The Queen They Let Go (Alice and Eric) novel Chapter 449

As Quentin spoke, he let out a long sigh.

"Our tests here haven't made any real progress. Maybe we should just accept the Sarratts' technical support."

He was just an employee; if he thought something might help the company, he said it.

He just hadn't expected that one sentence would rub both bosses the wrong way.

"O-okay, can we just pretend I never said that?"

Quentin was terrified.

The pressure coming off the two of them was enough to make a grown man shake.

He wanted nothing more than to crawl into a crack in the floor and disappear.

But Alice suddenly smiled. "So, what you're really saying is—the Sarratts have been trying to cozy up to you for a while."

Quentin's knees nearly gave out on him.

"No, no, I've never given them the time of day."

Alice said, "... I'm not interrogating you."

Quentin wiped the cold sweat off his face and forced out a sheepish grin.

"I'd never betray the Nolan Group."

Alice found a quiet room, sat down, and had him walk her through everything the Sarratts had tried so far.

According to Quentin, they'd been circling this place for three or four years.

With Oscar in a coma, development on the mine had basically stalled.

That was when the Sarratts started reaching out, offering "technical support" on their own initiative.

But the Nolans were spooked, afraid of getting played and having their core tech stolen.

If the Nolan Group hadn't been such a giant, it probably would've been bled dry into bankruptcy already.

Even without going under, this particular mine had run out of funding, and if they still couldn't fix the situation, then...

The fallout would be ugly.

Alice nodded, then quickly added, "Get in touch with the Sarratts and tell them we're ready to accept their technical support."

Quentin looked completely lost. "If they come in, we'd need a world-class hacker monitoring the system to keep them out of the back end. Otherwise..."

As he spoke, he glanced at Eric.

Mrs. Nolan might be willing to play with fire, but there was no way Mr. Eric would just watch his own assets go up in smoke.

To his shock, Eric actually seemed to agree with Alice's plan.

Quentin almost choked on his own disbelief.

This must be the kind of ancient emperor who would throw away his entire empire for a beautiful woman.

Totally lovesick.

Quentin shut his eyes.

Forget it. It wasn't his fortune, and he wasn't the boss. Even if he gave solid advice, they wouldn't take it.

He might as well do it their way, even if it felt like inviting a wolf into the house just to stop it from barking.

...

Three days later.

The Sarratts' technical team arrived at the mine.

To cement their status, they'd even hauled in their own equipment.

A second later, the Sarratt team's experimental results popped up right in front of her.

Quentin was floored.

Did she just ... crack their system outright?

Even if the Sarratts tried to fake their reports, it didn't matter now—they could watch every step of the experiments in real time.

Quentin could hardly believe his own eyes.

He honestly wondered if he was seeing things.

But...

He watched the first batch of data come through. The samples were still just useless soil, but Alice's skills had already earned his absolute respect.

Soon, the second batch arrived.

Alice's expression shifted, just a fraction.

This set contained radioactive material.

Extracted in large quantities, it had the potential to alter human genes.

The Sarratts had been chasing this kind of thing for years. If they could lock down the key thresholds, they could bend these rare metals completely to their will.

Sure enough, the Sarratt technicians in the lab broke into open celebration.

They immediately started preparing to wipe the original experimental data.

And then Quentin watched as, on Alice's screen, those numbers slowly warped and blurred, turning into a harmless string of ordinary figures.

But she'd already copied the real results.

And now she knew exactly which parts of the mountain were most likely to yield those rare metals.