The Sabotage Protocol
The betrayal settled into Mira’s bones like a slow-acting poison.
She sat at her desk, staring at her phone, replaying the moment on the trail. Leo’s phone buzzing. His guilty flinch. The way he’d tucked the device back into his pocket like a smuggler hiding contraband. She’d seen the screen. Just a glimpse. But it was enough.
*Algorithm Test Suite – User Data Profile: MK-0729.*
Her initials. Her user data. He was running his algorithm on her.
The hike had ended in awkward silence. Leo had tried to make conversation about the weather, the mud on their shoes, the terrible sandwich he’d bought from the trailhead kiosk. Mira had given one-word answers and stared at the rain-soaked path ahead. By the time they reached the parking lot, the fake-romantic tension had curdled into something cold and professional.
“I’ll drive,” she’d said, and he hadn’t argued.
Now it was Tuesday morning, and the office hummed with the usual startup chaos. Someone was microwaving fish in the communal kitchen. A designer was crying in the phone booth. The kombucha tap hissed like a dying animal. Mira ignored all of it. She was building a new spreadsheet.
*Operation: Counter-Sabotage.*
She typed the header in bold red font, then stared at it. The cursor blinked, waiting. She blinked back.
This was war.
Leo thought he could use her as a test subject. Fine. She’d let him think he was winning. She’d smile at the next fake date, laugh at his stupid jokes, let him believe she was softening. And while he was busy patting himself on the back, she’d be dismantling his code from the inside.
The plan was simple. She had access to the shared development environment. She could see his commits, his branches, his pull requests. He was working on a new matching heuristic—something he called the “Spark Factor.” It was flashy, gamified, and completely unscientific. It prioritized user engagement over compatibility. It was exactly the kind of feature that would impress investors and ruin people’s love lives.
Mira cracked her knuckles. She’d been told that was bad for her joints. She didn’t care.
She opened his latest commit. The code was clean. She hated that. She’d wanted it to be sloppy, full of rookie mistakes she could mock. But Leo was good. Not as good as her, but good. The Spark Factor used a weighted scoring system based on message frequency, response time, and emoji usage. It was shallow. It was effective. It was exactly what HeartSync’s users didn’t need.
She highlighted a block of code and hovered her mouse over the delete key.
“Working hard?”
She slammed her laptop shut. Leo stood behind her, holding two cups of coffee. He was wearing a navy blue sweater that made his shoulders look broad and his jaw look sharp. Mira hated him for that, too.
“Don’t sneak up on people,” she said.
“I walked across the entire office. You were in a trance.” He set one of the cups on her desk. “Latte. Oat milk. One pump vanilla. You’re welcome.”
She didn’t touch it. “What do you want?”
“To apologize.” He sat in the chair beside her desk, leaning back with practiced ease. “About yesterday. The hike. The phone thing. I should have told you what I was working on.”
“You should have.”
“I’m telling you now.” He spread his hands, palms up. “I’ve been testing a new algorithm. It’s not finished. I didn’t want to show you until it was ready.”
“You used my data without my consent.”
“It’s anonymized.”
“It has my initials.”
Leo’s smile flickered. “Okay. That’s fair. That was a dick move. I’m sorry.”
Mira studied his face. His eyes were earnest. His posture was open. He looked like a man who genuinely regretted his choices. She’d seen that look before. It was the same look her father had worn when he’d promised to come to her middle school science fair and then showed up three hours late, holding a bouquet of apology flowers.
“I accept your apology,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really.” She picked up the latte and took a sip. It was perfect. She hated that, too. “But if you ever run tests on my data again, I will delete your entire repository and blame it on a server error.”
Leo laughed. “That’s fair.”
He stood, brushing invisible dust off his sweater. “We have another date tonight. PR team booked us at a cooking class. Italian cuisine. They want photos of us making pasta together.”
“I know. I read the email.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.” He paused at the door. “Mira?”
“What?”
“I really am sorry. About the data thing. I should have asked.”
She waited until he was gone, then opened her laptop. The cursor was still blinking on her spreadsheet. She typed a new line.
*Phase One: Infiltration.*
She’d accept his apology. She’d go to the cooking class. She’d let him think everything was fine. And while he was busy rolling gnocchi and smiling for the cameras, she’d be planting a subtle bug in his Spark Factor code. Nothing destructive. Just a small adjustment that would make his results slightly less accurate. A rounding error here. A weighting tweak there. By the time he noticed, she’d have her own algorithm ready to present to the board.
It was perfect.
---
The cooking class was held at a restaurant called “Bella Vita,” which Mira suspected was Italian for “overpriced Instagram bait.” The PR team had arranged for a photographer to capture “candid moments” of the happy couple learning to make pasta from scratch. Mira wore an apron over her blouse. Leo wore an apron over his sweater. They both looked ridiculous.
“You’re holding the rolling pin wrong,” Leo said.
“There’s no wrong way to hold a rolling pin.”
“You’re using it like a hammer.”
“I’m applying even pressure.”
“You’re going to crack the counter.”
The instructor, a cheerful woman named Rosa, intervened before Mira could demonstrate the correct way to use a rolling pin on a human skull. “Bella, bella, you must be gentle. The dough is like a lover. You must coax it, not fight it.”
Mira stared at the dough. The dough stared back. It was lumpy and uncooperative. She hated it.
Leo, of course, was a natural. His hands moved with practiced ease, rolling the dough into a perfect, even sheet. He looked like he’d been making pasta his entire life. Mira wanted to throw flour in his face.
“You’re doing great,” he said, not looking at her.
“I’m not.”
“You’re learning. That’s the same thing.”
“It’s not.”
He finally looked up. His eyes were warm. “Mira. It’s a cooking class. The worst that happens is we eat bad pasta. That’s not a tragedy.”
She wanted to argue. She wanted to point out that bad pasta was, in fact, a tragedy, especially when you were paying eighty dollars per person for the privilege of making it yourself. But the photographer was circling, her camera clicking, and Mira remembered the plan. Smile. Be charming. Let him think you’re softening.
She forced her shoulders to relax. “You’re right. I’m being dramatic.”
“You’re being a perfectionist. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Drama is for attention. Perfectionism is for control.” He dusted his hands on his apron. “You’re not trying to impress anyone. You’re trying to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
Mira blinked. That was uncomfortably accurate.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s your excuse?”
“I like cooking. It’s meditative.” He picked up a knife and began slicing the pasta sheet into thin strips. “My dad never cooked. He had a chef. I learned from YouTube.”
“Your dad had a chef?”
“He was a CEO. He had a lot of things.” Leo’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. “He didn’t have time for cooking. Or for me.”
The photographer snapped a photo. Mira forced a smile. Inside, she was recalculating.
She’d assumed Leo was just another tech bro with a trust fund and a superiority complex. But there was something else there. Something wounded. She recognized it because she saw it in the mirror every morning.
“My parents had a data-driven marriage,” she said. “They met through a compatibility algorithm. They had two children, exactly 2.5 years apart. They divorced when the algorithm said their satisfaction scores were below the threshold.”
Leo stopped slicing. “That’s terrible.”
“It’s efficient.”
“It’s terrible.”
“It’s both.”
They stood in silence for a moment, surrounded by the clatter of other couples laughing and learning. The photographer had moved on to capture a couple who were feeding each other pieces of raw dough. Mira felt a strange pang of something she didn’t want to name.
“I’m still going to beat you,” she said.
Leo grinned. “I know.”
“I’m going to win the algorithm competition. I’m going to present a better system. And you’re going to admit I was right.”
“You’re not going to win.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’re adorable when you’re competitive.”
Mira threw flour at his face.
He sputtered, blinking white powder out of his eyes. The photographer spun around, camera raised. Click. Click. Click. Leo laughed, a real laugh, and grabbed a handful of flour from the counter. Mira saw it coming but couldn’t move fast enough. The flour hit her square in the chest, puffing up in a cloud that made her cough.
“You’re dead,” she said.
“You started it.”
“I’m going to win.”
“You’re going to lose.”
She grabbed another handful. He grabbed another. The photographer was in heaven. Rosa the instructor was yelling something in Italian that Mira was pretty sure was a curse. They were both covered in flour, both laughing, both pretending this was just another fake date.
But Mira felt it. The shift. The way her heart was beating faster than the situation warranted. The way she didn’t hate the flour on her clothes or the mess on the counter. The way she didn’t hate Leo.
She needed to hate him. That was the plan. Hate made it easy. Hate made it clean.
But Leo was looking at her with flour in his hair and a smile on his face, and hate was becoming harder to hold onto.
She wiped her hands on her apron. “I need to use the restroom.”
She walked away before he could respond. In the bathroom, she stared at her reflection. Flour dusted her hair, her eyelashes, the collar of her blouse. She looked like a ghost. She looked like someone who was losing control.
She pulled out her phone and opened the development environment. Her fingers moved automatically, navigating to Leo’s Spark Factor code. She found the weighting function. She adjusted a single coefficient by 0.3 percent. It was small. It was undetectable. It would skew his results just enough to give her an edge.
She committed the change. She closed the app.
When she returned to the kitchen, Leo was cleaning up their station. He’d made a full tray of pasta while she was gone. It looked perfect.
“I saved you some dough,” he said. “If you want to try again.”
“I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She sat down and watched him finish. The photographer took more photos. Rosa complimented his technique. Mira smiled and nodded and pretended everything was fine.
But she could feel the code change sitting in the repository like a time bomb. She could feel the weight of what she’d done.
She’d sabotaged him.
And she didn’t feel guilty at all.
That was the scariest part.
She sat at her desk, staring at her phone, replaying the moment on the trail. Leo’s phone buzzing. His guilty flinch. The way he’d tucked the device back into his pocket like a smuggler hiding contraband. She’d seen the screen. Just a glimpse. But it was enough.
*Algorithm Test Suite – User Data Profile: MK-0729.*
Her initials. Her user data. He was running his algorithm on her.
The hike had ended in awkward silence. Leo had tried to make conversation about the weather, the mud on their shoes, the terrible sandwich he’d bought from the trailhead kiosk. Mira had given one-word answers and stared at the rain-soaked path ahead. By the time they reached the parking lot, the fake-romantic tension had curdled into something cold and professional.
“I’ll drive,” she’d said, and he hadn’t argued.
Now it was Tuesday morning, and the office hummed with the usual startup chaos. Someone was microwaving fish in the communal kitchen. A designer was crying in the phone booth. The kombucha tap hissed like a dying animal. Mira ignored all of it. She was building a new spreadsheet.
*Operation: Counter-Sabotage.*
She typed the header in bold red font, then stared at it. The cursor blinked, waiting. She blinked back.
This was war.
Leo thought he could use her as a test subject. Fine. She’d let him think he was winning. She’d smile at the next fake date, laugh at his stupid jokes, let him believe she was softening. And while he was busy patting himself on the back, she’d be dismantling his code from the inside.
The plan was simple. She had access to the shared development environment. She could see his commits, his branches, his pull requests. He was working on a new matching heuristic—something he called the “Spark Factor.” It was flashy, gamified, and completely unscientific. It prioritized user engagement over compatibility. It was exactly the kind of feature that would impress investors and ruin people’s love lives.
Mira cracked her knuckles. She’d been told that was bad for her joints. She didn’t care.
She opened his latest commit. The code was clean. She hated that. She’d wanted it to be sloppy, full of rookie mistakes she could mock. But Leo was good. Not as good as her, but good. The Spark Factor used a weighted scoring system based on message frequency, response time, and emoji usage. It was shallow. It was effective. It was exactly what HeartSync’s users didn’t need.
She highlighted a block of code and hovered her mouse over the delete key.
“Working hard?”
She slammed her laptop shut. Leo stood behind her, holding two cups of coffee. He was wearing a navy blue sweater that made his shoulders look broad and his jaw look sharp. Mira hated him for that, too.
“Don’t sneak up on people,” she said.
“I walked across the entire office. You were in a trance.” He set one of the cups on her desk. “Latte. Oat milk. One pump vanilla. You’re welcome.”
She didn’t touch it. “What do you want?”
“To apologize.” He sat in the chair beside her desk, leaning back with practiced ease. “About yesterday. The hike. The phone thing. I should have told you what I was working on.”
“You should have.”
“I’m telling you now.” He spread his hands, palms up. “I’ve been testing a new algorithm. It’s not finished. I didn’t want to show you until it was ready.”
“You used my data without my consent.”
“It’s anonymized.”
“It has my initials.”
Leo’s smile flickered. “Okay. That’s fair. That was a dick move. I’m sorry.”
Mira studied his face. His eyes were earnest. His posture was open. He looked like a man who genuinely regretted his choices. She’d seen that look before. It was the same look her father had worn when he’d promised to come to her middle school science fair and then showed up three hours late, holding a bouquet of apology flowers.
“I accept your apology,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really.” She picked up the latte and took a sip. It was perfect. She hated that, too. “But if you ever run tests on my data again, I will delete your entire repository and blame it on a server error.”
Leo laughed. “That’s fair.”
He stood, brushing invisible dust off his sweater. “We have another date tonight. PR team booked us at a cooking class. Italian cuisine. They want photos of us making pasta together.”
“I know. I read the email.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.” He paused at the door. “Mira?”
“What?”
“I really am sorry. About the data thing. I should have asked.”
She waited until he was gone, then opened her laptop. The cursor was still blinking on her spreadsheet. She typed a new line.
*Phase One: Infiltration.*
She’d accept his apology. She’d go to the cooking class. She’d let him think everything was fine. And while he was busy rolling gnocchi and smiling for the cameras, she’d be planting a subtle bug in his Spark Factor code. Nothing destructive. Just a small adjustment that would make his results slightly less accurate. A rounding error here. A weighting tweak there. By the time he noticed, she’d have her own algorithm ready to present to the board.
It was perfect.
---
The cooking class was held at a restaurant called “Bella Vita,” which Mira suspected was Italian for “overpriced Instagram bait.” The PR team had arranged for a photographer to capture “candid moments” of the happy couple learning to make pasta from scratch. Mira wore an apron over her blouse. Leo wore an apron over his sweater. They both looked ridiculous.
“You’re holding the rolling pin wrong,” Leo said.
“There’s no wrong way to hold a rolling pin.”
“You’re using it like a hammer.”
“I’m applying even pressure.”
“You’re going to crack the counter.”
The instructor, a cheerful woman named Rosa, intervened before Mira could demonstrate the correct way to use a rolling pin on a human skull. “Bella, bella, you must be gentle. The dough is like a lover. You must coax it, not fight it.”
Mira stared at the dough. The dough stared back. It was lumpy and uncooperative. She hated it.
Leo, of course, was a natural. His hands moved with practiced ease, rolling the dough into a perfect, even sheet. He looked like he’d been making pasta his entire life. Mira wanted to throw flour in his face.
“You’re doing great,” he said, not looking at her.
“I’m not.”
“You’re learning. That’s the same thing.”
“It’s not.”
He finally looked up. His eyes were warm. “Mira. It’s a cooking class. The worst that happens is we eat bad pasta. That’s not a tragedy.”
She wanted to argue. She wanted to point out that bad pasta was, in fact, a tragedy, especially when you were paying eighty dollars per person for the privilege of making it yourself. But the photographer was circling, her camera clicking, and Mira remembered the plan. Smile. Be charming. Let him think you’re softening.
She forced her shoulders to relax. “You’re right. I’m being dramatic.”
“You’re being a perfectionist. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Drama is for attention. Perfectionism is for control.” He dusted his hands on his apron. “You’re not trying to impress anyone. You’re trying to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
Mira blinked. That was uncomfortably accurate.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s your excuse?”
“I like cooking. It’s meditative.” He picked up a knife and began slicing the pasta sheet into thin strips. “My dad never cooked. He had a chef. I learned from YouTube.”
“Your dad had a chef?”
“He was a CEO. He had a lot of things.” Leo’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. “He didn’t have time for cooking. Or for me.”
The photographer snapped a photo. Mira forced a smile. Inside, she was recalculating.
She’d assumed Leo was just another tech bro with a trust fund and a superiority complex. But there was something else there. Something wounded. She recognized it because she saw it in the mirror every morning.
“My parents had a data-driven marriage,” she said. “They met through a compatibility algorithm. They had two children, exactly 2.5 years apart. They divorced when the algorithm said their satisfaction scores were below the threshold.”
Leo stopped slicing. “That’s terrible.”
“It’s efficient.”
“It’s terrible.”
“It’s both.”
They stood in silence for a moment, surrounded by the clatter of other couples laughing and learning. The photographer had moved on to capture a couple who were feeding each other pieces of raw dough. Mira felt a strange pang of something she didn’t want to name.
“I’m still going to beat you,” she said.
Leo grinned. “I know.”
“I’m going to win the algorithm competition. I’m going to present a better system. And you’re going to admit I was right.”
“You’re not going to win.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’re adorable when you’re competitive.”
Mira threw flour at his face.
He sputtered, blinking white powder out of his eyes. The photographer spun around, camera raised. Click. Click. Click. Leo laughed, a real laugh, and grabbed a handful of flour from the counter. Mira saw it coming but couldn’t move fast enough. The flour hit her square in the chest, puffing up in a cloud that made her cough.
“You’re dead,” she said.
“You started it.”
“I’m going to win.”
“You’re going to lose.”
She grabbed another handful. He grabbed another. The photographer was in heaven. Rosa the instructor was yelling something in Italian that Mira was pretty sure was a curse. They were both covered in flour, both laughing, both pretending this was just another fake date.
But Mira felt it. The shift. The way her heart was beating faster than the situation warranted. The way she didn’t hate the flour on her clothes or the mess on the counter. The way she didn’t hate Leo.
She needed to hate him. That was the plan. Hate made it easy. Hate made it clean.
But Leo was looking at her with flour in his hair and a smile on his face, and hate was becoming harder to hold onto.
She wiped her hands on her apron. “I need to use the restroom.”
She walked away before he could respond. In the bathroom, she stared at her reflection. Flour dusted her hair, her eyelashes, the collar of her blouse. She looked like a ghost. She looked like someone who was losing control.
She pulled out her phone and opened the development environment. Her fingers moved automatically, navigating to Leo’s Spark Factor code. She found the weighting function. She adjusted a single coefficient by 0.3 percent. It was small. It was undetectable. It would skew his results just enough to give her an edge.
She committed the change. She closed the app.
When she returned to the kitchen, Leo was cleaning up their station. He’d made a full tray of pasta while she was gone. It looked perfect.
“I saved you some dough,” he said. “If you want to try again.”
“I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She sat down and watched him finish. The photographer took more photos. Rosa complimented his technique. Mira smiled and nodded and pretended everything was fine.
But she could feel the code change sitting in the repository like a time bomb. She could feel the weight of what she’d done.
She’d sabotaged him.
And she didn’t feel guilty at all.
That was the scariest part.