The sterile hum of the corridor lights grated against Charlotte's temples like sandpaper. Her knuckles, white as lab porcelain, clenched the datapad. On its screen, Elias Tan's smirking face beamed beside a holographic projection of her neural mapping matrix – the one detailing Gen III Florents' silent distress signals during forced socialization. Presented yesterday at the Singapore Bio-Synergy Summit.

Her breakthrough. His triumph. Again.

"A revolutionary leap in understanding hybrid empathy," the conference abstract boasted under his name. The lie burned hotter than Biome 1's desert sim.

She'd been deliberately sidelined – a "scheduling conflict" conveniently burying her in sublevel sensor calibrations while he pirated her life's work.

A tremor ran through her, violent and unfamiliar. Not sadness. Fury. A raw, scraping thing clawing up her throat, threatening to shatter the fragile dam of her control.

She practically lunged for the pneumatic doors of Biome 6, the humid breath of the vertical rainforest hitting her like a physical relief and a suffocating weight all at once.

The vast glass tower was nearly empty, the diurnal cycle shifting to the soft, indigo glow of simulated twilight. Only the drip of condensed water on broad leaves and the distant whir of the espresso machine's rain-harvest pump broke the silence.

She didn't go to her console. Instead, she retreated into a dense thicket of epiphytic ferns near the base of a colossal strangler fig – a shadow among shadows.

The cool metal of the datapad pressed into her palm. The data blurred. Not the screen's fault. Her vision swam, a treacherous heat welling behind her eyes.

Stupid. Weak. Illogical.

The self-recriminations hissed, but the tears came anyway – silent, furious tracks cutting through the lab's perpetual, gentle mist clinging to her skin.

She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her closed eyelids, trying to force the unacceptable vulnerability back into its cage. Calm down, Charlotte.

The soft scuff of a shoe on the composite walkway. Close. Too close.

Charlotte froze. Every muscle locked. The frantic rhythm of her heart hammered against her ribs, loud enough, she was sure, to echo in the vast space. She hadn't heard anyone enter. Hadn't sensed a presence. Her fortress of solitude breached.

Slowly, painfully, she lowered her hands, keeping her back turned, her spine rigid. She didn't need to see. The subtle shift in the air pressure, the faint scent cutting through the petrichor and damp earth – neither really floral like a Florent or nasty like a human, but distinctly hers – told Charlotte exactly who stood behind her.

You. Here. Now. Witnessing the catastrophic failure of Charlotte's meticulously constructed invisibility.

A ragged breath escaped her, betraying the storm within. She wiped her cheeks with a furious, inelegant swipe of her sleeve, the rough fabric catching on skin still damp with tears she refused to acknowledge.

Her voice, when she finally forced it out, was a strained, brittle thing, scraped raw by unshed screams and choked-back humiliation. "You... shouldn't be here after hours." The words were an accusation, a flimsy shield. "Biome Six... observation protocols are suspended." It aimed for usual flat neutrality but cracked on the edges like thin ice.

She couldn't turn to face you. Not yet. Not while the ghost of her father's smirk still burned behind her eyelids and the evidence of her own unraveling felt like poison in her veins.