a strange script buried in the backend — a deliberate delay command. Not hers. Dev's work, most likely.
Her hands steadied. Her mind sharpened.
By the time Ishaan passed the floor back to her, she had already purged the sabotage. The system booted cleanly this time, encrypting and decrypting test data with flawless precision.
"Triple-layered RSA encryption with a visual hashing module," she explained, her voice clear and strong now. "Designed not just for speed, but resilience. Even if someone tries to interfere."
She looked straight at Riya when she said it.
The applause that followed wasn't just polite — it was impressed.
---
Later, as the teams dispersed, Ishaan found Tina sitting outside the building steps, the rain finally softening to a drizzle.
"You okay?" he asked, offering her a bottle of water.
She took it, nodding weakly. "I hate that this still happens. Panic attacks. Like I'm… stuck in the past."
"You're not stuck," he said. "You fought through it. You owned that stage."
She glanced at him, and for the first time that day, smiled faintly. "Thanks for… being there."
"Always," he said simply.
---
But as they headed back, neither noticed Dev watching them from the far end of the corridor, his phone in hand. A message blinked on his screen from an unknown contact:
"Did she crack yet?"
"Not yet. But she will."
To be continued…