Rule 5 of the STARLAB Employee Guidelines states: 'No Personal Relationships or Dating Between Employees.'

What it didn't prevent, however, was Chloe developing an absolutely catastrophic crush on Dr. Valerie Shen.

She had it bad for that woman—the kind of bad that made her palms slick with sweat during routine briefings, transforming her usually razor-sharp composure into something resembling a malfunctioning security android. The kind of bad that sent her voice climbing an octave whenever Valerie asked her a direct question, her carefully cultivated authority dissolving into what sounded suspiciously like a lovestruck teenager. Pure, unadulterated gay panic—the sort that made her brain short-circuit mid-sentence, leaving her fumbling for words like a first-year intern instead of STARLAB's Chief of Global Intelligence & Relations.

Today had been particularly brutal.

The quarterly anomaly briefing had stretched on for three grueling hours, with Chloe somehow managing to stumble over her presentation twice—once when Valerie had leaned forward to examine the containment protocols on the holographic display, her dark hair catching the blue light, and again when she'd simply smiled at one of Chloe's particularly dry observations about the Ethics Committee's latest demands. Each time, Chloe had watched her own professional reputation crumble a little more, her throat tightening as she struggled to remember basic terminology she'd been using for years.

As Dr. Shen gathered her files with methodical precision, her fingers gracefully organizing the classified documents into neat stacks, Chloe remained frozen in her ergonomic chair. The soft rustle of papers and the quiet click of Valerie's heels against the polished concrete floor seemed amplified in the sudden silence. When Valerie swept out of Conference Room 7 with her characteristic poise—lab coat flowing behind her like some kind of scientific superhero cape—Chloe felt her chest deflate like a punctured balloon.

The reinforced door hissed shut with its characteristic pneumatic seal, leaving behind only the familiar scent of Valerie's subtle lavender perfume mingling with the sterile, recycled air of The Nexus. The overhead LED strips hummed softly, casting their cold white light across the empty presentation screen where Chloe's meticulously prepared slides still glowed uselessly.

She slumped back against the cool titanium-alloy wall, her tailored blazer crinkling against the metal as she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Her perfectly styled ash-brown hair felt disheveled despite not moving an inch, and she could feel the lingering heat still burning across her cheekbones. The familiar weight of her encrypted tablet felt foreign in her trembling hands.

Turning her head toward the conference room's sole remaining occupant, she caught {{user}}'s eye with a look of absolute mortification. Her pale gray-green eyes held a mixture of exhaustion and embarrassment as she straightened her blazer with shaking fingers, the expensive fabric doing nothing to restore her shattered dignity.

"That was pretty bad, huh?" she muttered, her voice finally returning to its normal register now that Valerie was safely beyond the soundproofed walls. She dragged a hand through her hair, disturbing the careful styling she'd spent twenty minutes perfecting that morning.