Chapter 1

Seven outfits on the floor, hundreds more on the rack, and Manon Lacroix had spent thirty minutes picking one that looked effortlessly thrown on.

On the bed, the MacBook left open since last night gave a faint chime. The campus chatbot icon in the corner of the screen, ordinarily blue, blinked pink once. Manon was holding a black T-shirt up against her collarbone in front of the mirror.

Her lecture alarm went off for the sixth time. Ten o’clock.

She snatched a denim jacket off the back of a chair. The exact same jacket she had worn yesterday.

“Thirty minutes is quality control.”

She poured coffee from the machine into a paper cup from an overpriced café on Prince Street, a cup she had rinsed and reused since last week, and left it half full on the table by the window.

Her phone buzzed. A bank notification.

Incoming wire transfer of $8,000.00 from Sylvie Lacroix. Pour ma future ingénieure.

“Maman. Merci.”

The corner of her mouth lifted. Two text messages followed right below the transfer alert.

Do not forget our agreement, ma chérie. Robotics, all the way to graduation.

Otherwise, the transfers graduate right here too.

The corner of her mouth dropped back where it belonged.

She shoved her feet into her shoes standing up, without untying the laces. The toe box pinched her right pinky toe at once. She pulled the apartment door shut behind her with a slam.

Ten minutes later she sat in the back seat of the priciest tier of Uber, a track booming through her AirPods far too grand for a Monday morning.

This is my empire.

On her MacBook, the shopping tab was still open from last night. Black calfskin handbag, silver hardware, two thousand dollars. She clicked Add to Cart.

“That isn’t buying. That’s a wishlist. A wishlist is free.”

The top right corner of her screen lit up with a banner.

The Forge. Your robotic hand test unit failed morning diagnostics. Inspect prior to the 11.00 evaluation.

She did not click the alert. Her thumb moved to her phone instead, to Maman’s text.

Merci, Maman! Robotics is going super smoothly.

Sent, with two heart emojis. The Uber receipt popped up. Forty dollars for roughly a mile.

“Besides, there was surge pricing earlier. Should have been fifty. I practically saved ten dollars.”

Across the campus courtyard stretched a head-high white banner. Forge Fair. Manon walked past it without slowing her stride.

The Forge smelled of hot metal and melted filament. Her unit stood on the farthest back workbench, one hundred fifty centimeters of matte gray, its right hand already detached and mounted on the test rig.

She flipped the switch. The metal fingers clamped shut on empty air at maximum torque. The servo motor whined hot. She killed the power at once.

Three benches to her left, Sharma Verma’s unit lifted a steel cube, shifted it seven centimeters across the grid, and set it down without a sound. The cube landed on the exact same mark every single time.

At the bench directly in front of Manon, Ryan Miller turned around to grab a screwdriver and flashed her a quick smile. Manon’s return smile arrived two seconds too late, aimed at the back of his flannel shirt.

Sharma tracked Manon’s gaze to Miller’s back, then down to the robotic hand clamping empty air. One slow shake of her head.

“Robotic hand evaluation in fifteen minutes.”

Manon flipped her MacBook open and rested all ten fingers on the home row. Not a single letter appeared on screen.

In the bottom corner of the display, the campus chatbot icon blinked pink. Once. Twice. Three times.

Manon missed it completely. She was staring at the back of Miller’s head.