The bronze reliefs of the San Francisco Civil Court exuded a cold glow under the July sun, as Rong Ci's nails dug deep into a Starbucks napkin. On the text of California Family Code Section 2640 amendment pushed over by Professor Taylor, the highlighter-marked paragraph seemed to ooze the saltiness of ink— the new clause stipulated: Intellectual property owned by a spouse before marriage, if commercially improved during the marriage, shall be deemed community property.
"They can't wait to tear apart your patent portfolio." Taylor turned his MacBook toward her; the real-time refreshed Delaware filing system on the screen showed that FENG CAPITAL had registered three special purpose entities two hours ago, all with names containing the keyword "silica sand purification".
Outside the window, a cable car rolled over the commemorative coins of Union Square, but Rong Ci's ears echoed with the laboratory explosion from three years ago. When she led the team to break through the silica sand electrolysis separation technology back then, Feng Tingshen pressed his champagne-foam-stained lips to her ear and said: "This is our Frankenstein."
Her phone suddenly vibrated; her secretary sent three encrypted emails in a row: The investment committee requested an emergency extraordinary general meeting. When she opened the voting rights change registration form in the attachment, Ventura Tech's corporate seal was赫然 stamped on the letterhead of Lin Wu Holdings' offshore company.
"Ms. Rong, would you like an iced Americano?" Taylor's intern敏锐ly held up a black coffee. This Gen Z girl in a Patagonia fleece had a Stanford Quantum Computing Center logo on her name tag. Rong Ci suddenly realized that the chief materials scientist on her team who had suddenly resigned had appeared in Lin Wu's LinkedIn network graph just last week.
As the Tesla rushed out of the underground garage, the automatic parking system suddenly reported an error. The rearview camera captured two security guards with Securitas armbands recording her license plate, and the snake tattoo on the back of one man's neck perfectly matched the last four digits of the IP address that had hacked the company's servers last month.
The biometric access control on the 33rd floor of Ventura Tech's headquarters rejected the iris verification, so Rong Ci directly kicked open the fire escape with her high heels. While crawling through the graffiti-covered ventilation duct, she heard a cleaner mutter in Cantonese: "The new boss is coming to tear down the lab (新老细要嚟拆实验室嘞)."
In front of the bulletproof glass door of the core R&D area, Chief Scientist Lilian was destroying samples with a laser cutter. This eight-month-pregnant MIT PhD held up a blue-glowing silicon crystal: "What they want is the formula, not the成果." Mustard-scented inert gas suddenly poured in through the vent, and in the red light of the activated safety protocol, the back of Lilian's ID badge revealed a handwritten Russian blessing from Lin Wu.
Rong Ci pulled off the emergency brake valve and inserted the USB drive into the mass spectrometer terminal. The tampered experimental data from the past three months cascaded across the裸眼 3D projection, and an abnormal fluctuation frequency resonated perfectly with the electromagnetic pulses emitted by Feng Tingshen's watch. When she pulled up the cloud logs of the home security system, she found that her husband had used administrator privileges to remotely access the quantum encrypted channel of the company's data center last month.
"The fifth-generation catalyst for the Chrysotile Project..." Lilian suddenly knelt in the puddle formed by coolant leakage, and the unborn child kicked her ribs through the protective suit, "can increase the conversion efficiency to 92% at room temperature."
Amidst the alarm, Rong Ci's smart bracelet began counting down—17 minutes and 38 seconds remaining of the 72-hour preservation period stipulated by Article 2640. She tore off the cover of MIT Technology Review from the lab wall, revealing a safe containing the notary's contact information. As the laser scanner read the barcode birthmark beneath her collarbone, three unlicensed Chevrolet Suburbans crushed the patent certificate sculpture in the lobby.
"Go to the San Jose Federal Court." She showed the electronic preservation order to the Uber driver, and the car radio suddenly cut in with breaking news: Lin Wu's environmental fund was acquiring high-yield bonds from Ventura Tech's creditors. The video phone screen in the back seat lit up, showing her daughter Feng Jingxin by the infinity pool of Lin Wu's Hawaiian villa, with the shell necklace on her wrist flashing the red light of a GPS locator.
The steel cables of the Golden Gate Bridge tensed into a musical staff in the twilight, and Rong Ci bit open a Marlboro爆珠. In the menthol smoke, she finally saw clearly the dancing numbers on the financial statements—not acquisition offers, but phosphorescent fire burning on the coffin lid of her marriage.