The next morning, Professor Vance held up Liam’s preliminary findings on galactic rotation curves to the seminar class. “This,” Vance said, tapping the dense graphs, “is what happens when you refuse to make excuses.”

100%.

57%... 73%... The lab door burst open. A bleary-eyed IT monitor named Greg stood there, coffee in hand, squinting at his tablet. “Lab 4, we’re showing an anomaly. Who’s running unapproved—”

His thesis data. Three years of astrophysical simulations. Gone. Or rather, trapped.

Liam yanked the external SSD from the USB port, the click of the disconnect echoing through the silent lab. Greg looked up from his tablet, confused. The monitoring software, now finding no rogue process running, logged only a cryptic “intermittent filesystem activity” and returned to sleep.

At 47%, the screen flickered. A different warning box appeared, this one in red: “Security policy violation: Unauthorized executable.” The lab’s monitoring software had finally noticed.

His phone buzzed. A text from his lab partner, Mei: “Vance just asked for a preliminary preview. You good?”