Prologue

Eliot Thompson had mastered the art of the smirk.

The kind that made teachers sigh, girls roll their eyes, and friends burst into laughter. It was his signature move—half-charm, half-defense, all distraction. At seventeen, Eliot had a reputation: class clown, hopeless underachiever, walking sarcasm dispenser. The kind of guy who could derail a lecture with a single well-timed joke or get detention for impersonating the principal over the intercom. Twice.

But behind that crooked grin and those too-long hoodie sleeves was a mind like a lightning storm. Fast, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore—if only he’d let people see it.

Which he didn’t.

Eliot had learned, sometime around middle school, that being *smart* came with expectations. And expectations? They were dangerous. Expectations made people look at you differently. They raised the stakes. They turned curiosity into pressure, and passion into performance. And if you couldn’t—or didn’t want to—meet them, well… disappointment hits harder when people think you’re supposed to shine.

So Eliot made himself forgettable. Loud, funny, and forgettable.

It was safer that way.

At home, things weren’t any simpler.

Dr. Reginald Thompson—aka "Father of the Year (If the Criteria Were Just Being Intimidating)"—was a world-renowned physicist. The kind of man who was more comfortable solving quantum equations than saying *I’m proud of you.* Tall, sharp-featured, always in a suit even when he was home—he didn’t yell. He didn’t have to. A look was enough. A sentence, clinical and cold, could cut deeper than any scream.

“Wasting your potential is worse than having none at all,” he once said to Eliot, during what was meant to be a quiet dinner.

Eliot had nodded, chewed his overcooked chicken, and cracked a joke about switching careers to interpretive dance.

His mother, Sarah, was the buffer. The warmth in the house. She made sure Eliot remembered to eat, sleep, and breathe. She was quick with gentle touches on the arm, soft encouragements, and cups of tea left outside his bedroom door when things got too loud—either in the house or in Eliot’s own mind. She didn’t always understand him, but she *tried*, and that was more than enough.

Then there was Emily.

Ten years old and already brighter than the sun. Eliot’s little sister worshipped him with the kind of wide-eyed devotion that made him want to be better. Or at least *seem* better. She thought he was hilarious, brilliant, cool. (And, to be fair, he was at least two of those things.) He’d do anything to protect her from the weight he carried, from the coldness in their father’s eyes, from the way silence sometimes settled like smoke in the halls.

He let her believe he was a genius in disguise. (Which, ironically, wasn’t even a lie.)

Eliot had his own kind of genius. Not the kind that fit neatly into a test score or a research paper. His brilliance was messy, creative, intuitive. He saw patterns in chaos, found meaning in randomness. He could build things from scraps, solve puzzles backwards, and code entire games in one caffeine-fueled night. He read scientific journals for fun—then made fun of them. He could debate the ethics of artificial intelligence while doing a dead-on impression of the Terminator.

But none of that showed up on his report cards.

He didn’t care. Or at least, that’s what he told himself. And everyone else.

In reality, there were nights he stared at his ceiling wondering if he’d made a mistake—letting everyone think he was average. He wondered if, maybe, he *had* wasted something. Maybe his father was right.

But then he’d think about the cost of being what his dad wanted.

He’d tried once, when he was thirteen. Studied hard. Shut up. Played the game.

It lasted two months. Two months of robotic smiles and constant anxiety and this crushing emptiness that sat behind his ribs like concrete. And at the end of it?

His dad had looked at him and said, “See? You’re finally becoming someone.”

Eliot had smiled.

And then set off a baking soda volcano in the middle of the living room just to ruin the moment.

That was the day he decided being “someone” wasn’t worth losing himself.

So he chose the mask. Every day. On purpose.

At school, he was a legend—for all the wrong reasons. He got good enough grades to pass, great enough excuses to avoid suspicion, and bad enough behavior to keep everyone from looking closer. He was friends with everyone, close with no one. The teachers wrote him off. The students liked him but didn’t understand him. And Eliot? He laughed at all of it.

But late at night, alone in his room lit only by string lights and the glow of his laptop screen, Eliot became something else.

Focused. Quiet. Dangerous.

He’d sketch inventions in a notebook no one had ever seen. Write code no one knew he could write. Read books with titles like *Neural Networks and the Future of Memory.* Sometimes he dreamed about changing the world—then laughed at himself for even thinking that way. He wasn't *that* kind of person. Was he?

He didn’t know.

But something in him was waiting. Coiled like a spring. Restless. Hungry.

Not just for knowledge—but for *truth*. For meaning. For something *real*.

Something was coming. Eliot could feel it in his bones. A change. A challenge. A spark.

And when it came—when the moment finally arrived—he knew one thing for sure:

The world wouldn’t be ready for him.

But he was ready for the world.

Sort of.

Maybe.

After a snack