Rivalries and Roadblocks

The dorm was a mess of wires, circuit boards, and half-drunk coffee cups. The whiteboard had long run out of space, forcing Elliot to start scribbling on a spare notebook page instead. A tangle of cables ran across the floor, connecting his half-assembled prototype to Esterio's laptop, where endless lines of debugging code scrolled across the screen.

They had been at this for hours.

Elliot adjusted the tiny sensor in his hand, muttering under his breath. "Alright, if this thing shorts out again, I swear I'm going to start believing in ghosts."

Esterio barely looked up from his screen. "Or you could just stop using parts you salvaged from your old drone project."

"Hey, I'm being resourceful." Elliot flicked a switch, and the board gave off a faint hum before flashing an angry red light. "Dammit."

Across the room, Marcus leaned against the door, arms crossed. He had been watching for the past hour, and while he was impressed, he also knew one thing for certain—he had nothing to contribute to this part of the project.

"Alright, I feel completely useless right now," he said, stretching.

Elliot smirked without looking up. "Good. Means you're self-aware."

"Yeah, yeah. Look, I don't do code or circuitry, but I do know we're gonna need better hardware, faster servers, and—if we're lucky—funding. So I'm gonna head out and start making some moves."

Esterio tapped a few keys, eyes still fixed on his laptop. "Where are you going?"

Marcus shrugged. "Pulling some strings. If I can get us access to one of the high-performance computing clusters, EVO will have actual processing power instead of relying on your poor laptop."

Elliot finally looked up. "And how exactly do you plan on getting us access to restricted MIT hardware?"

Marcus grinned. "Charm."

Esterio smirked. "And if that fails?"

Marcus grabbed his bag. "Bribery."

With that, he slipped out the door, leaving Elliot shaking his head. "If he comes back with a stolen GPU, I'm not asking questions."

Esterio leaned back in his chair, exhaling. "We should be making a prototype, not just talking theory."

Elliot nodded. "Yeah. But first, we need to solve one giant problem."

He stood up, pointing at the board. "If EVO is designed to rewrite its own logic, how do we make sure it doesn't rewrite itself into something we can't control?"

Esterio thought for a moment. "We give it explainability."

Elliot raised an eyebrow. "Explainability?"

"Most AIs are black boxes—they make decisions, but no one knows why. If EVO is going to evolve, it has to be able to justify every change it makes. That way, we can track its thought process."

Elliot grinned. "You're saying we make an AI that doesn't just optimize itself, but one that explains itself?"

"Exactly."

Elliot whistled. "Damn. That's actually kind of genius."

Before they could flesh out the idea, a knock sounded at the door.

Elliot groaned. "If that's Marcus coming back because he got caught, I swear—"

He swung the door open.

Zara Patel stood there, coffee in hand, smirking. "You guys look like you're either on the verge of a breakthrough or about to collapse."

Behind her, Noah and Riley—two more familiar faces from their AI classes—walked in, immediately eyeing the chaos in the room.

"Damn," Riley said, glancing at the scattered circuits and scribbled equations. "You guys are actually doing this?"

Elliot leaned back in his chair. "Yeah, yeah, we get it. The crazy ones strike again."

Zara set her coffee down. "You do know Hyperion is in this competition, right?"

Esterio nodded. "Yeah. Marcus told us. They've got their own private AI team."

Zara smirked. "That's not your only problem."

Elliot frowned. "What do you mean?"

She took a slow sip of her coffee, then leaned forward. "Viktor Lazarus is competing."

The room went dead silent.

Elliot nearly dropped the marker in his hand. "No way."

Noah nodded. "Signed up this morning."

Riley added, "And get this—he's competing solo."

Esterio's fingers tightened around the armrest of his chair. "Viktor? After all this time?"

Viktor Lazarus.

The AI prodigy. The one who had left MIT before most of them had even graduated.

He wasn't just smart—he was ahead of the field in ways that didn't make sense. While the rest of them were still learning how machine learning models worked, Viktor was building new ones from scratch.

His research had been so groundbreaking that MIT professors had to rewrite their own coursework just to keep up.

Then—he disappeared.

No research. No publications. Nothing.

And now, suddenly, he was back—competing against them.

Elliot exhaled sharply. "So, just to be clear... we're going up against Hyperion AND Viktor Lazarus?"

Riley smirked. "Yep. Have fun with that."

Zara crossed her arms. "So. What's the plan?"

Elliot let out a long breath before turning to Esterio.

"We build something they've never seen before."

Esterio nodded.

If Viktor Lazarus was back...

Then Team EVO had one goal.

Win.