Wait... it's the morning I find out my project got given to someone else.

Arthur’s hand came down on my shoulder, heavy and warm, exactly as it had in the life that murdered me. His fingers gave a reassuring squeeze, the kind a mob boss gives a lieutenant right before the car door locks from the outside.

"Big days require early starts, Ethan," Arthur said, his silver-dusted hair catching the soft downlighting of the breakroom. He looked into my eyes with an expression of profound, theatrical pride. "Julian and I just wrapped up an executive breakfast with the managing partners from Vanguard Tech. They’ve reviewed Chimera’s Q3 benchmarks. They are ecstatic. Frankly, the board is calling it the most significant infrastructure leap this firm has produced in a decade."

Julian stepped forward, offering an open-handed nod that barely concealed the predatory hunger in his hazel eyes. "It’s brilliant work, Ethan. Really. The heuristic modeling on the edge nodes is pure poetry. You’ve done a magnificent job laying the technical groundwork."

Groundwork.

There it was. The opening wedge. The subtle semantic downgrade from architect and creator to technician who dug the ditch.

In my first life, I had beamed at the praise, oblivious to the fact that Julian was already mentally measuring the drapes in my corner office.

"Thank you, Julian," I said evenly. I took a slow sip of my coffee, feeling the bitter warmth against my tongue. "The core neural scheduler reached ninety-nine point nine-nine percent fault tolerance at two this morning. The production pipelines are locked. We're on track for the November roll-out."

Arthur cleared his throat. He pulled his hand back from my shoulder, sliding it into the pocket of his bespoke trousers. The room’s atmospheric pressure shifted subtly, the genial mentor receding as the corporate butcher stepped onto the killing floor.

"Well, that’s actually what Julian and I wanted to talk to you about, Ethan," Arthur said, his voice dropping into a somber, conspiratorial register. "Walk with us down to Conference Room C. Let’s sit down for five minutes before the nine o'clock all-hands."

I didn't answer immediately. I reached over, picked up my small leather notebook, capped my pen, and stepped out of the breakroom, falling into stride between the two of them.

The fourteenth floor was beginning to wake up. Junior developers in hoodies were shuffling toward their cubicles; QA leads were calibrating automated test suites; monitors were flickering to life across sixty desks. Every single engineer on this floor knew that Chimera was my baby. They knew I had written the core routing compiler from scratch on my kitchen table.

We reached Conference Room C—a windowless box of frosted glass and acoustic oak paneling. Arthur stepped in first, taking the head of the dark walnut conference table. Julian took the seat to his right, setting down his leather portfolio and an expensive iPad Pro.

I sat at the far end of the table, directly opposite Arthur. I didn't slouch. I laced my fingers together on top of my notebook, resting my forearms against the wood.

Arthur folded his hands, leaning forward, his eyes softening into a masterpiece of manufactured executive regret.

"Ethan, nobody appreciates what you’ve built here more than I do," Arthur began, his voice a smooth, purring cadence designed to lower defenses. "You are an engineering savant. A generational technical mind. But as Chimera moves out of pure R&D and transitions into global enterprise deployment, the operational demands are evolving."

He paused, letting the silence build, waiting for me to ask the question that would seal my fate.

I didn't speak. I simply watched him, my eyes flat and unreadable.

Arthur blinked, thrown slightly off balance by my silence, before pressing forward. "The board feels—and I concur—that we need an experienced enterprise strategist at the helm for the client integration phase. Someone with deep relationships across the institutional investment networks in New York. Therefore, as of this morning, Julian is assuming the role of Principal Project Director for Chimera."

Julian leaned forward, his face a portrait of modest, collaborative humility. "I want to be very clear, Ethan: this is a partnership. I’m handling the executive steering committee, the investor roadshows, and client relations. You will remain on the project as Chief Technical Advisor. You’ll have total autonomy over the code, while I take the political heat off your shoulders so you can focus on what you do best."

Chief Technical Advisor. A title with zero voting rights, zero board visibility, and one hundred percent of the operational liability when the engine blew up.

"And the patent filings?" I asked quietly, my voice slicing through the thick air of the conference room. "The provisional patent application for the distributed heuristic balancing algorithm was submitted to the legal department last Friday. My name is listed as sole inventor."

Arthur’s smile tightened around the edges. He exchanged a lightning-fast, almost imperceptible glance with Julian.

"That's another reason we're having this chat, Ethan," Arthur said softly, his tone laced with that dangerous, velvet authority that brook no dissent. "The legal team at Vanguard flagged the patent structure. Under our corporate employee innovation agreements, all intellectual property developed using company server resources belongs to the firm. To secure the next tranche of institutional funding, the patent needs to list Horizon Interactive as the corporate assignee, with Julian and myself listed as co-inventors to reflect the strategic and managerial contributions that made the research viable."

He pulled a single sheet of heavy parchment from a manila folder and slid it down the length of the table toward me.

It was an Intellectual Property Reassignment and Title Amendment rider.

Right at the bottom was a blue signature tab.

In my first life, this was the moment my heart had shattered. I had argued, tears of betrayal burning behind my eyelids, until Arthur whispered that if I didn't sign, my stock options would be canceled under the discretionary vesting clauses of my employment contract. I had signed out of pure, unadulterated terror of losing five years of sweat equity.

I looked down at the parchment.