***
~~SLOANE~~
***
I run out of the bathroom with a towel clinging to my skin, heart hammering as I check the time on my phone. s**t.
I’ve been away from the office way too long.
Way, way too long.
Sooner or later, Harper—the supervisor who pretends she’s chill but tracks every second of your workday like a bloodhound—will start pinging me about the CypherGuard project.
And I don’t have the energy for Harper right now. Or for that endless spreadsheet mapping out endpoint vulnerabilities we’re supposed to isolate before end-of-quarter audits. We’re only halfway through code-flagging, and I’ve already missed two checkpoints. If I’m not careful, they’ll reassign it. And I’ve worked too damn hard to get trusted with something this sensitive.
I fumble into my room, drying off as I go, h
