Breakdown

Ava Chen hadn’t slept, not really, in days. The office lights failed to flicker awake when she arrived—a bad omen, she thought, the strip overhead dying in a slow strobe as if mocking her exhaustion. She juggled the battered office keys, missed the door on her first try, and caught her reflection in the glass: eyes swollen, mouth a flat line.

She slumped into her chair and scrolled through the calendar. At ten, she had NovaForge’s final diligence call—one last lifeline before the decks went dry. The sick anticipation felt radioactive in her bones.

Raj was already there, head bowed over his laptop, haggard. “Did you make the coffee?”

She snorted. “Not unless you want it served cold and bitter.”

He didn’t smile. “Investors today. You think the system will hold?”

“I patched last night’s regression myself. Full lockdown.” She lied—she couldn’t be sure. Who could she trust when code became conspiracy?

A trickle of teammates shuffled in—Maya, looking hollow-eyed, clutching a Red Bull like a charm; Jonah, chin up, too brisk, eyes scanning every shadow.

Maya’s voice cut the silent air. “We all good for NovaForge? Because I pushed the hotfix from GitHub, but there’s a rogue commit on main. I didn’t touch it.”

Ava’s chest tightened. “Hash?”

Maya tossed her a string of numbers. The commit signature was… Jonah’s.

Jonah flinched. “I didn’t push that. Must’ve been the auto-daemon.”

Raj’s scowl was dark, implacable. “Daemon doesn’t alter workflows, or push commits with your SSH key.”

Jonah threw up his hands. “Fine, screw it, check my machine. I have nothing to hide.”

Ava rubbed the bridge of her nose, already spent. “Later. Now, prep the deck and monitor app health. No slip-ups.”

She dialed in for the NovaForge check-in. Fiona Chao wasn’t alone—half a dozen partners stared back from a windowed Brady Bunch grid, pencils poised and expressions set to ‘suspicious.'

Ava clicked through their roadmap, metrics, sanitized logs. Then came the demo—she shared screen, toggled workflows.

A beat. She waited. Maya’s Slack pinged—approaching 100 concurrent sessions, load spike traced to non-client traffic.

Then, in real time, a catastrophic error: endpoints flashed red, the whole system stuttering. Private clusters fell over; demo data spilled onto the public dashboard.

Fiona’s lips pressed thin. “Is this real data exposure? If so, we’ll have to terminate due diligence now.”

Ava’s heart stalled. “It’s a bug in the test cluster, not production—”

Raj leapt in, voice brittle, “We’ll have this patched immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

But the damage was done. The NovaForge partners dropped off one by one, Fiona the last: “Reach out if you get your house in order. But don’t expect us to wait.”

The Zoom ended. Maya buried her face in her palms.

Ava felt the floor buckle beneath her. She staggered into the kitchen, clutching the marble counter hard enough her nails left half-moons. The shriek of her phone shattered the silence: push alert—from TechCrunch.

StoneLabs Announces HelixAI, Disruptive New Security Architecture: Real-Time Threat Detection, Zero-Day Response, Secure Data Pipeline. Available Now.

Ava stared—and then the world blurred. The details were almost word-for-word from the SecureStack pilot decks, even Ava’s language repurposed without shame.

Raj’s voice was raw as he burst in: “You seeing this?”

“Yeah. I see it.”

He shook his head, pacing, running hands through his hair wildly. “They stole everything, Ava. Everything. Features, positioning. Even our pilot names—M&T, SynVision—they’ve got the same beta clients!”

She felt a diagnosis blooming: shock collapsing into rage, wrapping tight as wire.

The bullpen was a war zone—Maya quietly crying at her desk, Jonah firing off denials, Raj growing more agitated until finally he turned on Ava, jabbing the air with his finger.

“We’re done!” He nearly shouted. “Whoever the leak is, they’ve gutted us. Our investors walk, our launch window is gone. I can’t—” his voice cracked. “I can’t risk my family’s future for a dream that’s dying.”

Ava stared at him, silent. His anger was jagged, but the fear—the honesty—hit harder. For a moment, she wanted to just nod, let him go, abdicate every fight left.

“There’s still a way. We find the leak. We patch—”

Raj shook his head, defeated. “No more patches. That’s all we do. That’s all we are now.”

He turned away, standing at the door, afraid and furious both. “I’m not quitting yet, Ava. But I’m almost there.”

She swallowed, voice a whisper. “Don’t go. Please.”

But he was already gone.

Maya’s chair squeaked as she spun to face Ava, mascara streaked across her cheek. “I didn’t do this. I would never.”

Jonah stood rigid, fists balled. “Then what, Maya? Are you blaming me?”

Ava put up her hands. “Enough!” But it was a futile gesture—the trust broken, the room charged with open suspicion.

Jonah stared at the floor, shoulders slumped. “You want the truth?”

Ava waited, uncertain.

Jonah took a slow breath. “It was me. I did it.”

Maya’s gasp was sharp as a slap. “What—are you joking?”

Jonah looked up, eyes glassy. “Victor came to me a month ago. Said he knew about my debt, my visa issue. Offered me more than I make here in a year, to just send over some logs. Tiny stuff. Then the pitch deck. Then the pilot lists. By then, I was scared, but it was too late.”

He ran a hand through his tangled hair, choking on the confession. “Victor said if I didn’t keep helping, he’d tell you—paint it so I’d never work again. I was trapped. I’m so sorry.”

Ava couldn’t find words; even Maya seemed speechless.

Jonah set his badge on the table. “Do what you want. Fire me, call the cops—whatever. I deserve it.”

For long moments, there was only the hum of the air handler, the mundanity of the ordinary world continuing as theirs imploded. Ava looked at Jonah—resentment, pity, betrayal, and some small coil of understanding all at war inside her.

“Just go home, Jonah.” Ava’s voice scraped out. “I’ll be in touch.”

He walked out, not looking back.

Maya spoke in a hollow echo. “He wasn’t the only weak link. If I’d checked my access logs…”

Ava ignored her, slumping into a desk chair, vision clouding, heart pounding.

She was alone. Every call and text was a wound—the Fortune pilot clients pulling out, the VC rejections piling in. StoneLabs’ HelixAI was trending everywhere; Victor’s smug promises of partnership twisted in her memory like a knife.

Evening fell. Alone in the empty office, Ava finally fished out her phone and texted Karen: I lost. Everyone left. Maybe you were right all along.

Minutes passed. Ava nearly gave up waiting. Then Karen called, voice a dry, unyielding balm.

“You done feeling sorry for yourself?”

Ava couldn’t speak; tears slipped down her cheek.

Karen filled the silence. “Everyone gets stabbed in the valley—hell, some of us leave half our blood behind and still limp to the next boardroom.”

“I couldn’t protect them. Or the product. Or myself.”

Karen’s voice sharpened. “You made a mistake. ‘Mistake’ is the most common word in every unicorn founder’s biography. You chose trust and lost. Next time, choose evidence. Grieve and get up. Or quit now, and leave your work to parasites like Victor.”

Ava pressed her sleeve to her eyes. “Maybe it’s just over. Maybe I’m not built for this.”

Karen grunted. “Bullshit. You’re built for the fight or you wouldn’t still be sitting in that office with nothing left but your scruples and your stubbornness. Now do what the best founders do: find out how much of yourself you’re willing to lose, and leave whatever you can’t live with. But don’t ever, ever hand the win to someone like Victor Stone.”

A long silence passed, heavy as a gravestone. But Ava found herself sitting a little straighter, breath evening, grit returning.

“I hear you.”

“Good. Now fix your house. Start again tomorrow. And remember—if you’re not pissing someone off, you’re probably building the wrong thing.”

Karen hung up.

Night seeped in through the blindless office windows. Ava pulled up a fresh browser tab, hands steadying. She had nothing—no team, no pipeline, no investor patience left. But for the first time in days, what she felt was not despair, but defiance.

It wasn’t over until she said so. Not yet.