Cosmic by celeste, p.18
Cosmic by Celeste, page 18
Celeste skimmed the text, her lips pressed thin. “This is fiction,” she said. “I do every quality run myself. I have the data. No contamination, no instability, no nothing.”
Thad grinned, admiration blurring into affection. “I know. But the board doesn’t. And the minute this rumor gets out, it’s going to be the only thing anyone talks about.”
She dropped the paper on the desk. “We run a side-by-side test. Every batch. We release the footage. I’ll do it in front of a live feed if that’s what it takes.”
He looked at her, and for the first time in a week, she saw hope in his eyes. “You’d do that?”
“In my sleep,” she replied, and meant it.
He slumped into the chair, the kind that cost more than her first car. “If Richard pulls this off, we lose everything. He’ll use it to force me out, you know.”
She circled to the front of the desk and stood close enough that he had to look up at her. “Then we don’t let him.”
Thad’s hand hovered over the Cosmic bottle, then reached for it. She caught his wrist, not hard, but enough to stop him. “Don’t open that,” she said.
He laughed a short, nervous bark. “Paranoid?”
She shook her head, then softened. “You’re not paranoid. You have enemies.”
He stared at her, searching her face for something: assurance, forgiveness, maybe a reason to keep fighting. “How do you do it? Stay calm, I mean. Everyone else is losing it.”
She took a step closer, voice low. “You don’t panic until the tests say panic. And they never have.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The hum of the city through the glass, the shuffle of paper, the throb of shared fear. Then he stood, and the proximity turned the air electric.
“We should get started,” he said, but didn’t move.
She nodded, and neither did she.
A knock at the door shattered the spell. Natalie, crisp as ever, hair in a no-nonsense braid and a stack of folders under her arm. She glanced from Thad to Celeste and back, eyes doing a quick calculus of what she’d interrupted.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said, skipping all preamble. “Richard’s called an emergency board session for two. It’s already on everyone’s calendar.”
Thad looked at the clock: an hour and a half. “He’s not wasting time.”
Natalie’s gaze lingered on Celeste, and for a flash, there was actual sympathy. “You’ll need to be ready. They’ll want you to defend the formula.”
Celeste straightened, the old armor clicking into place. “I always am.”
Natalie handed over a USB stick. “Full transcript of the allegations. Use what you need.”
With a nod, Celeste tucked it into her jacket, then turned to Thad. “I’ll run the tests now. You want to join?”
He nodded, then paused, looking for words. He reached for her hand, squeezed it tight, and said, “We’ll fight this together.”
It was a promise and a confession, and it hurt because they both knew what was at stake.
She let go first, collected her calm like a borrowed coat, and walked out, Natalie trailing behind.
Thad stood alone in the office, the taste of her perfume, warm, sharp, utterly unique, lingering in the air long after she was gone.
***
The board meeting began with the precision of a military tribunal. Each square of the video wall bloomed to life, directed by the director, their faces ring-lit and sterile, framed by the kind of expensive furniture that broadcast both taste and a total lack of empathy.
Richard’s image was dead center, the algorithm’s default to the loudest participant, his backdrop an immaculate library of first editions and an artfully out-of-focus view of Central Park. To his left, Natalie’s box flickered, her face uncharacteristically pale in the ring light, lips pursed in concentration. Thad sat off-center, a deliberate choice, never the focus, always the question mark.
Celeste was there, too, perched in the R&D office with two ring lights to fight fluorescent jaundice, her hair back and her posture a masterclass in defensive elegance.
Richard opened, as always, with a performance. “I appreciate everyone joining at short notice. In the interest of transparency and the well-being of our consumers, I’m bringing to light a troubling development with the Cosmic launch.”
He clicked something, and the shared screen replaced his face with a scan of the first “independent” lab report: red boxes around the words “trace contamination,” “unidentified volatile,” and “potential allergenic risk.” The font was Times New Roman, and the watermark was genuine.
“Over the last seventy-two hours,” Richard said, “multiple samples from the pre-release batch have tested positive for a chemical not listed in the original formulation. If this goes public, we risk litigation, a recall, and, most damaging of all, the loss of consumer trust.”
He let it hang, then continued. “I recommend an immediate production halt and an external audit of all R&D activity, effective now. Given the nature of the risk, I also suggest a temporary suspension of Dr. Bellamy, pending further investigation.”
The words landed like a brick in a punchbowl.
Natalie spoke first. “These reports haven’t been verified. It’s standard procedure for all anomalies to be confirmed by the internal lab. We’re still waiting for their results.”
Richard turned the full wattage of his smile on her. “Of course, and I defer to due process. But the optics of delay…”
Thad cut in. “What is the substance, specifically?”
Richard’s brow furrowed, a show of regret. “It appears to be a phthalate plasticizer, likely a cross-contaminant from a supplier, but the presence is statistically significant. I’ll let Dr. Bellamy address whether this is an expected artifact.”
All faces pivoted to Celeste, who sat like she’d known this was coming since the day she was hired.
“There are zero plasticizers in the Cosmic supply chain,” she said, her French accent sharpening. “We run triple-blind tests. All documentation is logged and timestamped. This is either a reporting error or someone is spiking the samples.”
A new director, camera pointed up his nose, interrupted: “Can you provide a chain of custody for all ingredients?”
Celeste nodded. “It’s in the shared folder. Page 19.”
A few heads ducked as people scrolled. Thad watched the mood shift. No one trusted anyone, but they trusted her more than they trusted Richard.
Richard produced a second report, this one from a “prestigious Belgian lab.” It showed similar results.
Celeste’s jaw set. “You know,” she said, voice clipped, “that overseas labs use different standards. You’re cherry-picking outlier data.”
“I’m looking out for the brand,” Richard replied, faux-modest.
Natalie tried to redirect: “With respect, this is the thinnest ‘evidence’ I’ve seen since the keto pill lawsuit.”
Richard shrugged. “I think we owe it to shareholders to consider the risk. After all, isn’t that why we’re here?”
For the next twenty minutes, the meeting devolved into a back-and-forth: Celeste citing peer-reviewed journals, Richard quoting legal precedent, and Natalie lobbing subtle insults across the ether. Thad tried to steady the ship, but with every new page of “evidence,” the balance tilted further toward panic.
When the dust settled, the board chair, a woman with the voice of a submarine captain and the soul of an actuary, summed up:
“In light of these allegations, and with full respect to Dr. Bellamy’s record, I propose a 48-hour suspension of all production and an immediate retest of the Cosmic batches by two independent labs, one of Celeste’s choosing. In the interim, Dr. Bellamy will have access to all resources needed to prove or disprove these findings.”
She looked at Thad. “Are you in agreement, CEO?”
He nodded and, for a moment, saw the relief on Celeste’s face, quickly hidden.
As the meeting adjourned, the faces flicked off one by one, leaving only Richard, who lingered in the digital vacuum.
“Good show, Thaddeus,” he said, voice low. “But you might want to keep an eye on your R&D. People under pressure do strange things. Even people you trust.”
Thad didn’t respond, but the words crawled under his skin and settled behind his ribs.
Richard smiled, switched off his camera, and left Thad staring at his own reflection in the black rectangle.
He sat for a long time, the silence pressing down, until his phone buzzed with a message from Celeste.
It read: “I won’t let him destroy us. I promise.”
But the doubt was already there, gnawing at the edge of hope.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The lab after dark was a mausoleum of silence and blue LEDs; the overheads dimmed to just enough light to keep the mice in the sub-basement from thinking it was always night. Celeste liked it best this way. Her kingdom of compounds and glassware was reduced to a finite number of problems, all solvable with enough time and caffeine.
Tonight, though, the silence wasn’t soothing. It was an accusation, thickening with every step she took between the high shelves and the humming fridges. She prepped the first set of samples with hands so steady that they almost looked fake, as if someone had replaced her bones with carbon fiber. But the mask slipped by batch three when she fumbled a pipette, and the droplet splashed onto the steel bench. It spread too fast, a miniature oil spill, and for a wild second, she wanted to lick it up, make the problem vanish by swallowing it whole.
She didn’t, of course. She pressed the spill with a sterile wipe, logged the error, and reset the tray. Old habits: never let the data lie.
Her phone vibrated, echoing in the silent room. She checked the display, which showed six missed texts: three from department heads, one from an old mentor in Grasse, and two from numbers she didn’t recognize. The first was a meme: her own face photoshopped onto the Mona Lisa, captioned, “She Knows Something.” The second was less kind: “Watch your back. They always eat the French first.”
She texted Maya. Ten minutes later, her assistant arrived, ponytail messy but lab coat buttoned tight, clutching a battered notebook like a shield.
“Sorry,” Maya whispered, though there was no one to disturb. “Security had to buzz me in. They’re locking everything down.”
Celeste nodded, poured the first sample into a column, and set the timer. “It’s starting, isn’t it?”
Maya didn’t ask what she meant. “People are spooked. There’s talk you’re going to get suspended tomorrow. I don’t believe it, but…”
“But?”
“There’s a story going around. That you compromised the formula yourself. So you could take the recipe too,” She broke off, the rest unspoken, but it hung in the air like bleach.
Celeste felt the words land first in her ears, then the base of her skull, then deep in the stomach where she stored all her old humiliations. “Who’s saying it?”
Maya’s hands twisted the notebook spiral. “I heard it from the guy in logistics, but he said it was from Richard’s floor. He’s got people everywhere.”
The machine beeped; Celeste focused on the data, forcing her voice to stay even. “We’ll finish these runs, then send the raw results to Natalie. They’ll have the internal numbers before the Belgians even wake up.”
They worked in silence, the only conversation the click and hiss of the test rigs. Celeste’s hands remembered the old rituals, but her mind spun in a shrinking gyre: How many people already believed the sabotage? How long before Thad did?
At 11:47, the final chromatograph finished. The readings were as pure as a newborn. She triple-checked the curves, took screenshots, and printed the results. No phthalates, no plasticizers, nothing but the scent of clean victory and the lingering funk of institutional betrayal.
She sat at her desk, wrote a three-paragraph summary, attached the raw data, and emailed it to Natalie, copying Thad and Maya.
Maya read over her shoulder. “You want me to run the overnight control?”
Celeste smiled, barely. “Get some sleep. I’ll handle it.”
Maya nodded but lingered at the door. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I’d follow you anywhere.”
Celeste wanted to say thank you, but the words felt too fragile.
When Maya left, the silence returned, colder than it had been before. Celeste tried calling Thad twice but got only his voicemail. She looked up and saw, through the glass, the silhouettes of two employees pretending to check the freezer inventory while stealing glances at her. She didn’t wave. She didn’t even blink.
She spent the next hour logging every step, cross-referencing every batch number, and photographing every result. If they wanted proof, she’d give them the kind that didn’t need an explanation.
As she packed her laptop, she spotted a slip of paper under the glass door. She bent to pick it up, heart pounding for no reason.
It read: “Richard was seen entering the testing lab last night. Thought you should know.”
No signature, a black Sharpie, and a chill that settled between her shoulder blades.
She reread it and again until the words lost meaning.
Then she looked out into the hall, saw no one, and locked the door behind her.
***
Thad had never managed to clean out his mother’s office. Every time he tried, the room staged a coup, photos cascading off the shelves, folders spilling like broken promises, the smell of her old brand of cigarettes hiding in the upholstery, no matter how many times he opened the windows. It felt like stepping into a crime scene where the only victim was himself.
Tonight, he didn’t even pretend to organize. He dropped onto the battered leather couch, let his head fall back, and stared at the ceiling. Directly above him hung a mobile of glass molecules, each strand labeled in Jocelyn’s handwriting. They clinked together when the heat kicked on, a wind chime of legacy and expectation.
On the desk, two stacks of paper glared at each other like rival mafias: one, Celeste’s lab results, crisp and definitive, every page signed and time-stamped; the other, Richard’s dossier, bulging with printouts of headhunter emails, LinkedIn messages, even a transcript of a phone call to a recruiter in Paris. All were neatly tabbed, all designed to look damning, even if most of it was circumstantial.
He picked up the top sheet of the dossier. The headline, highlighted in sickly yellow, read: “Exclusive Offer: Bellamy, Celeste: 7 Figures and Complete Autonomy.” The body of the email was the standard headhunter fluff, discretion, transformation, and thought leadership, but in the margin, Richard had written: “She’s playing you, T. Open your eyes.”
Thad closed the folder and then reopened it. Read the email and then Celeste’s clean data. He repeated the process, trying to find the contradiction that would simplify everything.
He didn’t.
On the edge of the desk was a framed photo, shoved there by some past fit of nostalgia. It was him and Celeste at a jazz club, maybe six weeks back, both of them sweaty and happy, half-drunk, and leaning into each other like the world was about to tip them out of the frame. He touched the glass, not sure if the ache in his chest was longing or suspicion.
His phone buzzed. Four missed calls, all from Celeste. He started to dial back, then stopped. Instead, he put the phone face down, afraid that if he heard her voice, it would break something inside him.
He sat there, torn between evidence and memory, until the silence thickened, and his own doubts began to talk.
What if she had lied?
What if she had planned it all along, used him as a stepping stone to somewhere brighter, somewhere less haunted?
He tried to dismiss the thought, but Richard’s words crawled up from the depths. “People under pressure do strange things. Even people you trust.”
He stood, restless, and paced the length of the office. At the far end was the old safe, the one Jocelyn kept for “real secrets.” He opened it, not expecting anything, needing to do something, and found, on top of the old company ledgers, a USB stick labeled: “Security- Lab 4- LAST 72.”
Thad stared at it, his heart racing.
He crossed to his laptop, plugged in the stick, and let the folder populate. Hours of security footage, each clip tagged with time and date, all from the corridor outside Celeste’s lab.
He played the first video, then the second, scrubbing through at double speed. It was mostly empty halls, the occasional night staff, a blur of Maya’s ponytail, and Celeste herself arriving at odd hours.
At 2:14 a.m., a figure in a three-piece suit appeared, swiping a card at the lab door.
Richard.
Thad felt the cold settle in, pooling in his gut.
He watched as Richard entered the lab, stayed exactly seven minutes, and then left, glancing once at the camera with the kind of half-smirk that made Thad want to punch a hole in the wall.
He checked the timestamp against the first flagged sample in Richard’s report. They lined up perfectly.
He sat back, stunned, and for a second, the old office seemed to breathe with him.
His phone buzzed again, this time a text from Celeste:
“Call me. I think we’re being set up.”
Thad looked at the screen, then at the open file on his laptop, then at the photo on the desk.
He dialed her number, pulse thundering, ready at last to hear her voice.
As it rang, he whispered to the empty room, “Let’s see who wants this more.”
And in the molecule-lit darkness, Jocelyn’s glass mobile swayed, silent but approving.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The transfer taxi glides through the predawn slurry of Jersey's industrial parks, past warehouses and prefabricated office complexes, their windows already gleaming with light pollution and a reflected sodium haze. On the edge of the chemical district, the plant squats like a battleship, low, armored, surrounded by a moat of parking lot and a perimeter fence topped with the kind of razor wire that assumes its own inevitability.
