I'll send everything tonight." She hung up. "Dr. Crawford is assembling a panel. Three mathematicians, independent evaluation. You have 48 hours to prepare." Isaiah felt hope for the first time in weeks.
"What's the catch?" "One of the panel members, Dr. Gregory Sullivan from Princeton. He was at Whitmore in 1994." Isaiah's blood ran cold. "He knew my father?" "Possibly. They were in the same program." Dr.
Moore's expression darkened. "He might be a witness, or he might be another one of Hartwell's allies. I don't know which." Isaiah stood. "48 Hours. Three mathematicians.
One chance." Dr. Moore nodded. "If you pass their test, the plagiarism charge collapses. If you fail." She didn't need to finish. Isaiah knew exactly what was at stake.
November 26th, 9:00 a.m. A conference room in downtown Whitmore. Neutral ground. No university administrators. No Hartwell.
Just three mathematicians. And Isaiah. The panel sat at a long table. Isaiah faced them alone. Dr.
Benjamin Crawford, 71 years old, MIT emeritus, Fields Medal nominee, white hair, sharp eyes, the kind of presence that made everyone else in the room feel smaller. Dr. Katherine Reynolds, 55, Stanford, cryptography expert, known for her brutal honesty and zero tolerance for excuses. Dr. Gregory Sullivan, 62, Princeton, number theory.
And Isaiah now knew, a Whitmore graduate from 1995, the year his father was destroyed. Sullivan's face was unreadable. Friend or enemy? Isaiah couldn't tell. Dr.
Crawford spoke first. "Mr. Parker, you understand the purpose of this evaluation?" "Yes, sir." "We're here to determine if your mathematical abilities are genuine. If you solved that equation through skill, or through fraud." Crawford's voice was cold, clinical. "We have no stake in the outcome.
We're not here to save you or condemn you. We're here for the truth." Isaiah nodded. "Good. Then let's begin." Elliptic curves. Graduate level difficulty.
The kind of problem that separated students from scholars. Isaiah picked up his pencil. For a moment, his hand trembled. The weight of everything pressing down. His father's legacy.
His own future. 24 Years of buried truth. Then he heard the voice. His father's voice. The fragment he'd carried since childhood.
"Numbers don't lie, son. People do." His hand steadied. He began to write. The first problem took 43 minutes. Expected time, 90 minutes.
Dr. Reynolds raised an eyebrow, made a note. The second problem. Modular arithmetic with cryptographic applications. More complex.
More demanding. Isaiah found an elegant shortcut. A method that wasn't in any textbook. A method from his father's notebooks. 1 Hour, 8 minutes.