CELESTE
I returned to the workstation with shaking hands, Jae-won's presence still burning on my skin like a brand.
Just finish it.
His words echoed in my head, mixing with exhaustion and fear and the treacherous heat that had flared between us against the sequencer.
I couldn't think about that. Couldn't let myself remember the way he'd looked at my mouth, the way the past had flickered in his eyes before he'd shoved away like I was poison.
Luna needed me focused. Luna needed me to break through this encryption.
I pulled up the layer I'd been struggling with for hours and forced myself to look at it with fresh eyes.
My father had built this protection in stages—each one a test, each one requiring not just technical skill but understanding of who he was. What he valued. What he feared.
Think, Celeste. What was he protecting?
Not just the research itself. That was obvious. But something deeper. Something he'd wanted to keep hidden even from potential allies.
I started typing, trying a different approach. Instead of brute-forcing the algorithm, I began searching for patterns in the encryption itself—anomalies, irregularities, places where the mathematical perfection wavered slightly.
There.
A microsecond delay in the processing sequence. So small most people would have missed it. But I knew my father's work the way I knew my own heartbeat.
That delay wasn't a flaw. It was a marker.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, following the thread. The delay led to a secondary pathway, hidden beneath the primary encryption like a secret room behind a wall.
I'd been trying to break through the front door when there'd been a back entrance all along.
The screen flickered.
New data began cascading down the monitor—files I hadn't seen before, protected by a layer of security so sophisticated it had been invisible until now.
My breath caught.
These weren't just research protocols and experimental data. These were annotations. Notes. Commentary written directly into the digital margins of the files.
Written in my father's hand.
Not typed. Handwritten, scanned, and embedded into the code itself. His distinctive script—elegant and precise, each letter formed with the same meticulous care he'd given to everything.
I leaned forward, my heart hammering, and began to read.
Entry 47: Initial trials show promising neural regeneration, but the delivery mechanism remains unstable. The viral vector concentration required for efficacy creates unacceptable risk of immune cascade. Further modification essential before human application.
Entry 63: Breakthrough achieved. Modified capsid protein structure reduces immunogenicity by 40% while maintaining therapeutic efficacy. This could change everything. But patent implications concern me. Choi pressure increasing.
Entry 81: Meeting with Chairman Choi today. He wants to accelerate timeline. Push to human trials within six months. I expressed concerns about safety protocols. He assured me profit was not the primary concern. I don't believe him.
I scrolled faster, my pulse racing, watching my father's hopes and fears unfold in digital ink.
Entry 94: They're pressuring me to simplify the therapeutic pathway. Make it proprietary. Create dependencies that would require ongoing treatment rather than cure. Ethically unconscionable. Spoke with legal about patent protection. They advise I have no recourse—all work product belongs to Choi Pharmaceuticals per my contract.
Entry 112: Discovered they've been filing patents under company name without my review. My methodology. My innovations. But my name appears nowhere. When I confronted Chairman Choi, he reminded me I signed away rights when I accepted position. Said this is how pharmaceutical industry works. That I'm naive to expect recognition.
My hands were shaking now. The words blurred on the screen.
Entry 128: I've made a terrible mistake. The research I thought would help humanity is being weaponized. They want to create a treatment that requires lifetime administration. Maximum profit extraction. When I refused to modify the formula accordingly, Chairman Choi made threats. Subtle, but clear. I'm trapped.
Entry 140: I'm going to tell C everything. She deserves to know what her brilliant career is being built upon. She'll understand. She'll help me find a way to protect the work while ensuring it's used ethically. Must discuss with C.
The screen froze.
I stared at that last line, at my father's handwriting forming my initial, and something broke open in my chest.
Must discuss with C.
He'd been planning to tell me. He'd seen the danger, recognized the corruption, and he'd seen me—his daughter—as his partner in solving it.
Not a child to protect. Not an employee to manipulate.
A partner. An equal. Someone he trusted with the truth.
But he'd never gotten the chance.
The lab fire had happened two days after that last entry.
Two days before he could warn me.
Two days before we could have stopped this together.
I pressed my forehead against the cool surface of the monitor, and the tears came.
Silent. Streaming down my face. Years of grief and guilt and furious vindication finally breaking through.
He wasn't a thief.
He'd never been a thief.
He'd been a brilliant, ethical man who'd realized too late that he'd signed his life away to people who saw innovation only as profit potential.
He'd tried to protect his work. Tried to ensure it would be used to heal, not to exploit.
And they'd killed him for it.
The fire hadn't been an accident. I'd always suspected, always known in my gut, but seeing his words—seeing his fear crystallize in those final entries—made it undeniable.
Chairman Choi had murdered my father to steal his research.
And Jae-won had built his reputation on my father's grave.
My tears fell harder, but they weren't just grief anymore.
They were rage.
Pure, focused rage that burned away the exhaustion and fear, leaving only crystalline clarity.
I sat up and wiped my face with shaking hands.
The annotations continued past that final entry—but they weren't my father's anymore. They were timestamps. System logs. Evidence of who'd accessed the files after his death.
Chairman Choi. Multiple executives. And then, six months later, the files had been transferred to a new project director.
Jae-won Choi.
He'd taken over my father's research. Built his career on it. Claimed it as his own innovation.
Did he know? Had he known what his father had done?
Or was he another victim of his father's lies?
I didn't have that answer yet. But I would find it.
Because my father had left me more than just research data. He'd left me evidence. Proof of his ethical concerns. Proof of the pressure and threats. Proof that would destroy Chairman Choi's empire if it ever saw daylight.
Must discuss with C.
"I'm here, Papa," I whispered to the empty lab, to the ghost of the man who'd trusted me with his legacy. "I'm here, and I'm going to finish what you started."
I saved the annotations to an encrypted backup—one Jae-won and his security wouldn't find—and then kept digging.
If my father had hidden these notes, what else had he protected?
The screen flickered again, and another layer of data emerged.
Not research protocols this time.
Financial records. Email correspondence. Meeting notes that detailed every conversation my father had with Chairman Choi about the research direction.
It was all here. Every piece of evidence needed to prove the theft. The coercion. The murder.
My father hadn't just been protecting his research.
He'd been building a case.
And now, three years after his death, I was holding the weapon he'd forged.
The question was: what was I going to do with it?