At a Tech Summit, I presented AI protocols from my late mentor, only for my ex-husband to realize they were his "children."
Liam Reed moved through the Tech Summit with a renewed sense of purpose. The initial buzz of Evelyn Thorne’s public humiliation and the subsequent, rapid shutdown of her access had shifted his investigative compass. What started as a general inquiry into tech patent fraud now had a specific, compelling target: Marcus Bell.
Back at his makeshift workstation in the press room, Liam began his deep dive. He wasn’t just looking for casual mentions; he was digging through public records, archived news articles, corporate transparency reports, and obscure legal filings related to FinchCorp. He focused his search specifically on Marcus Bell.
He started by querying Bell’s employment history, looking for any red flags, any sudden promotions, or unusual departmental shifts. What he found wasn’t outright illegal, but it certainly raised an eyebrow. Bell’s ascent within FinchCorp’s compliance department had been surprisingly swift, especially coinciding with Mark Davies’s own rapid rise in R&D leadership.
Liam then cross-referenced Bell’s approved “data integrity” or “security” directives with Mark Davies’s patent registrations. He built a timeline, painstakingly linking seemingly innocuous corporate actions to significant intellectual property claims. The pattern began to emerge with chilling clarity.
“There it is,” Liam murmured to himself, eyes fixed on his screen.
He found three distinct instances over the past five years where Marcus Bell had authorized “temporary data quarantines” or “restricted access protocols” on various FinchCorp projects. Each instance had occurred just weeks, sometimes days, before Mark Davies filed a major patent application related to those very projects. The reasoning cited by Bell in these directives was always generic: “potential IP leakage risk” or “proprietary data consolidation.”
One particularly glaring example involved a neural network architecture developed by a small team under Dr. Finch’s supervision, nearly six years ago. Bell had imposed a “Level 3 access restriction” on the project’s development files, effectively cutting off most of the junior researchers. Two weeks later, Mark Davies had registered a patent for a “novel neural architecture framework” that bore striking similarities to the quarantined project. The junior researchers had been too junior, too scared, or too unaware to challenge it.
Liam leaned back, a grim satisfaction settling over him. This wasn’t a coincidence. It was a pattern, a carefully constructed system of internal manipulation designed to facilitate intellectual property theft. Marcus Bell wasn’t just a loyal corporate officer; he was an enabler, a gatekeeper who systematically cleared the path for Mark Davies to claim others’ work. Evelyn Thorne’s current predicament wasn’t an isolated incident; it was merely the latest, most public victim of a well-oiled corporate machine. He knew he was onto something significant.
Meanwhile, Evelyn was hitting brick wall after brick wall. The shock of being locked out of FinchCorp’s main servers had given way to a burning frustration. She couldn’t afford to wait for official channels. Official channels were, she now understood, completely compromised.
She began reaching out to former colleagues, the few she still trusted, carefully framing her requests.
Her first call was to Ben, a mid-level engineer who had once worked closely with her and Dr. Finch on an early iteration of the Finch Protocols.
“Hey Ben, it’s Evelyn,” she started, trying to sound casual.
“Evie! Long time no hear,” Ben replied, his voice a little strained. He already knew about the summit drama. Everyone did.
“I know,” Evelyn said. “Listen, I’m trying to retrieve some old project files. Specifically, from the ‘Finch-Thorne’ development branch, circa three years ago. My old access has been… suspended.”
There was a beat of silence on Ben’s end.
“Evie, I wish I could help,” he finally said, his voice laced with genuine regret. “But all access to those older Finch projects was consolidated and restricted. New compliance protocols, you know? Marcus Bell signed off on it months ago. They cited ‘legacy data integrity’ concerns. Even us, we can only see a read-only, sanitized version, and only with special permission from Bell’s department.”
Evelyn’s jaw tightened. “Marcus Bell again.”
“Yeah,” Ben sighed. “Look, I’d love to help, but crossing Bell on something like this? It’s career suicide. I’m sorry.”
The call ended, leaving Evelyn with a bitter taste in her mouth. Ben was a good man, but he was also pragmatic. FinchCorp had a way of making people fall in line.
Next, she tried a less formal route. She knew that sometimes, older, less secure shared drives might still exist, remnants from a time before FinchCorp’s iron-clad data protocols. She remembered Dr. Finch’s habit of occasionally backing up crucial snippets to a personal, less-indexed server he jokingly called his “digital attic.”
She spent hours trying different IP addresses, combinations of old network paths she’d jotted down years ago in a forgotten notebook. She tried to log into her old FinchCorp email, hoping for an archived message with a link. That, too, was locked.
Each attempt was met with the same impenetrable wall of “access denied” or “file not found.” It was as if her entire digital footprint within FinchCorp had been meticulously scrubbed clean, or at least quarantined. Mark had anticipated her every move. He hadn’t just taken her work; he had systematically erased her very existence from the official records of its creation.
Her frustration mounted with every failed attempt. She slammed her laptop shut. This wasn’t just about reclaiming credit anymore. This was a war against an invisible enemy, one who controlled the very fabric of truth within the corporation. Her name, her contributions, her mentor’s legacy – all buried under layers of corporate politics and Marcus Bell’s “data integrity protocols.” The feeling of being trapped, with every avenue blocked, was suffocating. She knew the truth was out there. She just couldn’t reach it.
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