She smiles at that. It’s not the shattering, radiant version I remember from the first NeuraTech launch, but it’s a smile, nonetheless.
“Dominic is a force of nature,” I add. “If he wanted all of us in the same place at the same time, there was never any choice.”
She toys with her chopsticks, gathering noodles in a careful, looping motion. “He’s good at manufacturing chaos. I respect it.”
“I think he’d appreciate your respect,” I say. “Dominic collects admiration like trading cards.”
“How did you two even become friends?” She shifts in her chair, pulling one leg up and resting her chin on her knee. “You’re so... different.”
“That’s a polite way of saying he has social skills and I have spreadsheets.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s accurate, though.” I poke at my curry, considering how much to share. “We met at Harvard. I was twenty, working on my second degree, running a side business that was... legally questionable.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “The ‘questionable earnings’ Dominic mentioned at O’Malley’s.”
“You caught that.”
“I catch everything. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to process it at the time.” She leans forward, curiosity overtaking caution. “What kind of side business?”
“Grade alterations. Record modifications. Making problems disappear for rich kids whose parents had more money than oversight.” I shrug. “I was good at it. Had a system of communication with clients that I thought no one could crack. I assumed I was untouchable.”
Her eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “You were running an academic black market atHarvard?”
“I prefer ‘grade optimization services.’”
“I bet you do.” She’s fighting a smile now. “Dominic figured it out?”
“He sure did.” I almost smile at the memory. “He made it his mission to track me down because some idiot I’d helped was about to snipe his Pierce Goodman internship. Showed up at my door ready to murder me.”
“And instead of turning you in, he... what? Decided to be your friend?”
“He decided to be my business partner first.” I set down my chopsticks. “Made me a deal—I’d stop screwing him over with any grade changes, and he’d invest my earnings. Then he’d stay quiet, and we’d split the returns.”
“He leveraged you into being friends, in other words,” Audrey says, a little spark in her eyes now.
“Pretty much. After a while, he decided I was worth keeping, I guess. Not that I ever understood why.”
She’s silent a moment.
“That makes sense. You two have a weird chemistry.”
I look at her—the way she’s tilting her head—and realize she means it as a compliment.
“I could never have navigated Harvard without him.”
She laughs. “You say that like they make you solve social calculus on every problem set.”
“Sometimes they do,” I say. “Every code assignment has a collaborative component. I used to find the partnership more stressful than the actual project.”
She’s smiling now, genuinely. “I get that. It’s how I was in lab rotations. If I had to talk to people, the work felt secondary. Like the real test was whether I could pass for a normal human.”
“You’re very convincing,” I say.
She tilts her head to the side. “I do OK.”
The conversation drifts off, a natural fade. I use the lull to check the sim status, but I can feel her next question winding up before it lands.
