Dr. Marcus Chen had three rules about corporate meetings: bring coffee, expect lies, and always have an exit strategy.
Today, sitting in Nexus Defense Corporation's chrome-and-glass monument to military-industrial excess, he was rapidly discovering that two out of three wasn't nearly enough.
"Dr. Chen," CEO Jonathan Blackwood was saying, his smile carrying all the warmth of a tax audit, "your molecular restructuring breakthrough is exactly what our defense partners need."
Marcus shifted in his chair—a nervous habit his graduate students knew meant trouble was coming.
The leather portfolio in front of him contained five years of research that could revolutionize everything from space travel to medical implants.
It also contained the mathematical proof that he'd accidentally figured out how to build weapons that could erase cities from existence.
Minor oversight, really.
"Materials that can withstand nuclear pressures while remaining lighter than conventional alloys?" Blackwood continued. "The applications are limitless!"
Marcus adopted the patient tone he used when explaining why you couldn't just microwave uranium to make it go faster.
"Mr. Blackwood, when I published my research on manipulating atomic bonds, the intended applications were civilian. Infrastructure, spacecraft hulls, prosthetics—"
"Of course! But surely you see the defense potential?"
Blackwood waved dismissively, like he was brushing away inconvenient ethics.
"Armor that could protect our soldiers, weapons systems that could end conflicts quickly and save lives in the long run?"
"Weapons systems."
Marcus pronounced each syllable like they were radioactive. Which, knowing this company, they probably would be.
"Think of it as applied physics for humanitarian purposes."
Marcus had heard variations of this speech from every defense contractor who'd courted him over the past year. But Nexus had offered something the others hadn't: unlimited funding, cutting-edge facilities, and complete research autonomy.
All he had to do was let them handle the "practical implementations."
He'd been naive enough to believe them.
PhD in materials science, apparently zero credits in corporate sociopathy.
"Mr. Blackwood," Marcus said, slipping into his lecture voice—the one that had made freshmen question their major choices, "the process I developed doesn't just create super-strong materials."
He stood up fast enough to send his chair rolling backward.
"It manipulates matter at the quantum level, creating structures that exist in states that, frankly, shouldn't be possible under normal physics."
"Which makes them perfect for—"
"Which makes them cosmically dangerous!"
Marcus was pacing now, gesturing at equations that existed only in his head—a habit that had terrified his teaching assistants and was currently making Blackwood's security detail very nervous.
"Have you actually read my research? Do you understand what happens when these molecular bonds destabilize?"
Blackwood's smile never flickered, but something cold slithered behind his eyes.
"Dr. Chen, I think you're being overly dramatic. Our military consultants assure us that with proper safety protocols—"
"Your military consultants wouldn't recognize a quantum cascade failure if it collapsed their entire facility into a two-dimensional plane!"
Marcus stopped pacing and fixed Blackwood with the stare he'd perfected during budget committee meetings.
"Listen to me—this isn't advanced metallurgy. When you destabilize matter at these energy levels, you're essentially creating controlled reality failures held together by math and prayer!"
"Dr. Chen—"
"And if someone figures out how to weaponize the breakdown sequence…"
Marcus's voice dropped to barely above a whisper, but somehow filled the entire boardroom.
"You wouldn't just be building better bombs. You'd be building devices that could edit people out of existence. Not kill them—delete them. Like they were never born."
The silence that followed was the kind that usually preceded either standing ovations or security escorts.
Blackwood leaned back, his corporate enthusiasm morphing into something considerably more predatory.
"Dr. Chen, I believe you may be overestimating the… exotic properties of your discovery."
"Am I? Because my calculations suggest that a device roughly the size of a briefcase could remove every living thing in a hundred-square-mile radius from this timeline."
Marcus paused, watching Blackwood's face carefully.
"Not just kill them—erase them so completely that the universe would retroactively forget they existed. Their families wouldn't mourn them. Their friends wouldn't miss them. Perfect genocide with no evidence it ever happened."
Another pause. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"Tell me, Mr. Blackwood—is that the kind of humanitarian aid your clients had in mind?"
Blackwood was quiet for a long moment, studying Marcus with the calculating expression of someone who'd built an empire by knowing exactly which moral boundaries his employees would cross for the right price.
"Dr. Chen," he said finally, "you signed a comprehensive non-disclosure agreement when you accepted our research grant. I trust you understand the legal ramifications of discussing your concerns with… outside parties?"
There it was. The threat wrapped in corporate speak and tied with a lawsuit bow.
"Are you threatening me, Mr. Blackwood?"
"I'm reminding you of your contractual obligations. Your research is now Nexus property. Any attempt to publicize it, or to interfere with our development timeline, would constitute corporate espionage."
Blackwood's smile returned, but now it looked like something that belonged in a shark tank.
"I'd hate to see such a promising scientist face federal charges over a misunderstanding."
Marcus stared at him for a moment, then began collecting his papers with methodical precision.
Someone who'd just realized he was in a room full of people who viewed human extinction as acceptable collateral damage.
"Mr. Blackwood," he said quietly, "you've just made a critical error."
"Have I?"
"You assumed I value my career more than I value the continued existence of human civilization."
Marcus clicked his briefcase shut and headed for the door.
"You're about to discover exactly how wrong you are."
He was almost out when Blackwood's voice stopped him cold.
"Dr. Chen. I sincerely hope you'll reconsider your position. It would be… tragic if something happened to such a brilliant researcher."
Marcus didn't turn around. "Is that another threat, Mr. Blackwood?"
"It's a professional observation. The defense industry can be quite hazardous for individuals who don't understand how to work cooperatively within established systems."
Marcus smiled grimly at the door handle.
"Mr. Blackwood, I spent my graduate years working with materials that exist in seventeen dimensions simultaneously and could collapse into black holes if I calculated wrong. Your corporate intimidation tactics are significantly less terrifying than my average Tuesday lab session."
He opened the door, then paused.
"Oh, and Mr. Blackwood? You might want to monitor the news cycle tomorrow. I have a rather illuminating press conference scheduled with some very interested journalists."
Marcus never made it to that press conference.
The delivery truck ran the red light at exactly 11:47 PM. T-boning Marcus's aging Honda Civic in a textbook intersection collision as he drove home from his lawyer's office.
The impact sent both vehicles spinning into oncoming traffic, where a conveniently positioned fuel transport ensured that any evidence of mechanical sabotage would be thoroughly incinerated.
The truck driver would later claim his brakes had mysteriously failed.
The fuel transport operator would report swerving to avoid a stray cat.
The intersection's traffic monitoring system would experience a localized malfunction for exactly thirteen minutes surrounding the accident.
Marcus's last coherent thought, as he felt his consciousness fragment across dimensions that shouldn't exist, was that he really should have anticipated this outcome.
After all, he'd spent years studying how unstable systems behave under external pressure.
Apparently, corporate executives were no exception to the principle.
Then everything dissolved into white noise and quantum static.
But death, as it turned out, was just another phase transition.
And Marcus had always been very good at surviving phase transitions.