Chapter 2

"No," I said, the word tasting like iron in my mouth. "I'm not endorsing him. I'm going to HR. I have the code repository, every commit log, every design document. They all have my name on them."

Chloe' s placid mask finally cracked. A flicker of irritation crossed her face.

"Don't be dramatic, Ethan. You'll just make yourself look bad."

She walked out the door, leaving me standing in the silence of our apartment, the ghost of her perfume hanging in the air like a bad promise.

She didn't believe I'd do it. She underestimated me.

At the office, the atmosphere was toxic. When I walked past the open-plan desk area, I saw Leo holding court, laughing with a group of engineers. They glanced at me, then quickly looked away, whispering. The humiliation was a physical heat on my skin.

I went straight to my department director, Marcus Vance. I laid out my case calmly, logically, presenting the timeline of my work.

He listened with a bored expression, steepled his fingers, and leaned back in his expensive chair.

"Ethan, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention," he said, his tone dripping with corporate non-commitment. "But Chloe has already briefed me. It was a team effort."

A few hours later, an email landed in my inbox. It was an official project update from Marcus.

Subject: Congratulations to the Prometheus Team!

I scanned the body, my heart pounding. There it was, in black and white.

Lead Architect: Leo Zhang.

Project Manager: Chloe Myers.

I scrolled down, past the names of managers and product marketers. Finally, at the bottom, under a heading titled "Additional Contributors," was a list of over twenty names. Mine was buried in the middle, sandwiched between two people who had attended a single thirty-minute kickoff meeting three years ago.

My contribution was now officially worthless. It was a footnote.

My colleagues' whispers turned into open mockery.

"Heard you're trying to ride the coattails of that brilliant intern," one of the senior engineers said at the coffee machine, just loud enough for me to hear.

I looked at him, then at the others who were smirking. These were people I had helped, people whose technical problems I had solved. Now, they saw me as a joke.

That night, I didn't go home. I stayed in my cubicle, the glow of the monitor the only light.

I thought about the three years. The 1,095 days. The thousands of hours I had poured into Prometheus. The late nights fueled by cold pizza and energy drinks. The social events I missed. The moments with Chloe I'd sacrificed, telling myself it would all be worth it when I could finally give her the life she wanted, a life built on my own success.

How could she do this? For Leo? A lazy, sycophantic kid who spent more time networking than writing a single line of functional code.

The unfairness of it was a physical weight, pressing down on me until I could barely breathe.

I opened my laptop. If they wanted to play this game in the office, I would take it public. I would burn them to the ground with the truth.

I refused to use the connections my parents had. They were legends, Silicon Valley royalty who had built the very foundations of this world. But I had made a promise to myself. I would succeed on my own merit, or not at all. My name, Ethan, was deliberately common. No one at Aether knew I was the son of David and Sarah.

And I intended to keep it that way.