The security deposit box weighed nothing and everything at once.
Liam stood on the institute's front steps, the late afternoon sun painting the concrete in long, accusing shadows. The box in his arms held the sum total of his professional life:
A chipped "1 Scientist" mug (a gag gift from Clara last Christmas)
A waterlogged notebook filled with equations that now seemed laughably primitive
A framed photo of his father, Dr. Elias Thane, standing proudly beside his own doomed experiment a man who'd chased impossible dreams straight into an early grave
The guards hadn't found anything incriminating on him. Just thirty-seven cents in linty pocket change and a subway pass expired three weeks ago.
A bus screeched to a stop at the curb. Liam climbed on, ignoring the stares of commuters as he slumped into a seat near the back. The vehicle lurched forward, each jolt sending fresh waves of humiliation through him.
Outside the window, the city blurred past—a smear of indifferent steel and glass. Somewhere in those towers, Linda was probably already drafting the incident report.
Linda—
The first time he'd met Linda Cho, she'd been arguing with a physics professor in the middle of a crowded lecture hall.
"Your equation is wrong," she'd said, voice cutting through the murmurs of three hundred students. "The temporal variable can't be constant—it has to account for quantum flux."
Liam, hunched in the back row with a notebook full of dead language scribbles, had sat up straighter.
The professor had sputtered. "Ms. Cho, if you're so certain, perhaps you'd like to prove it?"
Linda had marched to the whiteboard, snatched a marker, and rewritten the entire formula in under a minute.
after proving the professor wrong she stood there smiling like a crazy fellow
he coudn't quite remember how they ahd became friends, but the next thing he knew they had beeen crazy tight friends
His phone buzzed. A text from Clara:
You okay? Just heard what happened.
Liam stared at the screen. What could he say? Sorry I ghosted you, I was busy becoming custodian of the multiverse.? He thumbed out a reply—Fine. Talk later.—then immediately regretted it.
The bus dumped him six blocks from home. His mother's home, he had spent his days in the lab, always cooped up in the lab, never had a social life, had always been a failure
The Thane family house hadn't changed in twenty years. Same peeling blue shutters. Same creaky front gate with the broken latch. Same porch light burning yellow against the gathering dusk.
Liam's stomach twisted. His mother kept that light on from dusk till dawn, a habit started when his father worked late nights at the lab. "So he can always find his way home," she'd said.
Now it illuminated Liam's shame as he trudged up the walkway.
He knocked.
The door swung open to reveal Sarah Thane, flour dusting her apron, her silver-streaked hair pulled into its usual messy bun. Her smile died when she saw the box in his arms.
"Liam?" Her voice was small. "What's wrong?"
The dam broke.
"I lost everything, Mum." His knees buckled. "The project. The lab. All of it."
Sarah caught him before he could collapse, her arms—still strong despite her age—wrapping around him with a fierceness that stole his breath. He buried his face in her shoulder, inhaling the familiar scents of lavender and baking bread.