In the two months since our first kiss, I’ve been living in a fever dream—vivid, overwhelming, slightly too good to be true. And now, I get to wake up next to her every day. I’ve memorized the sounds she makes when she’s close to coming, the way she steals sips of my coffee, the cadence of her laugh when I say something accidentally funny.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Knew it was coming.
Everything was just going too damn well
I roll my chair over. “Show me.”
“The penetration test results from last night.” She points at a cascade of red flags on her monitor. “We’re failing three of thetwelve FDA security benchmarks. The data isolation protocols aren’t holding under simulated attack conditions.”
My stomach drops. “That can’t be right. We passed these same tests two weeks ago.”
“We didn’t calibrate for the new FDA security requirements properly. They added new penetration testing standards.” She pulls up a document—sixty pages of regulatory updates that neither of us apparently read closely enough. “They buried it in the fine print. I missed it.”
“We both missed it.”
“I’m the biomedical engineer. Security compliance is my domain.”
“It’s our project. Our responsibility.” I’m already scanning the data, looking for a workaround, a solution, anything. “How bad is it?”
She takes a breath. “We’d need to rebuild the entire data isolation framework. That’s weeks of work.”
“We don’t have weeks.” I stare at the screen as if willing the numbers to change. “We have twenty-six days until the FDA deadline. If we lose two weeks to security redesign?—”
“I know what we lose, Logan.” Her voice matches mine—tight, controlled, barely containing frustration. “I can do the math.”
We stare at each other across the workstation, the easy intimacy we walked in here with this morning already fracturing under the weight of what we’re facing.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I didn’t mean to snap.”
“It’s fine.” But her jaw is tight, and she’s already turning back to her screen. “Let’s just figure out what we’re dealing with.”
Six hours later, we’re no closer to a solution, and the tension in the lab has thickened to something suffocating.
Every approach I suggest, she finds a flaw. Every workaround I propose, she shoots down. I know she’s right—sheusually is—but the constant rejection is wearing on me, scraping against nerves already raw from stress and exhaustion.
“What about a modular approach?” I pull up a new schematic. “We isolate the most critical data streams first, get those up to standard, then tackle the secondary protocols in phase two?—”
“That won’t work.” She doesn’t even look at the schematic. “The FDA requires integrated monitoring. If we isolate in phases, we lose the real-time correlation between device performance and patient outcomes.”
“Then we build a bridge protocol?—”
“That adds latency. The whole point of the neural implant is instantaneous response. If we introduce even milliseconds of delay?—”
“I know what the point is, Audrey. I designed the core architecture.”
“And I designed the biocompatibility interface. Which is why I’m telling you your solution doesn’t account for how these devices actually interact with human tissue.”
“Then what do you suggest?” The edge in my voice is sharp, ugly. “Every time I propose something, you shoot it down without offering alternatives.”
“I’m trying to think!”
“So am I! But it’s hard when everything I say gets dismissed before I finish.”
She spins to face me, fire in her eyes. “I’m not dismissing you. I’m pointing out legitimate concerns.”
“Are you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’d rather be right than make progress. It’s like you’re trying to shut me out, figure this out on your own instead of talking to me about it, problem solvingtogether.”
