Chapter 2What Came With the Stolen Code

Back in our room, Wyatt was sitting cross-legged on his bed, engrossed in a mobile game.

"Spill," he said, his eyes glued to the screen. "What's the drama?"

I kicked off my slippers, climbed onto my bed, and flipped open my laptop.

"Garrett stole all the data off my lab computer. He's giving it to Gina to present at the defense tomorrow."

Wyatt's thumbs froze.

The game's voiceover chimed from his phone: An ally has been slain.

"What did you say?" He whipped his head around.

"I said Garrett stole my—"

"No, I mean, how are you so damn calm?" he yelled, staring at me. "Your research got stolen! The fellowship data! The defense is literally tomorrow! You should be marching to our advisor's office right now!"

I yawned, looking at my laptop screen.

"What's the rush? He stole v0.3."

"What the hell is v0.3?"

"The build from three months ago. A scrapped draft."

Wyatt went quiet for three seconds.

"What does 'scrapped draft' mean in this context?"

"It means the code compiles but won't run. If it runs, it won't produce results. And if it does somehow produce results, they're entirely wrong."

Another three seconds of silence. Then, Wyatt slowly set his phone down, his eyes lighting up with a familiar, wicked spark. It was the look of a man who smelled premium, grade-A gossip.

"Hold on, hold on." He slid off his bed and lunged over to mine. "Are you saying he stole a pile of garbage code?"

"Not complete garbage," I corrected him. "The basic framework is solid. But the core logic is entirely broken. Plus..."

I pulled up the backup of the old build and scrolled to the pages heavy with comments. Wyatt leaned in and read for five seconds. Then he lost it.

"Oh my god, you actually called him out in the comments?"

"I wouldn't call it calling him out," I said, scrolling to line 203. "Just a friendly warning."

Wyatt read it aloud: "If Garrett is peeking at my screen again, please raise your eyes by three centimeters and look at this line. What are you looking at? Go write your own."

He laughed so hard his shoulders shook.

"There's more," I said, scrolling down further.

Line 315: // This function is named garrett_is_watching. No explanation provided.

Line 472: // The following algorithm is inspired by the ring topology of my advisor's horseshoe baldness. Confidential.

Line 519: // If this code appears in anyone's presentation slides other than my own, I highly recommend they check themselves into a psychiatric ward.

Wyatt literally fell off my bed, laughing.

"Did you know he was going to steal it back then?"

"Nope." I closed my laptop. "I just like talking to myself in the comments. I'm telling you, coders who don't write comments have no souls."

"That's not comments, man. That's a burn diary written in C++."

"Call it what you want."

"So what's the game plan for tomorrow?" Wyatt climbed back onto his bed, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

"Just present like normal."

"That's it?"

"What else do I need to do?"

I set my laptop aside and pulled up the blanket.

"Think about it. Gina is going to stand before the committee with a piece of junk code riddled with over three hundred bugs. She doesn't even know what the functions do. How long do you think she can survive their questions?"

Wyatt thought for a moment. "Three minutes?"

"You're giving her too much credit."

"Besides," I turned over, facing the wall, "Professor Harrison is on the panel."

"Harrison? The balding guy?"

"He supervised my undergraduate capstone project."

Wyatt grinned again.

"He knows my coding style like the back of his hand. My variable names, my indentation habits, my function structures. Those things are like digital fingerprints. You can't steal them, and you can't fake them."

The room fell quiet, save for the muffled sounds of video games from next door and a distant alarm ringing down the hall.

"Ryan," Wyatt called out.

"Yeah?"

"You are an absolute menace."

"I know. Now go to sleep."

"No, seriously. You usually look like a lazy slacker, but you're cold-blooded when it counts."

I didn't reply. I was already running through the possibilities. The defense order was determined by a random draw. If Gina went before me, the fallout would be glorious. If I went before her, she'd get a front-row seat to the difference between v2.7 and v0.3. Either way, it was a win. I closed my eyes. I slept like a baby.