Story code: ST-001330
Part 1: The Shared Screen
From my desk at the Brody Genetics Clinic reception, I watched Marcus Brody click the screen-share button on his terminal. Through the glass-walled office, the blue glow of his monitor illuminated his face, showing the bead of sweat tracing down his collar. He adjusted his headset, his eyes shifting to the video tiles of Dr. Christopher Chen and the other venture capitalists waiting on the call. On the shared screen, Marcus opened a PDF document labeled EB_Trial_Update_Stable.pdf-his sister Elena’s private gene-editing lab report. He had not requested her signature, nor had he accessed the secure server database; he was sharing a local file cropped to display only the top half of the genetic alignment.
“As you can see, the vector insertion is stable,” Marcus said, his voice carrying through the open office door. “My sister’s cellular markers have remained consistent for twelve consecutive weeks. Brody Therapeutics has achieved what the larger firms called impossible.”
In the waiting area, Elena Brody sat quietly, flipping through a medical journal. She moved her left leg slightly, adjusting for the persistent limp that had developed over the last month. She looked up at Marcus’s office, giving him a brief, trusting smile through the glass. Marcus did not look back. He kept his attention locked on the screen, his fingers drumming a rapid rhythm against his desk.
The clinic was quiet, the air conditioning hum the only constant sound besides Marcus’s presentation. On my own terminal, I kept the secure database open. The dual-key authentication token lay flat on my desk, its digital display cycling through security codes every sixty seconds. I looked back at Marcus’s shared screen. The cropped document looked perfect, showing clean lines of genetic therapy uptake.
Dr. Christopher Chen’s avatar lit up. “The markers look clean, Marcus,” Chen said, his voice flat through the speakerphone. “But we need the raw telemetry. The Series A terms require us to verify the full cellular sequencing before we transfer the first tranche of the ten million. Upload the complete, uncropped PDF to the group chat right now so my analysts can verify the run.”
Marcus’s hand froze on his mouse. His breathing became visible, his chest rising and falling in short, shallow cycles. He reached for his collar, pulling it slightly away from his throat. “Of course,” Marcus said, his pitch rising slightly. “I’ll drop the raw data sheet into the channel immediately. It’s the same dataset, just the untranslated readouts.”
I watched him minimize the Zoom window and open his local files. He selected a file named EB_Raw_Telemetry_Actual.pdf. His cursor hovered over it for three seconds. He dragged the file into the active chat window, hit enter, and restored the screen-share. The upload bar filled instantly. Dr. Chen opened the document on his end, his shared screen reflecting back in Marcus’s office glass. As the document rendered in full resolution, the cropped margins Marcus had hidden in the previous file were fully exposed, showing a series of red-highlighted rows at the bottom of the page.
From my desk at the Brody Genetics Clinic reception, I watched Marcus Brody click the screen-share button on his terminal. Through the glass-walled office, the blue glow of his monitor illuminated his face, showing the bead of sweat tracing down his collar. He adjusted his headset, his eyes shifting to the video tiles of Dr. Christopher Chen and the other venture capitalists waiting on the call. On the shared screen, Marcus opened a PDF document labeled EB_Trial_Update_Stable.pdf-his sister Elena’s private gene-editing lab report. He had not requested her signature, nor had he accessed the secure server database; he was sharing a local file cropped to display only the top half of the genetic alignment.
“As you can see, the vector insertion is stable,” Marcus said, his voice carrying through the open office door. “My sister’s cellular markers have remained consistent for twelve consecutive weeks. Brody Therapeutics has achieved what the larger firms called impossible.”
In the waiting area, Elena Brody sat quietly, flipping through a medical journal. She moved her left leg slightly, adjusting for the persistent limp that had developed over the last month. She looked up at Marcus’s office, giving him a brief, trusting smile through the glass. Marcus did not look back. He kept his attention locked on the screen, his fingers drumming a rapid rhythm against his desk.
The clinic was quiet, the air conditioning hum the only constant sound besides Marcus’s presentation. On my own terminal, I kept the secure database open. The dual-key authentication token lay flat on my desk, its digital display cycling through security codes every sixty seconds. I looked back at Marcus’s shared screen. The cropped document looked perfect, showing clean lines of genetic therapy uptake.
Dr. Christopher Chen’s avatar lit up. “The markers look clean, Marcus,” Chen said, his voice flat through the speakerphone. “But we need the raw telemetry. The Series A terms require us to verify the full cellular sequencing before we transfer the first tranche of the ten million. Upload the complete, uncropped PDF to the group chat right now so my analysts can verify the run.”
Marcus’s hand froze on his mouse. His breathing became visible, his chest rising and falling in short, shallow cycles. He reached for his collar, pulling it slightly away from his throat. “Of course,” Marcus said, his pitch rising slightly. “I’ll drop the raw data sheet into the channel immediately. It’s the same dataset, just the untranslated readouts.”
I watched him minimize the Zoom window and open his local files. He selected a file named EB_Raw_Telemetry_Actual.pdf. His cursor hovered over it for three seconds. He dragged the file into the active chat window, hit enter, and restored the screen-share. The upload bar filled instantly. Dr. Chen opened the document on his end, his shared screen reflecting back in Marcus’s office glass. As the document rendered in full resolution, the cropped margins Marcus had hidden in the previous file were fully exposed, showing a series of red-highlighted rows at the bottom of the page.