The Grand Auditorium of the Engineering Wing was packed with students and faculty, the air heavy with the smell of ozone and nervous energy. This was the "Innovators' Showcase," a day meant for brilliance, but at Shengli University, it was often a stage for the powerful to claim the work of the weak.
Lin Yu stood behind a curtain in the wings, her hands trembling as she made a final adjustment to the "Titan" prototype. The device, a sleek array of silver-threaded circuits designed to stabilize high-frequency data, was a masterpiece of hardware engineering. But it wouldn't bear her name.
"Remember the script, Yu," Jiang Ruyu hissed, appearing beside her. Ruyu was dressed in a pristine white lab coat, her Student Council armband gleaming like a badge of office. "You're the 'assistant.' I'm the lead developer. If you stutter once, I'll make sure your mother hears about your 'insolence' before the sun sets."
Yu nodded silently, her gaze dropping to the floor. She felt the heavy weight of the photo in her pocket—the only thing that kept her anchored as she prepared to watch her life's work be stolen in front of hundreds.
From the third row of the audience, Lin Xia sat with her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed. She didn't need to see the blueprints to know that the device Ruyu was about to present was the one Yu had been slaving over in their dorm.
She felt a presence sit in the empty chair beside her. Without looking, she knew it was Gu Yanchen. He looked as unbothered as ever, leaning back with a half-closed textbook in his lap.
"The Student Council is quite efficient at 'innovating,' wouldn't you say?" Yanchen remarked, his voice a low hum that barely carried over the crowd.
"They're thieves," Xia whispered, her jaw tight.
"The world doesn't care who builds the walls, only whose name is on the gate," Yanchen replied, his eyes fixed on the stage. He tapped a rhythm on his textbook—a specific, rhythmic pulse that Xia recognized from the server room. "Unless, of course, the gate has a backdoor."
Xia's fingers twitched. She reached into her bag, her hand finding her smartphone. As Nebula, she had already mapped the auditorium's local network. She didn't need to destroy Ruyu; she just needed to show the truth.
Ruyu walked onto the stage to a wave of polite applause. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present the 'Ruyu-Core'—a revolutionary step in data stabilization," she announced, her voice dripping with fake humility.
As she powered on the device, the screens behind her were supposed to show a clean, stable data stream. Instead, they flickered to life with a different image.
It was a time-stamped log from a soldering station—showing the device being built at 3:00 AM in a dark cellar. Beside the log, a hidden signature in the firmware began to scroll across the screen in bright neon blue: TITAN – PROPERTY OF LIN YU.
The auditorium fell into a stunned silence. Ruyu froze, her face turning a sickly shade of white as she looked back at the giant screens.
"What is this? This must be a glitch!" Ruyu screamed, turning to the wings. "Yu! Fix the projection!"
Yu stepped out from the curtain, but she didn't move toward the console. She looked at Xia in the audience, then at Yanchen, who gave a nearly imperceptible nod. For the first time, Yu didn't look down.
"It's not a glitch, Ruyu," Yu said, her voice small but steady. "It's the source code."
In the audience, Xia's fingers were still moving across her phone, but she realized something strange. She wasn't the only one in the system. Every time she tried to bypass a firewall, it was already open. Someone had dismantled the Student Council's security minutes before she even logged in.
She glanced at Yanchen. He was still looking at his textbook, a faint, predatory smirk on his lips.
The pulse of the city was beating. The Architect was rewriting the narrative from the shadows. Nebula was exposing the truth from the crowd. And the Shadow Twin had finally found her voice.