2026-02-26 12:10:55The closing of Demo Day was usually a noisy, chaotic mess of students popping cheap champagne and investors handing out business cards.
But tonight, the atmosphere inside the Grand Hall was entirely different. People were whispering. The investors from Silicon Valley and Wall Street were hurriedly packing their briefcases, their faces pale and their eyes darting toward the VIP exit.
“A Quantum Machine?”
“Built by a student at Braxton?”
It was completely surreal. The math displayed on the screen was light years ahead of what the government was doing in underground labs. But that wasn't even the biggest shock of the night.
Dr. Sage Walters.
The man was a ghost. He controlled tech conglomerates, private military contractors, and global shipping lines. He didn't show up to presidential meetings, not to talk of college science fairs. The whispers bounced from row to row as people filtered out.
“Why was he here?”
“Who did he come for? Last the press checked, he didn't even have a child.”
“Did he just happen to be in Boston?
“This is definitely breaking the entire internet tonight!!”
Nathan didn't care about the chitchat. He just needed to get out of the building fast before he threw up.
He pushed through the heavy oak doors and half-jogged down the main corridor, his head ducked low. But human beings are fast, and college kids with a fresh target are faster.
The moment he stepped into the main lobby, the flashes started. Dozens of smartphones were already pointed right at his face.
"Hey, it's the chicken boy!" a guy from his advanced calculus class shouted.
"Give us a crow, Walters! Come on, let's hear it!
Laughter bounced off the high ceilings. Nathan kept his head down and shoved his way through the crowd, his cheap suit catching on backpacks and elbows. They were already making memes. He could see the screens as he pushed past .. pictures of him holding the cardboard box, poorly edited with cartoon chickens flying out of it.
"Hey cuckoo! Where's your billion dollars?" a girl sneered, sticking her phone right in his path.
Nathan swatted her hand away, but that just made the crowd louder. Suddenly, something cold and wet smacked hard against the back of his neck. It burst on impact, sliding down his collar and soaking into his shirt.
"Chicken poop for the chicken boy!" a voice yelled from the top of the stairs.
Nathan reached back. Vanilla ice cream. It was sticky and freezing against his skin. The lobby erupted into a fresh wave of mockery. They were treating him like a freak show.
He didn't stop. He couldn't. His brain had already deciphered exactly what had happened back there on the stage, but his heart was lagging behind, dragging on the floor. It was a physical ache in the center of his chest. He had lost everything. His life, his future, the woman he was ready to marry, all of it stripped away and repackaged under another man's name in the span of twenty minutes.
He slammed his shoulder into the glass exit doors and stumbled out into the cold Boston night air.
He needed to get away, to just walk until his legs gave out, but as he turned the corner toward the loading docks, he froze.
There was a large, unmarked black box truck idling near the service ramp. Four men wearing cheap suits and white gloves were manhandling a heavy object covered in a black tarp.
It was his machine.
Nathan’s blood spiked. He watched them shove the delicate obsidian core —the one he had meticulously wired by hand at three in the morning for six months straight— like it was a broken refrigerator.
Just a few feet away, standing near a silver Maybach, was Principal Epstein. The man was tapping away on his phone, a smug, satisfied grin plastered across his face.
Nathan didn't even think. He just ran.
"Sir! Epstein!" Nathan yelled, his voice rough and breathless as he closed the distance.
The Principal looked up, irritated, as his driver quickly stepped out to block Nathan's path. Epstein waved the driver off and slipped his phone into his tailored jacket.
"Well," Epstein sighed, looking at the ice cream melting down Nathan's collar. "If it isn't our very own campus comedian. What do you want, Walters? I'm already late for a celebratory dinner."
"I know you know," Nathan panted, stopping a few feet away. His fists were balled up so tight his knuckles were white. "You know your son stole my project. Mark doesn't even know basic Python. He couldn't code a calculator, let alone a Quantum-Bridge. Do something. You are the principal of this college! Please, don't let my hard work go in vain."
Epstein stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he smiled. It wasn't an angry smile. It was worse. It was a smile of pure, condescending pity.
"You're a smart kid, Nathan. I'll give you that," Epstein said smoothly, leaning against the hood of the Maybach. "The math I saw on that screen tonight? Brilliant. Truly. But let me explain how the real world works, since you clearly missed that lecture."
Epstein took a step closer, lowering his voice.
"Did you honestly think I was going to let a nobody…. a kid who scrubs the toilets take the biggest technological victory of the century right under my nose? In my own university? While my son is standing right there?" Epstein let out a short, dry laugh. "You're out of your goddamn mind."
Nathan felt his stomach drop. "It's stealing. It's my property."
"Then go get a lawyer," Epstein challenged, spreading his hands wide. "Go ahead. Sue me. Oh, wait. That's right. You're a cleaner. You can't even afford to dry-clean that awful suit you're wearing, let alone afford a retainer for a corporate litigation firm. Who is a judge going to believe? The esteemed Principal and his wealthy son, or the unstable janitor who brought a live chicken to a tech convention?"
Nathan couldn't speak. The sheer, naked corruption of it hit him like a baseball bat.
"Look, I'm not a wicked man," Epstein continued, pulling out his phone again. "I believe in fair compensation for a hard day's work. Give me your routing number. I'll send a thousand dollars to your account right now. For... you know, upkeep. Go buy yourself a nice meal. See? I am generous.”
"Keep your dirty money," Nathan spat.
Epstein shrugged, putting the phone away. "Suit yourself. And hey... don't be too hard on your girlfriend. She really is a darling. But all it took was a few dollars, a nice handbag, and some promises about the future to convince her to dump you. Women like that are practical, Nathan. They follow the money."
Epstein opened the door to the Maybach, pausing before he got in.
"And between you and me? Mark will probably dump her once we're done with the press tour. She's just a prop. Anyway, I gotta run. Catch you in school tomorrow..." Epstein paused, a cruel glint in his eye. "Or not. You are not expelled, after all."
He giggled - an actual, high-pitched giggle- before hopping into the back seat. The heavy door slammed shut, and the Maybach pulled away, leaving Nathan standing in the exhaust fumes.
Nathan stood there in the dark, his breathing ragged. He turned around, his eyes scanning the parking lot.
At the far end, under a flickering streetlamp, he spotted a bright red sports car. Mark's car.
Mark and Amanda were standing by the passenger door. Mark was laughing, unlocking the car with a chirp of his keys, while Amanda fixed her makeup in the side mirror. They looked completely unbothered. They looked like they hadn't just ruined a man's life.
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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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