2026-02-26 12:10:34Nathan stood there, frozen. His chest felt like it had been hollowed out with a rusted spoon. He watched them… really watched them. Mark’s hand wasn't just on Amanda’s waist; it was sliding lower to her buttocks, possessive and smug, right there in front of the whole school.
That was his damn girlfriend.
And Amanda... she didn't look forced. In fact, she looked like she’d finally found the person she actually wanted to be with.
On the giant screen, the equations Nathan had typed until his fingers bled were scrolling by. The audience was losing their minds.
"$80 million!" a man in a front-row tuxedo screamed, waving a tablet.
"$150 million!" another shouted, jumping to his feet.
The numbers were moving so fast it didn't even feel like real money. To Nathan, it felt like his heart was being auctioned off piece by piece.
"$800 million!"
The hall went into a frenzy. Mark leaned over and whispered something in Amanda’s ear. She giggled… a sound Nathan had heard every morning for six months- and then she kissed Mark. Again. Right there on the stage. A deep, lingering kiss that told everyone in the room Nathan Walters never existed. He never did, really.
"THAT’S MINE!"
The scream didn't even sound like Nathan. It was a raw, ugly sound that tore through the cheering. But it was him.
The silence that followed was instant. It was a very hollow silence, one that would normally place a person on a hot seat. The big spotlights swiveled, blinding Nathan as they caught him standing in the middle of the aisle. He looked pathetic. His suit was a cheap charcoal thing that bunched up at the shoulders, and his face was red and streaked with sweat.a
"Amanda!" Nathan shouted, his voice cracking. "What the hell are you doing? That’s my code! That’s my project! That’s my machine! We built that in the basement, Amanda! Tell them!"
The Principal, a man named Epstein who usually didn't even acknowledge Nathan’s existence, stood up from the VIP table. He didn't look angry; he looked amused. He started laughing, a deep, belly laugh that set off the rest of the room.
"Well, well, who would you know?" Epstein said into his lapel mic. "It seems even a janitor can be ambitious. Tell me, young man, did you mistake the stage for the utility closet?"
The crowd roared. It was a nasty, mocking sound. Men, women and students collectively mocked Nathan Walters.
"I'm not a janitor!" Nathan screamed back, but his voice was drowned out. He looked at Amanda, pleading. "Amanda, please. Just tell the truth. tell them I spent six months on those equations. Tell them the code is mine. The machine I built it.. Come on!"
Amanda didn't even flinch. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him like he was a bug she’d found in her salad. She leaned into the microphone.
"I told you he was obsessed, Mark," she said, her voice cold and flat. "He’s been stalking me in the labs for weeks. He’s some scholarship kid who thinks because he cleaned the desks, he owns the ideas on them." She looked directly at Nathan. "I don't know who you think you are, but you need to leave before you embarrass yourself more than you already have."
Nathan felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. "Stalking? Amanda, stalking.. Wha…”
He turned to the crowd, “I have the prototype!" Nathan yelled. He was desperate now. He turned and ran back to his seat, tripping over someone’s feet as the crowd booed him. He grabbed the wooden box and ran back to the stage. "I have it right here! If it's theirs, why do I have the prototype inside this box?"
"Go ahead," Mark shouted from the stage, grinning. "Show them, Nate. Show them your 'genius' prototype!"
Nathan ripped the box open and opened it, expecting the obsidian cube to slide out.
Instead to his shock, a frantic, scrawny chicken with barely any feathers tumbled out onto the floor. It let out a terrified squawk and started flapping around, shitting on the polished stage.
The auditorium exploded. People were literally doubling over, gasping for air as they pointed at Nathan. They pulled out their phones and began to record, laughing unanimously.
"The Quantum Chicken!" Mark yelled, clutching his sides. "Is that your secret weapon, Nathan? Does it lay golden eggs?"
Nathan stared at the box. He felt sick. How?? They took it too. Mark must have swapped it while he was looking for Amanda. He looked at the Principal, at the investors, at the girl he thought he was going to marry. They were all laughing at him. He was a joke. A literal, featherless joke.
"Enough," the Principal said, wiping his eyes. "Security, get this clown out of here. He’s a disgrace to Braxton University."
Two massive guards grabbed Nathan’s arms. They weren't gentle. They jerked him around, forcing his head down. Nathan looked up one last time and saw Amanda leaning her head on Mark’s shoulder, watching him get dragged away like he was trash. And doing absolutely nothing!!
Suddenly, someone from the audience spoke up!
"I will pay $5 billion for a 50% share."
The voice didn't come from a microphone. It was just... there. Deep, quiet, and so powerful that it felt like the air in the room suddenly got sucked out.
The laughter died instantly.
In the center of the VVIP section, a man stood up. The moment he rose, the Principal nearly tripped over his own chair. The tech scouts from G****e and Apple stepped back like they’d been slapped.
It was Dr. Sage Walters.
He didn't do interviews. He didn't go to galas. He was the man who owned the satellites the world used to communicate and the banks that held the world's debt. Seeing him at a college demo day was like seeing a god walk into a dive bar.
"Dr... Dr. Walters?" the Principal stammered, his face turning a ghostly white. "I... we didn't know you were in attendance, sir. We are honored…"
Walters didn't even look at the Principal. He didn't look at the stage. He adjusted the cuff of his shirt, his eyes sharp behind his glasses.
"Five billion," Walters repeated. The amount was so high it didn't even make sense. "But I don't buy things that are stolen. And I don't invest in liars."
He looked toward the security guards holding Nathan.
"Let the boy go," Walters ordered. It wasn't a request. "And bring that machine to my office next week. I will make a deposit of $1 billion tonight. I want to see the hand that actually wrote the logic."
The Principal looked at Mark, then at the machine, then at the richest man in the world. He was sweating through his suit. "Of.. of course, sir. Whatever you want."
Nathan felt the guards' grip loosen. He stood there, shivering, confused. He looked at the man in the VIP section. He had no idea why the most powerful man in the world was looking at him with a look that almost... almost looked like a challenge. Or hope!!
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Chapter 375
Austin did not stand right away.He sat at the end of the row with his hands on his knees and his jaw set, and the people on either side of him slid away along the seats until he was alone in a small bare pocket of empty chairs. He had gone gray earlier in the evening and had stayed that way, the color of someone who has been awake for three days. When he finally got to his feet, he did it slowly, with great care, as if the floor might not hold him."I. I think there's been a mistake," he said."I don't think so," Agent Whitlock said.She took a thin folder from one of the agents behind her and opened it. She did not need to look at it. She had read the pages so many times in the past week that she could have recited them with her eyes shut, but she held them open anyway, in the plain view of every camera in the hall, because she had been told that what was about to happen ought to be seen."Mark and Austin," she said. "I'm placing you both under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder
Chapter 374: Karma’s A Bitch
Austin did not stand right away.He sat at the end of the row with his hands on his knees and his jaw set, and the people on either side of him slid away along the seats until he was alone in a small bare pocket of empty chairs. He had gone gray earlier in the evening and had stayed that way, the color of someone who has been awake for three days. When he finally got to his feet, he did it slowly, with great care, as if the floor might not hold him."I. I think there's been a mistake," he said."I don't think so," Agent Whitlock said.She took a thin folder from one of the agents behind her and opened it. She did not need to look at it. She had read the pages so many times in the past week that she could have recited them with her eyes shut, but she held them open anyway, in the plain view of every camera in the hall, because she had been told that what was about to happen ought to be seen."Mark and Austin," she said. "I'm placing you both under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder
Chapter 373: The Fall Of Mark And Austin
Mark had started it. A joke at the boy's expense in front of a class, something about his project being a live chicken with no feathers, and the room had laughed, and by the end of the week it had become a name. Chicken Boy. Epstein had heard it in the corridors, in the faculty lounge, in the mouths of teachers who ought to have known better, Mr. Zain among them, and he had never once corrected anyone.He never did anything wrong.It was such a simple sentence. He turned it over, slowly, in the failing light. The boy had cleaned his desk. The boy had oiled his drawer. The boy had built a thing so beautiful that governments wept over it, and had asked for nothing in exchange but to be allowed to keep it. Life had been unfair to him. It had been unfair to him in a hundred small ways and in one very large way, and every one of them had a face, and several of those faces had been Epstein's own.Was this how it was repaid? Was this karma?He wanted to laugh, if he had had the breath. It wa
Chapter 372: The Fall Of Jeffery Epstein 2
The strange thing was that it did not hurt as much as he expected.There was the burning in his throat, and a heaviness in his chest that felt like someone sitting on it, but those were already becoming distant, like a radio in another room. What he noticed most was how loud everything had become. Mark's voice, somewhere above him, saying Dad over and over. The doctor's calm, low murmur. The sound of three thousand people trying not to breathe. Every noise had edges now, sharp and bright, and underneath them the carpet was soft against the back of his head. It smelled of dust and cleaning fluid. Somebody had mopped it, he thought. Somebody had been careful.His eyes would not stay on anything. They drifted across the ceiling, the long white lights, the underside of a balcony, and then they found a face, and held.The boy was standing over him with his hands at his sides.Not a boy. Epstein corrected himself with an effort. A young man, in a plain jacket that he had worn three days run
Chapter 371: The Fall Of Jeffery Epstein 1
For a moment Jeffrey Epstein did not seem to understand that he had been spoken to.He sat in the middle of the faculty section with his hands pressed between his knees and his eyes fixed on the stage, and the faces of the colleagues on either side of him had slowly started to lean away, the way people do from a man who might be about to get bad news. A glass of water stood on the little table beside him. It was half empty. Sometime in the last quarter of an hour his hand had gone to it, and he had drunk without noticing, the way a dry throat will."Mr. Epstein," Nathan said again, not unkindly. "Would you stand, please. I think it would be better for everyone."Epstein stood.He did it badly, in two stages, one hand on the back of the chair in front of him, and when he was upright he looked small. It was the first time in twelve years that anyone in that school had seen him look small. He wore his good gray suit and his good blue tie, and the sweat had started at his collar and sprea
Chapter 370: The Fall Of Josh Renner
Unknown men in uniforms came in two lines, the way people do when they have practiced it, most of them holding weapons guided by their chins.Eight of them, in dark windbreakers over plain clothes, walking down the center aisle of the east hall at an even pace with their credentials already held out in front of them, and every head they passed turned and followed. At the front was a short woman in her forties with her hair pulled back and a face that had never in its life been talked out of anything. Four of the agents peeled off at the first row and took up positions along the wall. The rest kept coming.The President did not look surprised. Neither did General Reyes. Josh noticed that, and filed it away, and understood a few seconds later that this was because both of them had known since lunch."Joshua Renner." The woman stopped at the foot of the steps and did not raise her voice. "Special Agent Dana Whitlock, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have a warrant for your arrest."Jos
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