Chapter 11: Boxes and Strings

Attracting a mate in the animal world was simpler. Peacocks had their feathers, bucks had antlers, and humans had…this thing apparently. Apps filled with shirtless selfies, photos with pets, adventures, and often holding a wild fish? And of course, an obligatory photo surrounded by friends. With each swipe Kate took mental notes and studied the trends, trying to piece this strange nonsensical puzzle. Shirtless photos showed off their level of fitness and general self-confidence in their bodies. Perhaps pet ownership displayed abilities of empathy and responsibility. Group photos showed their capacity to sustain friendships and social skills. But what was the fish picture for? Hunting abilities for survival? That seemed highly outdated. That would be something she would ask Terry on her way home.

Kate had no such pictures in her own profile. There was only a single photo of her on the balcony of a Miami restaurant at her sister's birthday last year, taken by one of her friends. She didn't even like that particular photo, but she only now realized that outside of group conference photos, prize photo-ops and Christmas family pictures, she had barely any photos of herself. She just never felt the urge to freeze a particular moment of herself or her life. At least in this one she was wearing mascara.

Browsing Raya had been her morning pastime for the week, but no one had sparked Kate's interest yet. Each swipe, regardless of direction, felt empty and meaningless as if these weren't even real people. It was like online shopping for shoes, and she dreaded shopping. Was she being too critical? Or was she measuring them all against a single moment with a man who had fooled her?

No, perhaps this attempt at dating was just as terrible as her first attempts at romance.

STEM camp with high school kids was an eye-opening experience. Her first year there was when she was eleven, and she continued to go every summer until she was seventeen. Until she was 15, she had to stay by herself in a different dorm with an exclusive chaperone after 9 PM, but she didn't mind it. Kate liked being alone.

There was one other camper who made STEM camp admissions pre-high school, who stayed with his own chaperone a floor below. Evan was only a year older than Kate, but a year behind in school, and just as talented at programming as her. Being so much younger than the rest and having to walk together to class every morning, Evan and Kate quickly formed a fast friendship when they were preteens. He was cute in a clean-cut way, but nothing about him was a mystery. Girls Kate's age would giggle and swoon about boys, Evan included, but Kate had never felt like that. Her giddiness came from discovery, not from dimpled smiles and wide shoulders.

In her last year of camp, things had felt different between them. He was eighteen and it was his last year at camp before he started college. She was already going into her Junior year at MIT, and she was happy he had gotten into Harvard, his top choice. Despite talking about every STEM topic on earth, they never talked about being a couple, it had sort of happened.

Holding her hand, grabbing her a plate of food from the mess hall, partnering together on their last programming project (it ended up being adapted by NASA for the Mars Rover) but nothing was ever said about the nature of their relationship. Kate didn't think of it the same way anymore. Back then, she had just felt like it was another aspect of their friendship. Friends hug. Friends care about each other. Evan was her friend. But she didn't understand then that he was in love with her.

When they had sex on the last night of camp, Kate had thought it made sense. Why wait to go through a new experience with someone she didn't know? She trusted Evan. They had known each other for so long and it felt like it was just the next logical step. Kate didn't enjoy the act, even when they did it again early the next morning. The experience had been nothing like her sister described it. All it felt like, was that it had been a mistake. Evan was suddenly talking about changing his academic plans. Of transferring to MIT, wanting to be with Kate all throughout their studies.

Never mind that she was two years ahead of him, Kate didn't have time for that. The formulas for her future didn't include Evan.

She broke his heart and wondered if she even had one. Becca was a closeted romantic, but Kate wasn't even in the room of said closet. The feelings of longing and yearning, passion and romance seemed entirely fictional, and up until recently, she didn't often experience the spark of sexual attraction. Until him. Until Godric.

The way he attentively looked at her, and carefully listened to her methods of glass development made her feel on top of the world. His curious nods, his crafted questions, and the cold touch on his hand made her heart actually skip beats. The feeling of him was what she imagined drugs felt like, and now she craved more of it.

Despite his act being a completely fabricated lie, she was still left wanting more. Maybe she would come up with a program that could analyze all this dating app data. Perhaps she'd ask her sister to help her screen these candidates. In this case, a wide sample size isn't helpful.

Throwing her phone on the bed, Kate began her day, going through her usual morning routine without a single additional thought of dating. Her thoughts were consumed with her projects, particularly her next piece of groundbreaking work: project Gamma. Hopefully, she will meet the new test subjects soon and get some baseline data from them before hopefully proceeding with vampire trials.

But she was excited. More excited than the thought of touching a certain someone's hand. It was one of the most potentially dangerous projects she had ever undertaken, but it would be absolutely life-changing (or is death-changing? She'd have to ask one of the regular test subjects about the correct terminology) if she could get it to work.

Kate almost forgot to eat again, but Becca's annoying text reminders insisting that she ate something was the only reason Kate remembered to grab a protein-packed vegan smoothie from the fridge. This was ironic because it was Kate who purposely chose their plant-based diet yet again this week, in an attempt to keep her sister's organs from shutting down. Rebecca was so irresponsible with what she put in her body that it was a miracle she functioned the way she did. The junk food, her steady intake of Redbull, the uppers she took to work late and party even later, the downers she took to sleep - it was going to catch up with her sooner or later, and Kate could not afford to lose anyone else.

Much to everyone's surprise, she wasn't the first one in the lab that morning. Turns out, her dating side project was more time-consuming than she thought it would be. Arnie was already in her office.

"I was about to text you if you needed a rescue party," he joked coffee mug in hand.

"Rescue from what? I'm on time," she nodded at the clock - 9 AM.

"Which for you is late," he slurped on his drink again. "I didn't think you'd come in this morning, but nevertheless, I have a gift for you."

"What is it?" Her curiosity overrode her will to ask where else he thought she would be.

nodded at the Styrofoam box on her desk. Kate gasped. "The Gamma samples are here?!"

Project Gamma was her first try at UV-proofing something other than glass. Her eager hands lifted the squeaky lid carefully, her hands feeling the cool air of the ice packets inside. Arnie stood right next to her, just as excited to see the contents. He was instrumental in finding a possible manufacturer for it.

"So? Shall I order mice or guinea pigs?" He asked.

Kate looked at him, half disapprovingly. She did not want to test it on animals. Project Gamma was the development of a 100% ultraviolet-proof sunscreen for vampires. If she could protect their skin, then they could roam outside freely during the day as they wished. Other than their specific dietary needs, they could live life not so much differently from humans.

"No need. I'll test them myself," she finally decided.

Dr. Odenbach frowned. "What if you develop a rash?"

"I'd rather get a rash myself than melt a rat's skin off," Arnie heard the seriousness in her voice, knowing it was better to cave in than argue with her methods.

"Suit yourself," he sighed.

Together they opened the different formulations and recorded their first impressions. There were 7 different formulas in total, with different concentrations of chemicals, and a few different shelf stabilizers. Two of them had a terrible chemical smell neither of them approved. If it was offensive to their human noses, vampires would never try it.

"I don't know about that," Arnie was skeptical. "If this thing works, I think the smell is something they can overlook, no? I mean it's walking in the sun. A chemical smell is a small price to pay, don't you think?"

Kate shook her head. Vampires deserved better than a half-assed attempt. Secondly, anything less than perfection wouldn't do. Choosing the top two most promising creams, she rubbed a 3-gram dollop on the small of her left wrist. It made Arnie wince.

"Are you sure you don't want at least a rabbit?"

"That wouldn't be any good. The makeup of a Lagomorpha's epidermis and a vampire's is entirely different,"

"Neither is ours-"

"It's a lot closer," she insisted.

"Even if you don't develop sensitivities to any of these samples, it doesn't mean a vampire won't. I mean, neither of us has silver allergies, do we? Why risk it?"

Kate ignored his perfectly sound logic, using a different gloved finger to apply the second sample two inches away, higher up on the inside of her forearm.

Arnie rolled his eyes at her stubbornness. "Fine then. What's the timeline for clinical trials?"

Kate placed the samples back in the Styrofoam box and closed it gently, trying to mask her own frustration. "There isn't one."

"You're joking," Arnie on the other hand, never hid his frustration. "Sometimes I wonder if the FDA uses your mother's headshot as a dart target practice."

"They won't even confirm if they received the paperwork, which I submitted five times. They just don't want any pro-vampire products released."

"Don't you find it a bit odd, though?" He asked, his wrinkled face scrunching around his eyes. "That they won't approve pro or anti-vampire products?"

"Anti-vampire? Do you mean Calantica?"

She never thought of the anti-compulsion eye drops to be anti-vampires. It was more like… Levelling the playing field. But maybe to a vampire who abused this power for centuries for personal gain, it would seem that way.

"Of course. Your mother created the eye drops over fifteen years ago, and your dad never gave up fighting the FDA on it, but they just won't bend."

Now that she thought of it, it was odd. She wondered if she submitted a clinical trial proposal under a different name, under a different company, if it would get approved. That would be one illegal way to test their bias. "Do you think someone is stalling the FDA?"

"I've been in biomedical engineering longer than you've been alive, Kate. Someone, somewhere is always pulling the strings."

The rest of the morning went smoothly. She took detailed notes on samples 1A and 2B on their feel, smell and ease of application. 2B left a significant white cast due to its high zinc oxide content. She was gently smearing the samples on glass slides to measure the efficacy of their UV block under a microscope when she heard a commotion out in the hallway. There were people standing across the lab, loud whispers, confused and alarmed voices and one particularly loud one, cursing in anger.

Kate stepped out into the hallway, worried there had been a lab accident of some sort. Before her eyes found the eye-wash station, they caught two security guards escorting Dr. Kyle Wilson away from his desk and towards the elevators, while he held a box of his belongings. It then hit her all at once, what day it was. Bellefleur Tech board of directors meeting. That's where Arnie thought she would be this morning.

It was always Kate's directive to not get involved in the family business, and she always left her vote in her sister's hands. Kate always told herself Rebecca had a much better pulse for business decisions, but the truth was that she lacked the courage to get in a fight between her siblings, or against her dad, or any of the board members. Dick Junior and Rebecca were always so vicious, and their father always ruled with an iron fist, her voice was practically mute. Feeling small and insignificant at her own lab meetings was bad enough, so she took the coward's way out and always hid her head in textbooks. Kyle Wilson disappeared behind the closing elevator doors, his entire career diminished to the contents of a file box. Kate knew without a doubt that she would never see that man again. That no one would speak to him or his work, and that his name would be wiped clean off every project he worked so hard on. Before Kate could even ask herself what could have led to Dr. Wilson's firing, her heart sank inside her chest, not letting the words come out louder than a breath. Rebecca had found out that not even here Kate managed to stand her ground. So, her sister did what she always did: fought her fights for her and destroyed her enemies for her. Left nothing behind.

"Goddammit, Rebecca."

Every step out of the elevator came out with a loud sharp stomp of a stiletto hitting the marble floor. Rebecca returned from the Bellefleur Tech Board Meeting in a foul mood. "Get me Dr. Wilson!" She barked at her assistant as she passed the top floor reception desk on her way to her office.

She usually loved the glass walls, the openness and transparency. Of being seen by staff and other senior VPs while taking the shots and pulling the strings. But it also meant that when she wanted to bite someone's head off, it was public execution. Ever since her father's birthday party, when Kate let it slip that someone was being less than kind to her, she started investigating the ins and outs of the social hierarchy of the R&D department. It didn't take me much to make the nerds talk.

Rebecca knew Kate was more than competent at being a product manager, and God knows she was excellent at research and innovation. Soft skills, however, were not her sister's strong suit which was why Rebecca was the one who faced clients and shareholders. Which only made this morning's BOD meeting sting more. She could usually run circles around the board, but not today. No, today had been a shitshow.

With the stock value plateauing at 60 ever since her stunt, it would slowly normalize if she didn't come up with something big. The Louvre had helped the stock remain high, but the deal was still in escrow and in order to prevent Bonne Nuit from being bought with the offer on the table, she would need to close ten more Louvre. And seeing that she couldn't pull that out of her ass before this morning's meeting, the dinosaurs at the Bellefleur Tech BOD voted to explore the sale of Bonne Nuit further, if the buyers kept sweetened the deal, minus Calantica. And yes, you bet your ass that Dick Junior voted yes with the utmost satisfaction. Now, there were only two ways Becca could stop the sale from happening: if she made Bonne Nuit so fucking profitable that it would be too expensive for Northman to buy or… So unbelievably chaotic that they wouldn't dare touch it.

But that would be literal suicide. She would have to destroy everything that she built and held so dearly just so that he wouldn't have it. It would take time to find the precise way of pulling it off without imploding everything permanently – and time was what she did not have.

Rebecca knew she would never forgive her father the moment he made the public and official order for her to be the one to strike a deal with the vampires. Hearing him say those words before they changed topics, watching the order be registered in the official company minutes, was like her father ordering her to stab herself in the stomach. Richard Bellefleur was one cold son of a bitch.

Dr. Kyle Wilson exited the elevators, his eyes squinted at the bright natural light of the top floor. The creature that had tormented her little sister looked like a lost animal at the top of the Glass Tower, and Rebecca was going to put him down. Her assistant led him into her office, and with big curious and partially scared eyes, she gave the doctor a glance before closing the door. God have mercy on his soul.

"You wanted to see me?" He asked, walking towards her desk, but ultimately stopping ten feet away. Kyle was in his late thirties, tall and lanky, with deep black hair and wrinkles on his forehead. He wore a Patagonia sweater under his crisp clean white lab coat, which looked out of place in the sunny heavens of her office.

"Should I take a seat?" He asked awkwardly, halfway between her office's sitting area and her desk.

"No," she said coldly. Rebecca did not stand up from her chair yet. She eyed her prey, deciding exactly how she was going to decimate the man. "Have you finished the bulletproof glass project?"

He shifted nervously on his feet. "I was actually about to send you a progress report soon-"

"Progress report?" She cocked a brow.

"Yes, I actually figured out where the lamination error occurred only a few weeks ago-"

"So you were working on a progress report?"

He nodded, eyes wide. "Yes, I can have it done by the end of the day if-"

"Don't bother. You're fired," she said simply.

Kyle Wilson stood still for a minute, processing. She couldn't help but smirk at his discomfort.

"What? You can't fire me!" His voice cracked.

"Oh yes, I can and I just did. Go pack up your things."

The doctor approached her desk and placed his hands on the white marble table with a little more zest than he should have. "If you fire me, you're done. Without me, the bulletproof glass will never happen, and you know it. No glass, no fucking chance you keep the company, capiche?"

"Are you threatening me, Mr. Wilson?" Her voice dropped low, his words almost making her second-guess her move.

"I'm not, but I'm not the one on the verge of losing the company, am I? I've heard the rumours, people here talk," his dark eyes burrowed holes in her skull, making her blood rush. "If I walk out of this building, you have a double Ph.D. and the entire bulletproof project walking out with me. Which means no military contract. That's who really wants it, isn't it? The DOD? The ball is in your court, ma'am."

It was certainly worrisome how much Kyle seemed to know about her business. But Rebecca wasn't so easily intimidated, and certainly not by this fucking nerd. She stood up, not a single crease in her crisp ivory knee-length dress. She had worn her 4.5-inch heels today, so now that they were both standing, they saw eye to eye. For the last time.

"You seem to forget your place, Dr. Wilson. You have two PhDs? Congratulations, you have sneakers at the Olympics. Half of your department are doctors, including your direct supervisor-"

"Katherine is a child-"

"Katherine is your fucking superior, in every way fucking imaginable, Kyle," she raised her voice now, and from the corner of her eye, she could see curious heads turning outside her door. "And I may not understand science, but I do understand contracts, yes?"

Kyle gulped, but she continued. She wasn't anywhere near finished. Imagining him taking this tone with his sister was making her blood boil.

"And you have signed multiple NDAs and non-compete contracts, not to mention that every project you have ever even thought of up until five minutes ago is my intellectual property, which means you will be walking out of this building with your sad sorry Berkley PhDs."

"Your sister is distracted, and you are too incompetent to see it. Do you even know what she spends most of her time on? Because I sure don't. That project won't ever see the light of day."

"I can assure you the project will probably be finished and sold for millions before you even cash in your last residual cheque, which is even more pathetic because as you put it, a child will have completed it. And if you try to continue this project elsewhere, or ever even so much as think about it, I will personally sue you into your next life. So I'd say the ball is in your court, but the truth is, your balls are in my fist."

His face closed off and in his eyes, fear. He knew it was over. All of it. With a small nod, he retreated away from her table.

Outside, everyone was staring, VPs included. But Rebecca didn't care if they were going to complain about firing one of the lead researchers, or who would or could actually finish the project, or how that would look in the face of an acquisition. Her hands were tied at the BOD meeting, but in here she would call the shots - all of them - until the day she couldn't anymore.

On his way out Kyle paused at the door. He looked back at her, calmly. "You are as awful as your father. But please tell Kate," his eyes darkened. "That she will never be as good as her mother-"

"Get the fuck out of my office!" Rebecca barked.

The two security men posted at the elevator rushed to the man's side, knowing what the protocol was. She was suddenly out of breath, her skin hot with rage, hyperaware that the entire top floor was staring not at him, but at her, with wide, scared eyes.

For the first time in her life, she felt like the strings she pulled were her own noose.

AN

The plot has thickened in ways you guys can ONLY IMAGINE! I look forward to updating this story the ENTIRE month, if I had more written I'd update more often but alas. Life is busy

As always, fave/follow for updates and LEAVE A COMMENT

*kiss on the forehead*