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Chapter 10 - Exploit

"I... don't think I could point to a specific moment," Miana said, trying not to think about the real reason she knew about Sandra's feelings. "Just a sneaking suspicion I had."

"God, I'm so awful," Sandra said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling "Here you came over to talk about what was bothering you, and I end up babbling on about me." She rested a hand on Miana's shoulder, dark brown eyes staring intently into Miana's. "But seriously, try not to worry about what happened today. Maybe those electrical engineers screwed up somewhere, or maybe it was just a bad accident. Whatever happened, it has nothing to do with us."

Yeah, that's what you think.

"Hey, how about a refill?" Miana said, holding up her empty glass to distract away from the subject. "We need to make a toast to the success of the project." Seeing Sandra's hesitation, Miana smiled and shifted on the couch, pushing her chest forward and giving her drinking companion a good eyeful of her cleavage. "Come on, just one more."

"Okay," Sandra said, standing up to head to the kitchen. "But just one more, okay? I've got a lot of work on my thesis to do this weekend, and the last thing I need is a splitting headache in the morning."

"Fine, just one more glass," Miana promised.

* * *

Technically, she hadn't lied. After their refills of cheap box wine had been drained, Miana had headed into the kitchen herself, bringing back the six-pack of beers from the fridge. An hour later, both of them were deep into their second cans, and Sandra's laughter was starting to sound a lot less restrained.

"You're kidding?" Miana said. "The teacher actually accused you of copying something from the internet?"

"Yeah, can you believe that?" Sandra said with a barking cackle. "Even after I showed him all my research notes and bibliography, he didn't believe me. Probably because most of it was way over the head of some small-town high school science teacher. Asshole ended up giving me a 0 anyway for 'going outside the bounds of the original assignment,'" Sandra made her voice sound deep and stuffy as she quoted the teacher. "God, I was so fucking pissed. Asshole screwing up my perfect grades just because I wrote a research paper he didn't understand."

"So, what did you do? Get your parents involved or something?"

Sandra scoffed. "Yeah, like they fucking cared. I told you before how they felt about my interest in science. Guess they got sick of all those arguments at the dinner table about how 'evolution is just a theory' and that sort of bullshit," she said. It was so strange, hearing the normal stuffy Sandra flinging around profanities left and right. Get her a little tipsy and she turned into a sailor, apparently.

"So, you took the F on the paper?" Miana asked.

"No damn way. I took that paper, stuck it in an envelope, and I mailed it off to one of the professors here at Rutherford," she said. "Put in a note explaining the situation and asked him to confirm that what I had written was original research."

"Crafty," Miana said, and meant it. Just like on their date, Miana was finding her closer relationship with Sandra to be quite enjoyable. She considered how things might have been different if it wasn't for the Cyclops. Were she and Sandra the best of friends in another quantum reality?

"So, did the professor back your story?" Miana asked.

Sandra's grin grew wide and proud. "Oh, even better. I got an email about a week later. The professor told me that not only was the paper a legitimate piece of original research, but that he was going to be submitting it to one of the major scientific journals," she said. "He offered to personally email my teacher to tell him that what I had written hadn't been copied, and was actually an intriguing new theory that needed to be shared with the scientific community at large."