Reese stopped in her tracks and turned around, but instead of looking at Sofia, her eyes went straight to Bailey.


    "Where''s the developmentb? I want to see if your tform can actually run de."


    Sofia''s face went pale with anger at Reese''s cold tone, but when Bailey gave her a look, she had no choice but to walk over and gesture down the hallway. "This way. I''ll show you."


    Matthew trailed after them, a subtle smile tugging at his lips as he watched Reese''s confident stride.


    Theb was spotless, filled with rows ofputers and several techs huddled around a central workstation. Sofia walked right up to the main console, grabbed the mouse, and clicked through a few windows until a cascade of code filled the screen. Clearing her throat, she started her pitch. "Matthew, this is the tform we built at Vista Tech. We''ve already tweaked it several times for de''s specs. There shouldn''t be any issues."


    "That''s not for you to decide," Matthew replied, pulling a USB drive from his pocket. "This has a partial build of de''s system. Let''s see if it works."


    "Of course." Sofia took the drive, plugged it in, andunched the program. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she set everything up.


    A progress bar appeared, steadily rising. Sofia gave a confident smile. "See? I told you it''d work."


    Her smile barely had time to settle before it froze. The progress bar stalled at fifty percent, then a red error message shed across the screen.


    Warning: Insufficient system resources. Unable to run program.


    Warning: Data mismatch. Integration failed.


    Sofia''s back broke out in a cold sweat. She frantically started typing, but nothing changed. The error message stayed put, and the progress bar didn''t budge.


    Bailey''s expression darkened as he hurried over. "What''s going on? I thought you already sorted out all the issues."


    "Sofia, fix it! Didn''t you say you''d worked on de''s development and knew the system inside and out?"


    But the truth was, when Sofia was part of the de team, she''d never touched the core data. The critical integration with Ratcliff Global''s The Vault was all done by Reese. Sofia had relied on her years of standard experience to build this tform, never once thinking Reese had rewritten the rules when she


    developed de. Now, staring at the


    stalled program, Sofia was


    Matthew leaned back against a desk, arms folded, watching Sofia flounder before ncing at Reese. When Reese gave him a tiny nod, he spoke up. "How about we let Reese take a shot?"


    Sofia''s face burned, but she tried to hold her ground. "Matthew, even if Reese was involved with de, wasn''t she just your assistant? How would she know what''s wrong? Why don''t you take a look yourself?"


    Hank jumped in. "Yeah, exactly. Sofia''s a top Al grad from an international university. If she can''t solve it, what could Reese possibly do?"


    Bailey kept quiet, watching Matthew closely. He figured Matthew was just covering for Reese, trying to make her look good. There was no way she could actually fix something thisplicated.


    Reese ignored all the chatter. She stepped up to theputer and started typing, focused and fast.


    A few minutester, she stopped and pointed to a line of code on the screen, her voice calm. "Here''s your problem. The logic in this algorithm is off is causing the system resources to be allocated unevenly. That''s why de can''t run."


    She pointed again. "And this protocol doesn''t match up with de''s core module.


    That''s what''s triggering the error."


    Theb went silent. The other techs leaned in to look at the screen, and


    recognition dawned on their faces.


    "That''s it! That''s exactly the issue!"


    "We''ve been debugging this for days and never caught it. No wonder she works in


    de. Incredible!"