Reborn Together, From Enemies to the Richest

I reached the stage before Mara could finish her announcement. The microphone squealed when I grabbed it. Behind me, the battery display blinked red, then went dark. In front of me, a hundred investors and reporters turned from Mara's face to mine. "The prototype is not yours," I said. Mara's smile held for half a second longer than it should have. She wore a pale blue suit and the expression I remembered from a thousand magazine covers: composed, expensive, untouchable. Then she looked directly at me. I had seen that look once before, in the final months of my first life, after a flood had drowned the lower floors of our shared research facility. We'd been rivals by then, each blaming the other for the company that had swallowed our work. I'd spent my last evening watching the city's emergency lights through smoke and rain, certain Mara had chosen her fortune over the people we'd started with. Now she was twenty-nine again. So was I. "Ms. Ward," she said, "you're interrupting a private demonstration." "Then you should have kept my name off your presentation." A dozen phones rose. The event's sponsor, Bellwether Harbor Development, had invited reporters to see Mara's announcement about a new tidal-storage system. The system onstage used the same control architecture I had designed in graduate school, before the first life went wrong. Mara's fingers tightened around the clicker. "We'll address your concerns after the presentation." "No. You'll address them now." The room shifted. I heard a camera shutter, a chair scrape, a man near the front whisper my name. My company, Ward Marine Systems, had two employees and a stack of unpaid invoices. Mara's company, Voss Capital, had money, lawyers, and a board that would call this a stunt. I had no proof she'd stolen anything. Not yet. The version of me who had once made that accusation had been right, but right without evidence was just an expensive way to lose. I turned to the display and pointed at the black screen. "This unit was designed to regulate pressure through a three-stage valve sequence. The first stage is mine. The second is mine. The third is a workaround I developed after a test failure on May 14." Mara didn't flinch. "Can you demonstrate that?" she asked. The question was calm. Almost kind. I hated that I remembered how she sounded when she was trying to make me look unreasonable. "I can show the dated files," I said. "But not here. Your equipment's locked." A murmur passed through the room. Mara glanced at the sponsor's representative, who was already moving toward us with a security guard. "I'll give Ms. Ward five minutes," she said. "Then we continue." That was when I saw it: the faint white scar across her left thumb. In my first life, she'd gotten it while opening a broken control panel during our first winter at the harbor. She'd told me it was nothing. Years later, when I'd seen the same scar during a televised interview, I'd felt a strange, childish relief that she was still alive. I had no right to recognize it now. The sponsor's representative guided us into a side room. Mara came with us and shut the door behind her. "Did you wake up on the same morning?" she asked. I forgot how to breathe. "What?" "Don't make me say it twice." She looked older than her face. "The flood. The acquisition. The winter we started in that warehouse. Did you live through all of that?" My throat tightened. "I died at forty-one." Mara nodded once. She didn't tell me what happened to her. She didn't have to. For several seconds, neither of us spoke. Then she glanced at the door. "You're going to accuse me of taking your design." "You did take it." "I haven't yet." "You were about to." Her expression hardened. "And you were about to spend the next twelve years fighting me instead of the people who used our fight to buy everything we made." The memory of the flood pressed behind my eyes. The ruined lab. The purchase orders I'd signed under pressure. The last, bitter message I'd sent her. I looked at the black prototype display. "So what do you want?" "To stop repeating the part where we lose." "By giving me five minutes?" "By working with me." I laughed, too loudly. "You don't get to steal the prototype and call it collaboration." "I said I haven't stolen it yet." She reached for the presentation clicker, then set it down between us. "I'll withdraw the announcement," she said. "You'll give me access to your dated files. If they prove the design is yours, we start over with a clean agreement." "And if I refuse?" "Then we go back out there and accuse each other. Pike buys the project for pennies in six months. You end up broke. I end up with a company I can't control. We both know how that story goes." I looked at the scar on her thumb. Then at the clicker. "Tomorrow," I said. "Nine a.m. My office. Bring your lawyer." "I'll bring mine." "And no public claims until we have a deal." Mara picked up the clicker. "Agreed." When we returned to the stage, she announced that the demonstration had been postponed because the system needed further testing. I told the reporters I had no comment. By the time I got to my car, three calls from investors had come in. The first was furious. The second asked whether I was suing. The third wanted to know if I could deliver a prototype by summer. I sat behind the wheel and watched Mara emerge from the venue. Her driver opened the rear door. She didn't get in. She stood on the curb with the city's gray harbor behind her, looking straight at me. We had twelve years to build something different. And only one morning to decide if we were going to try.