She turned to Penny, her expression softening even as the intensity remained in her eyes. "If they spent the energy they're using on this trip just focusing on the engineering of a synthetic monopole, they wouldn't be coming home with cold feet; they'd be coming home with a patent that would make them the most powerful men in science. It is astonishing in how many ways a monopole could change our lifes, Penny. Total revolution."
"Well," Penny said, a sleepy, mischievous grin tugging at her lips as she snuggled closer. "I'm glad I have the smart girl in my bed tonight. Maybe she can tutor me on a few more things."
Elena smiled, feeling how much she cared for the woman beside her. "I think I can manage that."
---
The Monday morning air still held the ghost of the van's exhaust fumes as Elena and Penny stood on the sidewalk. The silence that followed the boys' departure wasn't empty; it was heavy with potential.
"So," Penny said, hugging her elbows against the morning chill. "They're actually gone. No Star Trek marathons and nobody to tell me I'm sitting in their 'spot' for ninety days. It feels... strange."
Elena leaned against the brickwork, looking up at the now-quiet windows of the building. "Something is missing, like a vacuum, Penny. And nature abhors a vacuum. Let us fill it with work on your trailer."
While the guys were still navigating airport security, Elena had already turned her apartment's lab into a 24-hour production house. What had once been a pair of simple robotic arms had evolved into a sophisticated automated fabricator. It was a marvel of precision engineering, capable of weaving fibers, milling aerospace-grade alloys, and 3D-printing reactive plastics with microscopic accuracy.
As soon as Elena fed the blueprints into Angie's core, the machines hummed to life. Over the next few days, the fabricator spit out a small arsenal: Arasaka-branded rifles that felt dangerously real and balanced in the hand, and sleek tactical uniforms woven with integrated LED fibers that could pulse with the character's "health" or "data flow."
But the centerpiece—the prop Elena was most proud of—was the Deep Dive Pod.
In the Cyberpunk world, these pods are essentially high-tech sensory-deprivation tanks used by hackers to project their consciousness into the digital world. Elena had designed the pod with a custom electrochromic glass lid. With a single command, the glass could transition from crystal clear to pitch black.
"It's perfect for the storytelling," Elena explained to Penny, running a hand over the smooth, matte finish of the pod. "When you're 'under,' we can keep the glass clear to show your peaceful face, making it look like you're dreaming. But when things go wrong—when the Rogue AIs find you—we can tint the glass or keep it clear to capture the frantic, claustrophobic movements of someone dying inside a coffin they can't escape."
Penny shivered as she looked at the pod. It didn't look like a movie prop. But somehow it made it even better. Looking at the first prop Elena created she was forced to think back at her last movie. There simply was no comparison. Elena was right, if she did a good job with this trailers, she might really have something to be proud of. Regardless of her future career choices.
---
The reality of the "decommissioned studio" was a slap in the face. When Elena and Penny swung the heavy doors open, they weren't greeted by a old but ready-to-use set, but by a scene of technological vandalism. High-end lighting rigs had been smashed for their copper, and the camera mounts were empty sockets in the ceiling.
"This isn't a studio," Penny whispered, kicking a piece of shattered glass. "It's a dump with a roof."
Elena didn't blink. She was already on her laptop. "It's an opportunity for a clean slate. We don't have time for manual labor." Within ten minutes, she had hired a crew of local university students to haul the junk out. "By tomorrow, I'll have my construction drones in here to scrub the walls and lay the new cabling. If the world won't give us a stage, we'll build one."
"Construction drones?" Penny asked curiously. But Elena did not answer and pretended to work on her Laptop. But secretly she felt it was time to decide if she brings Penny into more details of her life or not.
However, the precision gear—the custom lighting arrays and the professional cameras needed to capture the appropriate quality—couldn't be bought spontaneously. Elena needed to go back to her lab.
"I'm going to be locked creating new blueprints and getting the materials needed to create the lighting and the cameras," Elena said, her eyes already distant as she calculated all she needed. "I'm going to be deep in the weeds today, Penny—blueprints, materials, and a lot of typing," Elena said with a small, apologetic smile. "Don't just sit around getting bored. Go find Stuart. Besides me, he's the expert on the world 'Lucy' lives in, and he's dying to talk about the character. Let him walk you through the mindset. By the time I have the cameras ready, I want you to feel like you've actually been to Night City."
---
Penny pushed open the door to the Comic Center, but the bells didn't chime into the usual dusty silence. Instead, she stepped into a transformed space. Elena's influence—and Stuart's new capital—had turned the shop into a high-end gallery.
The harsh fluorescent lights were gone, replaced by a strategic lighting system that bathed the aisles in deep teals and magentas. Spotlights highlighted rare figurines, and a neon sign behind the counter hummed with a soft, electric pulse. It felt like a piece of Night City had been carved out in the middle of Pasadena.
Stuart wasn't alone. He was standing near the register, talking to a girl with vibrant hair and a "Death Note" t-shirt who was looking over an application form.
"And you're sure about the 'Modern Age' filing system?" Stuart was asking, his voice lacking its usual tremor. "I'm very particular about the variant covers."
"Trust me," the girl replied, a confident smirk on her face. "I can alphabetize a long-box faster than you can say 'Crisis on Infinite Earths.'"
"Stuart?" Penny called out, walking toward them.
Stuart looked up, a genuine smile breaking across his face. "Penny! Hey. Just... give me a second. I'm interviewing Denise here. I've reached a point where I can't actually man the register and finish the next issue of Cyberpunk at the same time."
"It's fine," Penny said, leaning against the counter. Denise's eyes darted between Stuart and Penny, clearly piecing together why this girl looked so familiar. "Elena is locked in her lab building the camera rigs, and she sent me here. I wanted to talk about the 'Lucy' escape scene. I need to understand the... the soul of it."
Denise's jaw practically hit the floor. She looked at Stuart, then back at Penny. "Wait. You're the 'Lucy' from the sketches? And ...and ... are you consulting on some live action what? Movie!?" She turned to Stuart, her eyes wide with a new level of respect. "You didn't mention you were a creative director for a film project."
Stuart turned a healthy shade of pink. "It's a... so far it is only some trailers to promote the comics and the game that will be released at some point. But yes, we're shooting the beginning of Lucy, the Arasaka escape soon."
"That is so metal," Denise whispered, looking at Penny with awe. She turns to Stuart and simply says "Don't mind me, I would be honored to just wait for the both of you!"
Stuart looks at her a little strangely. He never was in that situation but decided to role with it.
Stuart led Penny to the back of the shop, where a focused beam of light cut through the teal-and-magenta shadows to illuminate his drawing board. The air here was thicker, smelling of ozone and the ink of his pens. Behind them, Denise watched with a look of reverence, her application form forgotten as she realized she had just walked into the birth of a legend.
Stuart sat down, his digital pen hovering over a fresh canvas. "The scene describes the core of the Cyberpunk world, Penny," he said, the pen suddenly flying to create jagged, red-tinted horizons. "This Arasaka facility… it's a farm. They've bought kids from their parents—some sold for a few months' rent, others just so the rest of the family could eat. All of them chosen because they have a high neural-link compatibility. A talent for diving."
He looked up at her, the artist's typical nervousness replaced by a cold, creative intensity. "But to understand Lucy, you need to understand the Blackwall. Decades ago, the AIs turned on their creators. Humanity managed to cage those killer programs in a separate part of cyberspace—behind the Blackwall. Going there is a death sentence. If one of those AIs finds you, you aren't just dead; your mind is wiped before your heart even stops."
He paused, seeing Penny shiver. He knew the imagery was working.
"But by caging the AIs, humanity lost most of the world's digital knowledge. For a company like Arasaka, there is no morality, only a balance sheet. They calculate the cost of buying a child and the cost of the equipment against the potential profit of the data that child can steal from behind the wall."
Stuart leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a low, urgent hum. "The part you need to feel is the struggle. How do you motivate a teenager to face that level of horror every single day? It's not just money. It's ingrained, psychological fear. Years of conditioning that makes them more afraid of Arasaka than they are of the killer AIs. Lucy has watched her friends die in those pods, one by one, for years. She has seen their brains fry while she watched through the glass. The escape isn't just a prison break, Penny. It's the moment she realizes she would rather have a bullet in her head then spend one more second being a corporate slave and at someday be deleted by an AI."
Penny stared at the screen, where Stuart had sketched a young Lucy looking at a glowing, red barrier. She felt a knot tie in her stomach—not for the character, but for the raw, human injustice of it.
"She's the only one who stands up," Penny whispered.
Stuart clicked his pen, the sound sharp in the quiet of the back room. "Exactly," he said, his voice dropping to a low, intense hum. "She's the glitch in the system that corporations spent decades to perfect. But the system isn't just about the walls or the guards, Penny. It's about the people inside."
He sketched a group of teenagers, their faces pale and illuminated by the harsh blue light of computer monitors. "When you're a slave in a farm like that, you have two choices: you stand together, or you step on someone else's head to get a slightly better treatment. The constant fear isn't just the Blackwall; it's the fear of betrayal. You never know who is a friend and who is an informant looking to make profit by stabbing you in the back."
Stuart's pen moved with frantic energy, drawing a series of silhouettes falling into darkness. "In the scene we're shooting, Lucy and her small circle of friends are the 'bugs.' They've found a loophole in the security – they found hope. But as they make their move, the system starts to crush them. One of them—a kid they trusted—is about to crack. He's ready to sell them all out just for a chance to live."
Penny leaned in, her eyes fixed on the screen. "So what happens? Does she kill him?"
"No," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "It's worse than that. They didn't see the betrayal coming. They were so close, Penny. But security was informed and they didn't have enough time, so one after another her friends sacrificed themselves for Lucy."
A soft, sharp squeak of excitement escaped Denise. She was clutching her application so hard, her eyes darting between Penny and the screen like she was watching a blockbuster movie unfold in real-time. She quickly covered her mouth, looking embarrassed, but her wide-eyed stare said it all: she was hooked.
Stuart didn't seem to notice; he was too deep in the story. " Lucy escapes, Penny. But she doesn't escape clean. She carries the burden of being the only survivor in a world built on betrayal. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees the people who died so she could have a chance. That's the fire in her eyes. It's not just anger. It's a debt she can never repay."
Penny stood there for a long moment, the magenta and teal neon of the shop reflecting in her eyes. The "V" character was no longer a mercenary in a comic book. She was a woman carrying death and guild with every step.
"I get it now," Penny whispered, her voice thick with a new kind of weight. "She's not only running away from Arasaka. She's running from her own guilt, the feeling of having failed."
Denise let out a long, shaky breath. "That is... so incredible," she whispered, her voice full of genuine awe. "Pleeeease hire me!"
---
By the time Penny walked back to the apartment building, the sun was setting over Pasadena, casting long, orange shadows that reminded her too much of the "jagged horizons" Stuart had been drawing. Her head was heavy. She felt like she was carrying the ghosts of Lucy's friends up the stairs with her.
She peeked into Elena's apartment. The muffled sound of high-frequency whirring and a faint blue glow from under the door told her Elena was deep in "The Zone." Between the construction drones at the studio and the camera sensors in the lab, Elena was building a physical world as fast as Stuart was building a mental one.
Penny decided to give her space. She retreated to 4B, kicked off her shoes, and sat on her sofa in the dark, trying to hold onto that feeling of "Lucy"—the weight of the fear, the guilt, the coldness of the corporate farm.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The rhythm was precise. It wasn't the frantic thumping of Leonard or the rhythmic triple-tap of Sheldon. It was sharp and clinical.
Penny sighed and pulled herself out of her thoughts. She opened the door.
Amy Farrah Fowler stood there, wearing a beige cardigan and clutching a sensible satchel as if it were a shield. Her expression was one of intense, almost predatory, sociological interest.
"Sheldon informed me that you were the primary catalyst for our meeting," Amy stated without a greeting. "He also indicated that in his absence, you are the designated 'caretaker' of his social interests. Since he is currently in a frozen wasteland, I have decided we should share some time together. You know, get to know each other better."
Penny leaned her forehead against the doorframe. "Amy, it's been a really long day. I've spent four hours talking about child slaves and killer AIs."
"Fascinating," Amy said, stepping into the apartment before she was officially invited. "Though I suspect your 'killer AIs' are mere science fiction. My research into the pre-frontal cortex suggests that true consciousness in silicon is at least six decades away. Now, shall we begin our bonding ritual? I have brought a list of topics for 'Girl Talk,' including the hormonal cycles of primates and a critique of the historical inaccuracy of the 'princess' archetype."
Penny looked at Amy, then at the empty apartment. The contrast was almost too much. Two hours ago, she was learning how to be a revolutionary. Now, she was being asked to discuss primate hormones.
"You know what, Amy?" Penny said, a tired but genuine smile finally breaking through her "Lucy" mask. "If you want to be besties, you're going to have to do better than a list. Do you know anything about trauma? Or... how a person would act if they just watched their friends' minds get fried?"
Amy paused, her eyes narrowing behind her glasses. "Are we talking about your fictional project, or did your weekend at the Cheesecake Factory take a very dark turn?"
"The project," Penny said, sitting back down and gesturing for Amy to join her. "I'm playing a character who is a survivor. I need to know how that feels—I want to really bring the character to life."
Amy sat down, her posture stiff but her interest clearly piqued. "Well, from a neurobiological standpoint, survivor's guilt is a fascinating malfunction of the amygdala. If you wish to portray it accurately, we should discuss the sympathetic nervous system's response to unresolved grief."
Penny leaned back, realized that this unexpected bestie might actually help her for her acting. "Okay, Amy. Talk to me. Make my brain hurt."
---
The studio no longer smelled of dust. It smelled of fresh paint. Elena had worked miracles; the walls were now lined with modular acoustic dampening, and a rail system snaked across the ceiling, carrying Angie's camera clusters like silent, predatory birds.
Stuart stood in the center of the "Pod Room" set. He was wearing a tactical headset, his tablet glowing with the storyboards he and Penny had labored over.
"Denise, move three inches to the left—you're blocking the light for the 'traitor' reveal," Stuart commanded.
Denise, practically vibrating with excitement in her green motion-capture suit, scurried into place. She had convinced a friend to cover the comic book shop for a "family emergency," which, in her mind, this was. This was the birth of a masterpiece.
"Alright, listen up!" Stuart called out, his voice echoing. "This is the 'Final Breach.' You aren't actors, scientist or even adults; you are terrified teenagers who have been living in a cage for ten years, never even seeing the sun. The guards—played by a grumpy Elena, more will be added later digitally—are coming. These guns," he pointed to the Arasaka rifles, "shoot paintballs. If you get hit, it's going to sting. Use that. If you're scared of the bruise, use that fear. You are running for your lives!"
The girls stood in a circle: Penny in the center, surrounded by Bernadette, Alex, and Amy. They looked like neon-green aliens in their suits, markers placed precisely on their joints so Angie could later shrink each frame into the size of malnourished teenagers.
A heavy silence fell. Penny closed her eyes, letting her shoulders drop, breathing in the cold air until she wasn't a girl in a warehouse, but a ghost in a machine.
"Angie," Elena's voice came from the shadows, cold and detached. "Initiate environment 02. Kill the house lights."
The studio plunged into a deep, oppressive blue. The only light came from the flickering red "Emergency" strips Angie had synced to the grid. The green suits vanished into the shadows, leaving only the glowing markers floating like digital fireflies.
"Ready," Penny whispered. Her voice had changed—it was lower, jagged with a decade of suppressed fear.
The studio air was cold, the ventilation humming with the artificial chill of a corporate tomb. Stuart stood by the monitors, his face tight. Elena was already in position, hidden behind the "Arasaka" blast doors at the far end of the hallway set.
"Alright," Stuart whispered into the comms. "We're sneaking. This is the moment they think they've won. Penny, you're leading. You've just planted the seed of the code that blinds their sensors and opens doors. You're the genius netrunner who just gave them hope. Action!"
Penny moved with a fluid, stayed crouch, her eyes darting between the shadows. Behind her, Bernadette, Alex, and Denise followed, their breathing heavy and synchronized. They were a pack. They were almost out.
Amy was at the rear. She stopped.
While the others moved forward, Amy turned toward a heavy yellow lever on the wall—the manual emergency release. Her face was terrifyingly calm. She gripped the cold metal.
CLANG-SHREEEEEE!
The sound of the blast doors retracting was like a thunderclap in the small studio. The girls spun around, blinded by the sudden flood of harsh white light from the opening.
The sound of the blast doors retracting was like a thunderclap in the small, sterile studio. The girls spun around, blinded by the sudden flood of harsh white light.
"Amy! What are you doing?!" Penny hissed, her heart leaping into her throat. She lunged forward, not to attack, but to pull Amy back into the shadows. "The sensors are blind, but the security isn't deaf! They'll hear that noise—they'll be here in seconds! Get away from the lever!"
Penny grabbed Amy's arm, her eyes wide with frantic protection. "Come on, the path to the heli-deck is open! We can be out of here before they reset the grid!"
Amy didn't move. She didn't flinch. She simply looked down at Penny's hand on her arm with a clinical, detached curiosity.
"They won't be 'coming,' Lucy," Amy stated, her voice terrifyingly flat. "They are already here. I sent the signal four minutes ago."
Penny froze, her fingers slipping from Amy's sleeve. "What? No... we're friends. We're getting out together."
"The concept of 'freedom' is a statistical fallacy," Amy countered, stepping firmly into the light of the open corridor. "I have analyzed the flight path of the helicopter you intend to steal. Even with your hacking skills, Arasaka controls the satellite grid and every landing zone within a thousand-mile radius. There is no 'away.' There is only the distance traveled before we are identified and incinerated."
"We have to try!" Penny pleaded, her voice cracking as she realized the horror of what was happening.
"A friends are like a pack – it is a biological survival strategy that fails when the predator is omnipresent," Amy said, looking past Penny toward the darkness. "Arasaka rewards intelligence. I have negotiated a 're-education' contract in exchange for the encryption keys you just planted. The probability of me living a productive life as a corporate asset is ninety-four percent. The probability of us surviving that flight is zero. I am not a traitor, Lucy. I am a realist."
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
The heavy, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of combat boots echoed from the bright darkness Amy had just invited in. A silhouette appeared—Elena, a wall of tactical armor and cold, corporate intent.
Penny—no, Lucy—didn't hesitate. She opened fire. Soon the air was filled with bullets as she aimed for the threshold of the open door, a desperate attempt to suppress whoever was coming through.
"RUN!" Lucy yelled, her voice raw and jagged. "HURRY! TO THE STAIRCASE!"
The sound of Lucy's rifle was the spark in the powder keg. Behind her, Bernadette, Alex, and Denise erupted into a blind, panicked frenzy of shooting. They weren't soldiers; they were kids trying to escape hell.
In the crossfire and the strobing red light, a stray shot—fired in a shaking panic by Alex—caught Amy square in the chest. A burst of neon-orange "blood" blossomed across Amy's green suit.
Amy stumbled back, the clinical mask finally breaking. Her eyes went wide, reflecting the muzzle flashes of her friends' rifles, before she collapsed backward into the very hallway she had opened for their enemies.
"AMY!" Lucy's scream was a guttural sob, but she didn't stop firing. She couldn't.
Elena moved like a storm through the paint-smoke. She wasn't just a guard; she was a predator. She ducked under a spray of paint and returned fire with terrifying, mechanical precision.
Thwack! Denise went down first, a hit to the leg spinning her into the wall.
"Don't look back!" Bernadette shrieked, grabbing the back of Lucy's tactical vest and hauling her toward the final bulkhead. "V, GO! They're right on us!"
Alex tried to pivot, her rifle clicking empty, but Elena was already there. A single shot caught Alex in the center of the chest markers. She fell silently, a neon ghost among the shadows.
Lucy scrambled backward, her boots slipping on the fresh paint on the floor. She saw the bodies of her friends, the smoke of the "battle," and the cold, unyielding advance of the Arasaka shadow.
"CUT!" Stuart's voice roared over the speakers, but it felt like it was coming from another planet.
The studio lights didn't come on immediately. For a few seconds, the only sound was Penny's ragged sobbing in the dark. The betrayal hadn't just been "metal"—it had been devastating.
Elena lowered her rifle, the visor of her helmet reflecting the flickering red emergency lights. She looked at Amy, who was still lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
The house lights flickered on. The tension broke like a snapped wire.
Alex was rubbing her arm where a paintball had caught her. "Elena! You said aim for the vest!"
"I lied," Elena replied, lifting her visor with a small, dangerous smirk. "This bit of pain made your expression perfect. It's a great moment, you will see."
Penny came back from the staircase, her hair matted with sweat, her eyes red from crying. She looked at her friends—the "corpses" on the floor who were now laughing and complaining about the paint. The weight of the scene was still there, a cold lump in her chest.
Stuart walked over, looking at his tablet. Angie was already working on editing the content. "This was a great shot! Let us hurry to the next set. You all, keep the emotions you are feeling alive. This will be perfect!" He was full of excitement.
---
The atmosphere in Elena's apartment didn't just feel like a homecoming; it felt like the quiet before a tectonic shift.
The boys sat huddled on the sleek, minimalist furniture, looking like relics from a different century. Their faces were buried under thick beards.
In stark contrast, the apartment itself was a masterpiece of curated tension. Every light had been dimmed except for the massive 8K screen that dominated the far wall. It didn't show a menu or a screensaver. It held a single, static image: the word CYBERPUNK in its iconic, jagged neon yellow, bleeding against a backdrop of flickering magenta and electric cyan. The colors didn't just sit on the screen; they bled into the room, casting long, synth-wave shadows across the floor.
On the low-profile glass table, a tray of crystal flutes stood in a perfect circle. They were filled with "liquid gold"—a premium vintage champagne that caught the neon glow, the bubbles rising in steady, carbonated pulses like a ticking clock.
Elena stood by the screen, her silhouette sharp against the pulsing yellow text. She didn't look weary; she looked like a conductor waiting for the first note of an overture. Beside her, Penny stood with a poise that was entirely new—a stillness that wasn't about waiting, but about being ready.
Elena, Penny, and Stuart had already seen the finished trailers as they had to decide on which version to use. Especially Penny and Stuart were extremely proud of it. But as the guys were about to come home, they decided to wait and share it with them all together.
"I don't see why we have to watch a 'home movie' the second we get back," Sheldon grumbled, perched on the edge of the sofa as if he were afraid the furniture might have changed its molecular structure in his absence. "I have a massive breakthrough in science to report."
"It's only a few minutes, Sheldon," Penny said. She looked calm—different. The waitress was gone, replaced by a woman who knew she could be a great actress.
Elena stood by the large 8K screen. "Thank you all for coming. This is a little project we did to promote the Cyberpunk comics and the game that will come soon. It took precision, technology, and a lot of... digital blood. But thanks to the hard work of Penny, Stuart, Bernadette, Alex, Amy and Denise we created something special and wanted to share it with you as soon as possible. "
"Before we watch whatever video project you've been 'playing' with," Sheldon said, his voice dripping with condescension, "I suppose I should share the good news. While you were here, I was discovering the impossible. I have the data to prove the existence of monopoles deep in the ice of the arctic."
Elena notices Howard, who was staring at his hands. He looked like he was about to tell his mother he has changed his religion.
"Sheldon," Howard interrupted, his voice surprisingly firm. He looked at Elena and Bernadette for a brief second, a silent apology in his eyes for derailing her premiere. "We need to do this now. Sheldon, those signals you recorded? Those weren't prove of the shifting of magnetic monopoles."
Sheldon blinked, a small, patronizing smile appearing on his lips. "Howard, I know you're tired, but let's leave the high-level physics to the men who actually do understand the math. The readings were clear."
"What you recorded," Howard snapped, finally looking Sheldon in the eye, "was us turning the electric can opener on and off."
The room went deathly quiet. Penny's jaw dropped. Leonard squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the fallout.
Sheldon's expression didn't change at first. He simply looked baffled. "What? Why... why would you do that? You were supposed to be my eyes and ears at the edge of the world."
"Because you wouldn't stop blaming us!" Howard suddenly yelled out of suppressed frustration, standing up. "Every time the readings stayed flat, it was because Leonard hadn't calibrated the sensors right, or because I was too 'intellectually pedestrian' to maintain the equipment. You spent three months calling us incompetent failures because the North Pole didn't have what you wanted!"
Sheldon opened his mouth to protest, but Howard pushed forward.
"We were sick of it, Sheldon! We were stuck in a hut with a man who treated his best friends like faulty hardware because he couldn't face a null result. So yeah, we turned on the can opener. We gave you the 'discovery' you wanted just so you'd stop telling us we were the reason your career was over!"
Leonard interjected, "but we kept the original data."
Sheldon looked at Leonard. Leonard wouldn't look back. He looked at Raj, who was busy inspecting a loose thread on his sweater.
"The can opener," Sheldon whispered, ignoring Leonard completely, his voice trembling with a terrifying, pale fury. "My life's greatest achievement... faked with a can opener."
Without another word, Sheldon stood up. He didn't yell. He simply turned and walked out of the apartment, the door clicking shut with a finality that made the "Cyberpunk" neon coming from the TV feel even brighter.