Chapter 9
Chapter 9
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Geneva threw Stan a smirk that could cut glass. “Fine, I’ll tag along with you guys, but this jerk just tried to spook me. Bet he’s itching to put me six feet under.”
The institute crew shot Stan a look so icy it could freeze a desert, their hands twitching toward their belts like they were ready to pull heat.
If that leaked blueprint had left them squinting at Geneva, her jaw–dropping performance in the competition had wiped all doubts clean.
She was a straight–up prodigy–too valuable to let slip. If Stan so much as breathed wrong around her, he’d be screwing over the whole nation.
In the end, Geneva inked deals with the hotshot spons
tossing them the robot’s production data like it was spare change.
She strutted out with the institute’s team, while Stan got dragged off in cuffs, looking like a kid caught stealing cookies.
The sponsors were practically doing cartwheels, already picturing the Wheeler Group’s empire eating dirt.
Stan, meanwhile, got roasted in interrogation for over thirty hours, only cut loose when they confirmed he hadn’t laid a finger on Geneva.
His face was darker than a storm cloud–he’d never been clowned this hard.
‘That Motley girl’s gonna pay,‘ he seethed, lumping Geneva in with every other “Motley” he loathed.
Well, except Tabitha–she was the only one who didn’t make his skin crawl. But the woman he wanted to crush? She was untouchable now.
Fuming, Stan stormed into his office and snapped, “Fire every single woman named Motley in the Wheeler Group. All of ‘em!”
His secretary blinked, jaw on the floor. ‘Is this dude’s brain short–circuiting again?‘
At the institute, Geneva tackled tests from the big kahunas and owned them. She earned her spot, complete with her own slick lab.
For three months, she went full hermit, only popping out when her project was ready to drop jaws. When she finally showed it off, the others just stared, totally lost.
“A hazmat suit?” one scoffed. “You ghosted us for months to whip up this?”
シス
MATE
Hazmat suits were basic, something any factory could churn out. It was like a Michelin chef serving up microwave mac and cheese.
But Geneva just grinned, shaking her head. “This ain’t your grandpa’s suit. It sniffs out viruses ten feet out and zaps them in a hot second–over three hundred types, poof, gone.”
That got their gears turning. “Won’t mess with humans, right?” one asked, leaning in.
“Safe as a sunny day.”
The crew ran the suit through every test in the book, and the results were gold: it was a lifesaver, especially for medics dodging infectious diseases. It dropped their risk to zilch.
Still, the institute’s tech geeks were too busy chasing sci–fi gadgets to throw the suit a parade.
What they didn’t know was the real stakes. In the original story, two years after the heroine kicked the bucket, the male lead and his rival were locked in an epic love war over the female lead. To make their drama hit like a freight train, the author cooked up a global viral outbreak. Millions of randos like Geneva’s old self got wiped out just to spice up their romance.
Geneva wasn’t about to be cannon fodder for their love fest, and she sure wasn’t letting anyone else get caught in the crossfire. That suit? It was her big “screw you” to the virus that would’ve torched the world.
The virus crashed the party, riding in on a freak rainstorm that soaked the city to its bones. Those who caught it? Their eyes glowed red like cheap
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Chapter 9
Halloween contacts, and in two or three days, their brains were toast. Their bodies still shuffled around, though, like extras in a zombie flick. By the end of the week, it was curtains–brain dead, no encore.
Geneva was hell–bent on cooking up a cure before the world went full apocalypse, but the novel played hard to get with the virus’s backstory.
All she had were symptoms, and that was like trying to crack a safe with a paperclip. No way was she whipping up a magic pill without more intel.
Three months later, Geneva was back at it, churning out a gadget straight out of a sci–fi blockbuster. With it, she slapped together a report that hit like a plot twist nobody saw coming.
When it landed on the bigwigs‘ desks, they freaked. Her report screamed one thing: humanity was one bad day away from a total wipeout.
The higher–ups scrambled, calling a cloak–and–dagger meeting with all the institute’s top dogs, Geneva included.
She stepped up, cool as ice, and laid it all out. “Okay, so I built this badass telescope, right? It spotted this creepy planet out in the void. That place used to be hopping with life–until a virus turned it into a ghost town. Now that planet’s barreling toward Earth, and it’s gonna sideswipe us. Not a head–on crash, but enough to dump that virus right in our backyard. If this thing can torch an entire civilization, it’s gotta be crazy contagious. Spreading like gossip, human–to–human. It took out one world, and we’re next if we don’t get our act together.”
The room went quiet, like someone hit pause on a movie. Nobody thought Geneva was spinning a yarn.
They just sat there, faces like they’d seen a ghost, thinking, ‘Damn, this girl’s too freaking smart!‘
Everyone knew her rep–she was practically a legend–but they had no idea her body was rocking a new soul. They figured her old quiet vibe was just her brain operating on a wavelength too high for the rest of them.
Yeah, classic genius stuff.
Her telescope? Already got the thumbs–up from the science geeks. They swore it was legit, which meant her report wasn’t some wild theory–it was the real deal.
The big boss, face hard as concrete, leaned forward. “When’s this thing gonna hit?”
Geneva didn’t miss a beat. “Judging by its speed? Less than two years.”
That was all she wrote. The suits took over, and Geneva, plus a couple of researchers, bounced.
Two weeks later, Astaria hit the gas, churning out the protective suits Geneva had dreamed up.
Even if the virus ghosted them, those suits could be pawned off to hospitals–no harm done.
Then came the million–dollar question: should they clue in the rest of the world? It split the room like a lightning bolt.
Some pushed for playing nice, saying it was only right to give the globe a heads–up. Others weren’t so warm and fuzzy, warning that spilling the beans could bite them in the ass.
Some countries would probably cook up a wild conspiracy, blaming them for pulling a sci–fi stunt.
After endless bickering, they hatched a sly plan: leak Geneva’s report with no name attached, let it slip into the world like a whisper.
Total bust. The report got dragged through the mud. Scientists worldwide ripped it to pieces, calling it hot garbage, a straight–up embarrassment. Nobody gave it a second glance.
A year zipped by, and with the virus’s big debut creeping closer, Geneva started clocking something sketchy. The rain. Those last few storms? They felt wrong, like they were packing something sinister.
She ran tests, threw together another report, and dropped it anonymously, same as before.
Big surprise it tanked. Foreign scientists piled on, cackling about Astaria’s “sorry excuse” for research. “How did this ‘trash‘ even sneak into a legit
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journal?” they commented.
But back home, Astaria was wound tight, ready for war. Geneva’s deadline was closing in fast, and the government wasn’t screwing around.
Every department went full beast mode, rolling out heavy–duty defenses.
When the virus finally dropped–right in the middle of a huge national holiday, because of course it did–Astaria was locked and loaded.
They dished out protective suits like they were handing out free swag, each
one
slapped with bold patriotic slogans to pump up the crowd.
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Spell it out and tell everyone a planet–killing virus was knocking? That’d just spark a riot. And if Geneva’s call was off, the government would eat dirt.
So they played it smooth, working in the shadows to keep the country standing.
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