By the time I reach the fourth floor of Hawthorne’s science building, the hallway already sounds like a trial.
Murmurs. The squeak of anxious shoes. The uneven rhythm of fingers drumming on plastic binders. The glass wall of Conference Room B glows with the blue of a projector and the collective stress of ten overcaffeinated grad students.
I stop just out of sight, press my palm briefly to the cool cinderblock, and exhale. This is fine. This is what I’ve been aiming at for three years: the big meeting. The merged lab. The mega-project that will decide who actually gets to stay in this field and who ends up back home explaining to their family why you can’t pay rent with half-finished PhDs.
I smooth the cuff of my cheapest blazer—black, slightly shiny in the wrong light—and step into the doorway.
Half the room turns to look at me. The other half is turned toward him.
Jaxon Reid sits at the far end of the table, one arm draped over the back of his chair like he owns the air molecules. Dark button-down, no tie, collar open just enough to say I’m not intimidated by any of you. His hair is doing that infuriatingly casual thing that probably took zero effort, and his laptop is angled away from everyone as if state secrets live there.
His gaze slides to the door, finds me, and cuts sharp.
“Lane.” He says my name like a diagnosis.
“Reid.” I answer like a cure he can’t afford.
There’s a tiny, delighted noise from somewhere near the middle of the table. Priya. Of course she snagged a seat with prime viewing angles. She covers her mouth with a notebook, eyes bright behind her glasses.
“Aria, hey,” she says, a little too casually. “We were beginning a betting pool about whether you’d blow off the opening salvo.”
“I was working,” I lie smoothly, dropping my backpack on a chair near her. Technically true—I was at my campus job resetting lab equipment until five minutes ago. “Some of us need the stipend, remember?”
The way Jaxon’s jaw moves tells me he heard that and resents it. Good.
At the head of the table, Dr. Elena Cross clears her throat. Everyone snaps their attention forward. If Jaxon owns the oxygen, Elena owns gravity. She leans on the table with both hands, neat gray bob severe, lipstick perfect, eyes sharp enough to cut funding.
“Now that we’re all here,” she says, with a pointed glance from me to Jaxon and back, “let’s get started.”
She taps a key, and the projector blinks to life. A slide appears: HAWTHORNE SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE MEGA-PROJECT, followed by a subtitle in donor-friendly font.
“Mr. Hale has made his expectations clear,” Elena says. “This department is on probation, financially and reputationally. We need a flagship result. We will produce it.”
She looks at Jaxon. Then at me. I don’t miss the infinitesimal lift of her brow when she looks my way, as if silently asking whether I’m going to combust.
I straighten my spine. Don’t worry, doctor. If I burst into flames, I’m taking the golden boy with me.
“As you know,” she continues, “we’re merging the Cross Lab and the Reid Lab into a single team. One project, one major publication pipeline, one shot with Victor Hale.”
