?Chapter 859:


    Her words made the whole teamugh, but they also inspired them.


    For Ste and the team, seeing Sandra so motivated was a truly rare sight.


    On the morning of thepetition, Ste arrived at the research institute earlier than usual to ensure everything was ready and all backups were in ce.


    But when she opened the final presentation file, her heart sank as an error shed on the screen: “File corrupted.”


    Ste froze. She tried everything she could think of—checking the backup drive, searching through the cloud—but nothing worked. Every synced copy was inessible.


    All their important data, experiment notes, and videos had turned into unreadable code, and some of it waspletely gone.


    With less than three hours left before the contest, Ste felt a wave of panic.


    Even with her experience, she didn’t know where to begin.


    When Sandra and the others arrived, they immediately noticed Ste’s pale, shocked expression.


    “Ste, what’s wrong? You’re up early, but you look… off. Today’s the big day! We’re going to beat Nina!”


    Sandra’s usual energy seemed to bounce off Ste like a wall. Elbert noticed her unusual mood first, so he asked cautiously, “Sylvia, is everything okay?”


    Ste forced herself to look at her team, her voice tight. “Our research files… someone deleted everything on purpose.”


    “What?”


    A collective gasp went through the team. The months of painstaking work, gone.


    “How… how is that even possible? Everything was fine yesterday afternoon when we checked!”


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    “The files were password-protected; only we could ess them. Who would sabotage us?”


    “Could it have been a hacker? Or…” Sandra started, then froze, covering her mouth with her hand. She realized she’d spoken too loudly.<fn687e> Original content can be found at </fn687e>


    The room fell grim. Ste’s mind raced, but she forced herself to stay calm. She knew this wasn’t a mistake. Someone was deliberately trying to knock them out of thepetition.


    As Ste tried to figure out a way to recover the files, her phone rang. It was William.


    “Ste, are you ready? I’ll be at the institute in about twenty minutes to pick you up,” William said, his voice confident and cheerful.


    He had gone to the Briggs Group earlier to deal with some urgent matters, which was why he hadn’te to theb with Ste.


    Ste exhaled slowly, trying to keep her voice calm. “William, there’s a problem. Someone wiped all mypetition files.”


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