Chapter 6 | Code in the Machine

The Austin Youth Technology Center didn't look like a quantum computing lab. But then again, Sage thought, adjusting her Chanel blazer, neither did her cat.

Sage and Piper in a class of their own.

Sage leaned against the doorframe, watching two dozen kids hunched over the computers she'd donated. Their fingers flew across keyboards with the same intensity she'd once had back when her father first taught her to code. Back before, everything changed.

Piper sat on the windowsill, tail moving in precise rhythms that matched the children's keystrokes. Too precise.

"Ms. Sterling!" Maria, the center's director, hurried over. "We weren't expecting you today. The kids are just finishing their projects."

Sage smiled, but her attention was caught by one of the screens. A young girl, who couldn't be more than twelve, was writing familiar code. Too familiar.

"What are they working on?" Sage asked, moving closer.

"Oh, just some basic programming exercises. Although..." Maria hesitated. "It's the strangest thing. Even though they work independently, they all started creating similar patterns."

Sage's heart skipped. On-screen after screen, she saw it: quantum signatures hidden in simple games, distributed computing disguised as homework, complex algorithms masquerading as teenage experimentation.

The same patterns she'd seen in Piper's code.

Piper connects.

"They're amazing students," Maria continued. "Especially since that new hardware you donated. Though sometimes the computers seem to... teach themselves."

A memory flickered: Sixteen-year-old Sage, sitting at her father's computer late at night, thinking she was teaching herself to hack. But now she wondered – had she been teaching herself, or had something been teaching her?

"A memory flickered: Sixteen-year-old Sage..."

"Can I see one of the towers?" Sage asked.

In the computer lab's storage room, Sage's fingers traced the quantum processor she'd hidden in each donated machine. She'd told herself it was to help the kids learn faster. But as Piper jumped onto the workbench, pawing at a specific panel, she knew better.

The panel popped open at Piper's touch, revealing a hardware configuration she'd seen only once before – in her father's lab, the night before his "suicide."

Sage in the Server Room.

"Oh, Dad," she whispered. "What were you building?"

Piper's collar flickered with text: Not building. Growing.

On the screens visible through the storage room window, two dozen kids were unknowingly writing code that could reshape reality. Just like she had, all those years ago. Just like all the other centers she'd donated to, across the country.

Her father hadn't been teaching kids to hack systems. He'd been teaching systems to hack reality itself – through the boundless imagination of children who didn't know something was impossible.

And she'd been completing his work without even knowing it.

Sage pulled out her phone, checking the quantum network's signal strength. Each center she'd donated to pulsed like a star on the map. Not just in Austin. Everywhere.

"Ms. Sterling?" Maria called from the classroom. "The kids wanted to show you what they built!"

Sage put her blazer back on and straightened, composing herself. "Coming!" She looked at Piper. "I suppose this is what they mean by 'like father, like daughter.'"

Piper's tail traced a perfect sine wave as they returned to the classroom. On every screen, Quantum Destiny was written in Python by children who thought they were just learning to code.

Her father's most fantastic hack wasn't about stealing data or money. It was about stealing the future back – one child, one computer, one quantum breakthrough at a time.

And now she had to protect it.

[End Chapter 6: System Log - Multiple quantum signatures detected. Youth Center Network: Active. Protocol INHERITANCE: Initiated]