I yanked my hand back from the scalding puddle. The brown liquid hissed against the fried motherboard, sending a thin wisp of foul-smelling smoke into the air.
"Oops," Sloane said. She didn't sound sorry at all. "My elbow slipped."
I grabbed a fistful of paper towels from the center of the conference table and jammed them onto the keys. My knuckles throbbed. The skin was already turning a violent shade of red, but I ignored the sting. I scrubbed the damp paper over the plastic.
Beneath the soggy mess, tiny grey flecks clung to the spaces between the keys.
Cigar ash.
It had been lodged in those crevices for five years. Traces from the three A.M. shifts I pulled in the freezing server room, typing the first iteration of this company's architecture with numb fingers while Damon slept on a beanbag chair in the corner.
Heavy footsteps stopped right beside my chair.
I kept my eyes on the keyboard. I waited for Damon to ask if I needed ice. I waited for him to scold Sloane for ruining three thousand dollars' worth of company hardware.
"Leave the laptop. IT will scrap it," Damon said.
He dropped a thick, cream-colored document right over the ruined keyboard. The heavy paper immediately soaked up the coffee at the edges.
I stared at the bold, embossed letters at the top.
Annual Tech Innovation Award – Official Nomination Form.
Below that, typed in crisp black ink, was the nominee's name. Sloane Davis.
"What is this?" I asked. My voice sounded entirely detached from my body.
"The board needs a signature from the lead engineer to finalize the submission," Damon replied. He pulled a heavy gold fountain pen from his breast pocket. "Sign it."
I looked from the paper to his face. "You want me to sign over my nomination."
"Sloane is the face of the project now," Damon said. He didn't blink. "She needs this title to convince the investors tomorrow. A nomination gives her credibility."
"Credibility she didn't earn," I shot back.
"It's a team effort, Maya," Sloane chimed in. She leaned against the edge of the mahogany table, crossing her arms. "We all play our parts. You code in the back. I sell in the front."
"You don't even know how to compile the code," I said, glaring at her. "If they ask you to explain the data routing protocol, you will freeze."
"She won't freeze because I will be standing right next to her," Damon interrupted. He tapped the gold pen against the table. "This isn't a charity, Maya. It's a business. The investors don't want a sleep-deprived mother stumbling through a technical manual. They want a polished pitch."
I stood up. My chair rolled back and hit the wall with a dull thud.
"Five years, Damon," I said. "I built the servers while you maxed out your credit cards. I wrote the algorithm that saved us from bankruptcy last quarter. Now you're giving my award to her?"
"I am securing the future of this company," he countered. His jaw tightened. "Your name on that form does nothing for our stock valuation. Sloane's face on the cover of Tech Weekly does."
"She didn't write a single line of that software."
"I am the CEO," Damon raised his voice, the sound bouncing off the glass walls. "I decide who gets the credit."
"The company?" I scoffed, ignoring his volume. "You mean the two of us in a garage, eating cold noodles while I coded the security protocols from scratch? Is that the company you're talking about?"
"Stop living in the past," Damon snapped. "We have fifty employees now. We have a board of directors. We have a Series B funding round tomorrow."
"And the only reason you have any of that is because my software actually works," I said.
"Software you built on company time," Sloane added. She walked around the table, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Damon. "You act like you're the only one who sacrificed. Damon mortgaged his house for this."
"I gave birth ten days ago!" I fired back. The sound echoed in the boardroom. "I was answering your frantic emails from the recovery room, Damon. You told me this award was my bonus for missing my maternity leave."
"I changed my mind," Damon said flatly.
He shoved the solid gold pen into my hand. The metal felt cold and heavy against my burned palm.
"Sign the paper, Maya. We are done arguing today."
I stared at the shiny barrel of the pen. I should have thrown it at him. I should have ripped the cream-colored paper into tiny pieces and scattered them over his expensive Italian shoes.
Instead, a short, sharp laugh punched its way out of my throat.
Sloane flinched, taking a quick step back. Damon frowned, his eyes narrowing as he tried to read my expression.
They expected tears. They expected a meltdown.
I clicked the cap off the pen.
"You think this piece of paper makes her an engineer?" I asked, my tone conversational.
"Just sign it," Damon warned.
I pressed the nib against the thick stock. I didn't hesitate. I scrawled my initials right next to Sloane's name, pressing so hard the gold tip nearly tore through the page.
"There," I said.
I tossed the pen onto the table. It clattered loudly against the wood, rolling until it hit Sloane's empty coffee mug.
"She has her title," I continued, packing my ruined laptop into my leather bag. "I hope she knows how to answer the judges when they ask about the neural latency."
"I'll manage," Sloane sneered, though her voice wavered slightly.
"Go home, Maya," Damon said. He snatched the signed form off the table, inspecting my initials. "We will see you after your leave."
I zipped my bag shut. "Don't call me when the servers crash."
I turned and walked out of the boardroom. The glass door swung shut behind me, cutting off the sound of Damon's voice.
The fluorescent lights of the open-plan bullpen buzzed overhead. The floor was nearly empty, most of the engineers having already left for lunch. I marched straight to my cubicle at the far end of the room.
My hands shook as I dropped my bag onto the carpet.
Let them have the fake award. Let Sloane parade around with a meaningless piece of paper.
I still had the real power.
I just needed to grab the unsubmitted patent drafts, get to the post office, and file them under my own name. Once those documents hit the registry, Damon's company would owe me millions in licensing fees just to use the code Sloane was presenting tomorrow.
I reached for the bottom drawer of my desk.
The metal handle felt freezing against my burned skin.
I yanked it open, the tracks squeaking loudly in the quiet office.
My spare heels sat in the corner. A half-empty box of herbal tea rested near the front. A stack of old meeting agendas lay flat against the bottom.
I pushed the folders aside. I dug my hands all the way to the back.
The thick manila envelope containing the original patent drafts was gone.
