Moje przemówienie pożegnalne zostało przerwane: „Nie mamy na to czasu”. Zamknąłem laptopa… Wtedy inwestorzy zapytali o mnie.

“And they want to punish Dr. Rodus for refusing to let her work be stripped of its purpose.”

The judge’s gaze shifted to me.

“Dr. Rodus,” she said, “you may speak.”

My mouth was dry.

But my voice was steady.

“I did not leave Audiovance to compete,” I said. “I left because they were dismantling the very programs that proved our technology worked in the real world.”

Sloane stood.

“Objection. Narrative.”

The judge lifted a hand.

“Overruled,” she said. “Let her speak.”

I looked at the judge.

“My grandfather stopped coming to family dinners because hearing aids made everything louder but not clearer,” I said. “He sat in silence while conversations happened around him. That silence is not a market opportunity. It’s a human loss.”

The courtroom stayed quiet.

“In our clinics,” I continued, “we built technology with the people who needed it. We didn’t design it in isolation. We didn’t price it to exclude. We didn’t treat communities like pilot projects for marketing.”

I could feel Bennett’s eyes on me.

But I didn’t look back.

“I was terminated,” I said. “I was told we didn’t have time for my work. And less than four hours later, they asked me to come back because funding was threatened. That is not loyalty. That is desperation.”

Sloane objected again.

The judge let me continue.

Maya called our first witness.

Aisha Reynolds.

Aisha stood at the witness stand with her shoulders squared and her voice warm.

She spoke about community clinics.

She spoke about patients who had never been able to afford traditional hearing care.

She spoke about what it meant when a company built distribution into research.

Then Teresa called Mrs. Gonzalez.

Mrs. Gonzalez walked to the stand slowly, carefully, refusing help.

She looked at the judge and smiled.

“I was a violinist,” she said. “And then I became someone who watched other people play.”

She turned her head slightly, as if listening.

“Dr. Rodus gave me sound back,” she said. “Not loud sound. Real sound. The kind that lets you be in a room again.”

The judge’s expression didn’t soften.

But something in the air shifted.

Because Mrs. Gonzalez wasn’t a spreadsheet.

She was a person.

When Audiovance cross-examined her, Sloane tried to trap her in technical questions.

Mrs. Gonzalez simply blinked.

“I don’t know what you call the math,” she said. “I know what I can hear.”

The judge asked one question at the end.

“If I grant this restraining order,” she said, “what happens to the clinics?”

Aisha answered.

“They close,” she said. “People lose access.”

The judge looked at Sloane.

“And what is the harm to Audiovance if I deny it?” she asked.

Sloane’s jaw tightened.

“They lose their proprietary advantage,” he said.

The judge’s eyes narrowed.

“Over community care?” she asked.

Sloane didn’t answer fast enough.

The judge leaned back.

“I will rule,” she said. “For now, the restraining order is denied. The court will not be used to shut down community health services without compelling evidence of wrongdoing. We will proceed to discovery.”

My lungs expanded like I’d been holding my breath for weeks.

Maya’s hand brushed my arm.

“Not over,” she whispered. “But we can breathe.”

Outside the courthouse, cameras waited.

I hadn’t expected that.

Journalists asked questions.

Was I stealing Audiovance technology?

Was Audiovance sabotaging accessibility?

Did I plan to take down the company?

I wanted to say a hundred angry things.

Instead, I said one true thing.

“This isn’t about taking anything down,” I told them. “It’s about building something that can’t be taken away from the people who need it.”

That quote made headlines.

Some praised me.

Some mocked me.

Audiovance’s stock dipped again.

And then, two nights later, something happened in our lab that reminded me Elaine Thorsen had been right.

They would go farther.

It was almost midnight when Lena called me.

Her voice was tight.

“Vienn,” she said. “Get here.”

I drove to the warehouse with the city sleeping around me, the streets slick with leftover rain.

When I walked in, the lights were on in the lab.

Gustaf stood by the server rack with his hands on his hips.

Jace sat at a workstation, eyes narrowed at a monitor.

Lena looked like she hadn’t blinked in an hour.

“What happened?” I asked.

Gustaf stepped aside.

“Someone accessed the repository,” he said. “Not just accessed. Copied.”

I felt cold spread through my ribs.

“How?”

Jace tapped the monitor.

“Credential spoofing,” he said. “It looks like one of our internal accounts. But the access point is off-site.”

Maya, who must have arrived earlier, stood in the doorway.

“We’re treating it as a breach,” she said. “We’ve locked down systems. We’re documenting everything.”

My voice came out quieter than I intended.

“Do you think it’s Audiovance?” I asked.

Lena’s eyes flashed.

“I think it’s someone who knows us,” she said. “This wasn’t random.”

Gustaf swore softly in Swedish.

Jace leaned back.

“If they want discovery,” he said, “this is how they get it before the court makes them wait.”

Maya’s expression hardened.

“If Audiovance is behind this, it’s not just a civil case,” she said. “It becomes criminal.”

Teresa arrived the next morning, and when we showed her the logs, her face didn’t change.

She’d seen this kind of behavior before.

“They are panicking,” she said. “Panicked institutions do stupid things.”

I stared at the breach report.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Teresa’s eyes met mine.

“We keep building,” she said. “And we make them regret every attempt to stop you.”

Maya cleared her throat.

“And we upgrade security,” she added. “We treat this like what it is.”

A war.

I didn’t like that word.

It felt too violent for something that was supposed to be about sound.

But the truth was, they were fighting.

Not with weapons.

With paper.

With code.

With reputations.

With fear.

We brought in a cybersecurity consultant named Noah Reyes, a former federal contractor who spoke like he was always translating invisible danger into language normal people could understand.

He walked through our systems, asked a hundred questions, and then sat down at a folding table with his coffee.

“This isn’t just someone trying to steal files,” he said. “This is someone trying to make you look careless. They want you to look like you mishandled sensitive data so they can argue the court should shut you down.”

Maya nodded.

“Exactly,” she said.

Noah looked at me.

“Do you have enemies?” he asked.

I almost smiled.

“Yes,” I said.

He didn’t laugh.

“Then act like it,” he replied.

While we fortified our systems, we kept running clinics.

Because the communities didn’t care about our legal battles.

They cared about whether they could hear their grandchildren.

In Newark, we met a retired bus driver named Leon who had spent thirty years listening to engines roar and passengers shout.

He sat across from Aisha and told her he’d stopped answering his phone.

“It’s too embarrassing,” he said, voice low. “I keep saying ‘What?’ and people get tired.”

Aisha squeezed his hand.

“You’re not embarrassing,” she said. “The world is just loud in the wrong ways.”

In Westside, we met a young man named Malik who had auditory processing issues and had learned to hide it by smiling and nodding.

When he tested our device and realized he could follow speech in noise, he laughed so suddenly it startled him.

“I didn’t know it could be like this,” he said.

In Riverdale, Mrs. Gonzalez came back and brought Isabella.

Isabella was eleven now, violin case strapped to her back, eyes bright and suspicious of adults.

“She’s the one,” Mrs. Gonzalez told her, pointing at me. “The one who gave me your music back.”

Isabella looked at me as if she was deciding whether to trust me.

Then she nodded once.

“Thank you,” she said.

Her voice was small.

But it landed.

A month later, we attended Isabella’s recital.

Not because it was good public relations.

Because it was the point.

The auditorium was a modest high school hall, the kind with faded curtains and chairs that squeak.