Ignition Hazard E-Book

Fabienne Gschwind

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 396

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Timea is a brilliant safety expert, specialized in explosion-prone facilities and toxic chemicals. But soon after starting at an international polymer corporation, she becomes entangled in a web of chaotic acquisitions, dubious financial flows, and a secret virus laboratory. When she gets too close to the truth, a perfectly staged "laboratory accident" is planned to take her out. Amid safety inspections, cyberattacks, and the madness of project management, Timea fights for her life – and for everyone's safety. IGNITION Hazard is a high-tension industrial thriller about modern research, safety standards, and global power plays – humorous, fictional, and with a wink at the absurdities of working life.

Leseprobe

Ignition Hazard

Foreword – Use of AI

This book was created over a period of two years, mostly while traveling – on trains, in airports, or sitting on hotel beds with my iPad. This resulted in countless typos, half-finished sentences, and poor German.Once the entire story was written to my satisfaction, I copied it section by section into ChatGPT-4o, instructing it to smooth out the German, improve the sentence flow, and correct the punctuation. I had previously trained ChatGPT on my writing style so it could roughly mimic my way of writing. I explicitly instructed it not to change the content – except when I expressly requested it, for example, to make a dialogue flow more naturally.Most of the time, this worked well, but I often had to go back and forth several times until the sentences were right. Occasionally, even repeated prompting didn’t help, and ChatGPT happily rewrote parts of the story.Afterwards, I had the story translated into English with DeepL. I then reviewed the entire English version, and as always, this gave me countless ideas for how to improve passages, make them more humorous, or cut unnecessary parts. Once again, I used ChatGPT to refine my English or to phrase certain sections more elegantly.Of course, this caused the book to diverge from the original German version, so I had it translated back into German using DeepL. I then read this version completely, since technical terms were often mistranslated or the use of “Sie” and “du” was inconsistent.Only after this final review was I satisfied and prepared the book for publication.The entire book was also translated into French with ChatGPT, since – unlike DeepL – ChatGPT is capable of correctly applying the special French punctuation and the style of the passé simple. Whether the French version will ever be published is still uncertain.

*

Timea was usually an expert at preventing chemical labs from going up in flames.Today, the risk was manageable: she was looking for a new job.

Not because she had to—but simply because she could. Her current position in Denmark was well-paid, low-stress, and secure. But the distance from her family weighed heavier than any bonus. Both her sister and her brother, who lived in the Saarland, were expecting children at the same time. Timea had decided it was time to move closer to them.

It was a Friday afternoon, and she found herself in the tiny state of Maasburg—a minuscule duchy tucked between Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg. The capital, also called Maasburg, was the focus of today’s little reconnaissance tour.

She unlocked the rental bike, swung into the saddle, and set off. Two hours lay ahead—plenty of time foxr a short “exploration ride,” as she liked to call it. The job contract wouldn’t be discussed until Monday. Today was just about getting a feel for the place: what kind of city was this? If everything turned out to be terrible, she could still walk away.

She wore a practical, understated outfit—a lightweight jacket, sturdy shoes, and a backpack with exactly three compartments. Timea was petite and wiry, the kind of person who seemed impossible to slow down. Her short brown hair, upright posture, and lack of jewelry gave her a no-nonsense presence.

The streets were quiet, the air was crisp, and the city was green. Wide bike lanes ran through modern districts, flanked by old trees and surprisingly well-tended flowerbeds. As she followed the canal, she found herself wondering how it was that she had never visited this place before.

On the horizon, the industrial area came into view—not classic heavy industry, but more of a high-precision playground: advanced ceramics, medical adhesives, machines for chip fabrication. And right in the middle of it all stood a half-finished concrete block, next to a half-built parking structure. This could soon be her new workplace.

Timea came to a brief stop. One sign pointed toward a fitness center, another toward a shopping promenade. At the very least, the location looked promising. She pulled out her phone and, in a matter of seconds, memorized the way back to the residential area. Memorization had never been a challenge for her.

Many believed she had a photographic memory. She knew the truth: it wasn’t talent—it was relentless training. Her parents hadn’t been ordinary parents. They were memory athletes with world-record ambitions, who had met at a speed-reading world championship. Even their wedding had been optimized for efficiency—five minutes, eighty-seven guests.

“If you can’t retain 300 words a minute, you don’t get dessert”—that had been a popular saying at the dinner table.

In her family, thinking was treated like a competitive sport. Weekends resembled training camps, filled with memory games, lightning-fast calculations, number sequences, and spelling words backwards. And when those drills became too routine, the challenges got more absurd: long-distance casting with a fishing rod, Morse-code dictations through table tapping, origami on a balance board, and reciting poetry while jumping rope. There was even a year when the entire family participated in the world air guitar championships. Timea hadn’t practiced enough, and so the family ended up in fourth place. Her mother didn’t speak to her for weeks.

Failure wasn’t punished openly, but it was felt—subtle, efficient, and emotionally precise, often in the form of a deeply disappointed furrowed brow. Timea had loathed it. Her sister, on the other hand, had thrived under pressure. She was now a parkour coach and earned her living as a close-up magician, dazzling audiences with card tricks and micro-illusions—ideally under tight time constraints and in front of skeptical crowds. Her brother had become a master of lockpicking and designed massive domino constructions. On his YouTube channel, he was currently explaining how he intended to set the world record for the longest chain reaction ever built. Both siblings regularly submitted applications to the Guinness Book of Records.

And Timea?One day, she simply walked away—quite literally. At twenty, she discovered skydiving, and from that moment on, she stopped spending her evenings and weekends in tightly scheduled blocks of mental drills. Despite this clear break from family tradition, her relationship with her parents and siblings had actually improved. Without the constant competition, the pressure eased. Every now and then she still let herself get pulled into some quirky challenge, but these days she took it lightly. And in retrospect, she couldn’t help but smile at her childhood—the endless list of seemingly useless skills she had picked up along the way. Though, to be fair, a few of them turned out to be surprisingly handy in everyday life.

The neighborhood she was now riding through felt friendly and efficient. Supermarkets, cafés, a medical center, fast food, and bars were all within easy reach. A tram connected the various districts, and bus stops were dotted across every corner.

She snapped a few photos, mentally stored the surroundings, and smiled. If the rest of the conditions worked out, she’d accept the job without hesitation. And if not—well, then she wouldn’t.

But a glance at her watch suddenly jolted her out of her peaceful thoughts. Damn—the train to Karlsruhe! She had promised an old friend she would stop by spontaneously, and the regional express was leaving in twelve minutes.

Quickly, she turned the bike around, pedaled harder, and navigated back to the station with purpose. Five minutes later, she was sprinting up the station ramp with her backpack and made it onto the train just in time.

As she collapsed into her seat, slightly out of breath, her instincts kicked in: tablet out, mind back into the technical world.

She opened an article she had saved that morning—a new post from an American safety blog titled "Combustible Dust Hazards in Hybrid Systems." Timea skimmed the diagrams, frowned at the poor ventilation system described in a case study from Indiana, and shook her head at a fuel tank lid that had, supposedly for budgetary reasons, never been replaced.

She often wondered how much in high-tech facilities ultimately came down to sheer luck.And the irony, of course, was that it was her job to make sure that luck didn’t get pushed too far.

*

Timea was a safety expert for chemical industrial facilities—a profession that was nearly impossible to explain without eventually mentioning something like “explosion overpressure calculations.” Her daily work revolved around hazard analyses (What could go wrong—and how bad would it get?), interpreting toxicity data (How poisonous is this stuff really?), calculating safety distances (so the next accident doesn’t take down the entire lab), and writing fire protection concepts that nobody wanted to read—until something caught fire.

She mapped out ATEX zones—those are the areas where explosive gas or dust mixtures can form, for instance when someone leaves ethanol uncovered or lets fine powder spill. She drafted emergency plans (“What to do if the reactor blows?”), reviewed safety data sheets (sixteen pages of small-print panic), and analyzed reaction calorimetry results—in other words, she figured out how much heat a chemical reaction would release before someone else had to find out with a fire extinguisher.

There were HAZOPs, too—structured brainstorming sessions where every single valve had to be imagined as having a bad day. She navigated between lab realities, European regulations, and a level of healthy paranoia that, anywhere else, might have been considered a clinical issue.

Currently, she was living in Denmark. It was fine—organized, safe, efficient. But it lacked hills. Timea missed the rugged terrain of her youth. She longed for the Alps, the Black Forest, or at least a place with a bit more gravity. After nearly two years in Denmark, she was ready for something new. And since both her sister and brother lived near Saarbrücken—and had both managed to reproduce in the same week—it was time to move closer.

Timea couldn’t help wondering if the two of them had secretly entered a competition called “Who can have a baby faster?” With her family, that wouldn’t have surprised her.

She herself couldn’t have children. Years ago, she had undergone emergency surgery to remove her uterus after a tumor nearly caused internal bleeding. She had made peace with it. Instead of becoming a mother, she would embrace the role of the eccentric, adventure-loving aunt—one who knew her way around hazardous chemicals, jumped out of planes, and could dismantle a safety briefing with a single remark.

She hadn’t even been looking for a new position—rather, a headhunter had found her. With her expertise, she was in high demand within the chemical industry. The offer came from a highly specialized and surprisingly successful polymer startup named PolyNeo. Their focus: encapsulating polymers that release active substances at specific points along the digestive tract. The research was promising, the location ideal, the company clearly on a growth trajectory. They were looking for someone to oversee safety in both lab and production.

The only real uncertainty? It was a startup—which potentially meant chaos, a lack of structure, and probably lower pay than her current role. But that would all be clarified on Monday.

The Start-up was located in the tiny state Maasburg. Unlike Luxembourg, Maasburg was the exact opposite of a tax haven. Companies that chose to set up their headquarters here submitted to a strict regime: high safety standards, rigorous environmental regulations, maximum transparency, steep social contributions, and a tax disclosure policy that would make any accountant break into a sweat.

So why would anyone voluntarily move to Maasburg?Because for certain companies, it acted as a seal of quality.If you produced or conducted research here, you could position yourself as ethical, green, socially responsible, and squeaky clean. Consumers who opposed tax tricks and exploitation paid close attention to a company’s location. Being based in Maasburg meant: We have nothing to hide.

As a result, many premium companies had settled here—high-end clothing brands, sustainable food manufacturers, biotech firms, and boutique cosmetics producers. Even a few pharmaceutical giants had set up research divisions in the area. Maasburg had found its niche: the anti-tax haven with moral added value. The capital’s tech park was booming, fueled by generous innovation grants, academic programs, and an international talent network. PolyNeo was one of those success stories—and Timea might soon be a part of it.

It was Saturday morning by now. Timea had arrived in Karlsruhe and was meeting up with her old friend Olivia—a university ritual they still indulged in: a walk, a bit of shopping, coffee and cake. Olivia was a professor at the University of Karlsruhe, and—as usual—had buried herself in her office.

Timea waited ten minutes at the main entrance, sent a few messages, got no reply—and grinned. Olivia was probably so absorbed in her work she hadn’t noticed the time, let alone her phone.

Timea let herself into the building—just as she expected, a side door hadn’t been properly locked—and found Olivia’s office without any trouble. The door was slightly ajar. Olivia was buried in a mountain of paperwork, shifting stacks of exams from one side to another while typing on her keyboard and simultaneously trying to reorganize her calendar.

“I’m almost done, I swear!” she said, startled when she noticed Timea.“There was this funding proposal, then the review paper, and the exams—and to top it off, the heating’s out in my apartment building. It’s warmer here.”

She shoved some papers into a box, stopped mid-motion, and paused.

“Hey, your company—PolyNeo—is it… Mangrovian now?”

“What?” Timea blinked. “What are you talking about?”

Olivia pulled a printout from a pile and handed her a newspaper article.“It was in the news yesterday. Your startup got acquired.By a big Mangrovian firm. EncapX. For 800 million.”

Mangrovia.Even the name sounded like a mix of geopolitical awkwardness and pharmaceutical trickery. The country was a paradox: rich in natural resources, cheap for manufacturing, ruled by an authoritarian regime. People alternately referred to it as the “North Korea of Pharmacie” or the “Bangladesh of Battery Materials.” A dictatorship with investor appeal. Their electricity came entirely from hydropower—at least there was that. But when it came to environmental regulations, everyone looked the other way. Waste was dumped into the deep sea, as long as no cameras were watching.

And yet, in recent years, an impressive pharmaceutical industry had sprung up there. Most of their products were generics—cheap to produce, but surprisingly high in quality. Mangrovian companies exploited patent loopholes, took advantage of grey areas, and gained market share—especially in countries that couldn’t afford the expensive originals. They were controversial, feared, admired. And now they owned PolyNeo.

“Timea, don’t you read the news?” Olivia asked.

“Uh… no. I binged a series last night and ignored my inbox.”

“Well, you’d better catch up. I’m off to the bathroom—when I get back, I want details.”

Timea pulled out her phone. Sure enough: a new email from PolyNeo.

“Dear Timea,You’ve surely heard the exciting news that PolyNeo has been acquired by EncapX. But don’t worry—your job is still here, waiting for you. Provided, of course, that you choose to continue working with us.”

What followed were several paragraphs full of promises: access to the EncapX Academy, exciting projects in the global safety network, exchange programs with other locations, career advancement, business travel opportunities.

This wasn’t just a job. This was a launchpad.

Timea grinned. She had already wondered if the small company might become boring over time—the same labs, the same routines.But this? This meant movement.And the fact that the new headquarters would be in Mangrovia?Well… she’d jumped with worse companies before.

Naturally, Olivia was fully briefed the moment she returned.

*

It was Monday morning, and Timea had returned to Maasburg.Since the new production building of the formerly independent PolyNeo startup wasn’t finished yet, she was temporarily assigned to a set of provisional container offices. The actual research lab and a small pilot production unit were located a few steps away, in a hall belonging to the university. The move into the new facility was planned for about two months from now. Everything was a bit improvised—fitting for a company that had just been acquired and was simultaneously expanding into a tech park.

Present at her onboarding were Garry, the CEO of PolyNeo, and someone from EncapX HR Europe. He had already studied Timea’s résumé and emphasized—more than once—how thrilled EX (as EncapX referred to itself internally) was to have her on board with such expertise.

Then they got down to business: salary, bonuses, benefits. Everything was significantly above what PolyNeo had originally offered. And as a cherry on top, they promised her a relocation agent who would handle everything—from the move to registering with the local waste disposal service.Timea was more than satisfied. She signed the contract—on the condition that she would only start in three months.

She didn’t want to just vanish from her current company, but instead take the time to properly train her successor. And she had a few vacation days she was determined to use up.

EX had no issue with that. The new building wouldn’t be ready for occupancy before April anyway, and the lab operations wouldn’t begin before June. Perfect timing.

On the train back to Copenhagen, Timea had time to reflect—on her career, her choices… and her resignation letter. That one was easy to write.

She had studied classical chemistry in Karlsruhe, and later moved to the Technical University of Munich for her PhD—a solid upgrade. And that was where something unexpected happened: she stumbled upon the field of industrial safety. It all began with a calorimetry experiment. The equipment was sitting in the lab, but no one really knew how to operate it—or worse, how to interpret the data. So she booked a workshop with the manufacturer.

That was the beginning of the end. Or rather, the beginning of the fun.

She quickly learned that calorimetry wasn’t some esoteric side discipline—it was a central tool for assessing how dangerous a chemical reaction could be. With the right method, one could not only predict explosions, but actually prevent them—if you knew what you were doing.

The workshop leader was an experienced safety expert who mentioned a real accident in nearly every third sentence. Time and again, he let his gaze slowly wander across the seminar room, lowered his voice, and spoke in a tone reminiscent of a psychological horror thriller:

“And here’s an example from Basel… just imagine what could have gone wrong – and what almost did: The calorimeter revealed, at the very last moment, a barely considered reverse reaction pathway. Just 10 degrees of overheating would have been enough to generate so much gas that the 250-liter reactor would have literally exploded.

Had we not immediately changed the production plans, the facility would have detonated right in the middle of a residential area in Basel. Windows within hundreds of meters would have shattered, toxic fumes would have spread over the city like during the Sandoz disaster. Injuries, fatalities, millions in damages, and decades of lost reputation – all because of a tiny detail that was almost overlooked. That single experiment, five hours in the calorimeter – it saved the company from millions in losses and a catastrophic disaster.”

Timea hung on his every word like others binge a Netflix series.

Back in Munich, she signed up for more courses, devoured everything the library had on industrial safety, and was soon put in charge of updating all the institute’s safety documentation. The actual safety officer had lost interest and delegated the entire job to her—and Timea was too curious to say no. The department paid for her training without asking too many questions. Why not? Anyone who voluntarily reads standards is either dangerous—or a total asset.

One thing led to another: she completed her doctorate focusing on safety-critical analytical methods like calorimetry, TGA, and DSC—measurement techniques that sounded like things you probably shouldn’t Google.The university hired her directly after graduation, initially to oversee lab safety. Shortly after, she also became the institute’s radiation protection officer and took over laser safety management.Over time, she was responsible for anything that glowed, radiated, or burned.

The best part? The university had a training budget—and she used it like an addict.She attended workshop after workshop: HAZOP, ATEX, FMEA, SIL, safety culture, functional safety, quantitative risk assessment—every acronym and catastrophe simulation she could find.

One of the companies running these courses took notice. A young woman who not only remembered all the test answers, but also every real-world case study? That stood out. They offered her a job.

She hadn’t planned on switching jobs—but the offer was too good.The company was a spin-off from Ghent University: a small, highly specialized safety consultancy with its own lab. The five founders were all seasoned veterans—twenty years in the field, gravelly voices, each of them knowing at least seven ways to blow up an average toilet using supermarket products.

Timea said yes immediately. She wanted to learn from the best.

And she did. For an entire year, she focused on analyzing dust explosion behavior—an underrated hazard in industry. Because it’s not just gasoline or gas that can explode: even fine dust—like flour, plastic, or metal powder—can detonate under the right conditions.

Timea ran systematic tests to determine how easily a substance could ignite, how much pressure it would generate, and whether it could trigger a chain reaction. She learned that a single spark or a hot surface was enough to turn an entire production hall into an inferno—if the dust was fine enough and properly dispersed.She slowly began advising her own clients. Her colleagues were fantastic, the projects diverse.

Five years later, she was a recognized expert. She had mastered thermal analytics, understood dust explosions, battery thermal behavior, solvents, and toxic process gases. She had worked on projects in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food, metal, and polymer industries.

Her favorite project? A polymer plant with a fluorination unit: deadly gases, toxic solvents, explosive dust clouds, highly exothermic reactions. A nightmare for most—but for Timea, an adrenaline rush.

Because yes: Timea was an adrenaline junkie.

Much to her supervisors’ dismay, she had discovered extreme sports. Paragliding was her gateway. Then came skydiving, wingsuits, formation jumps. She even tried BASE jumping—until her Belgian employer banned it. A safety expert who jumps off bridges? That was a PR problem.

Timea just shrugged. She knew the stats. She’d already lost three friends.But the control during a jump, the clarity in free fall—that was her release valve.n Belgium, she eventually gave it up – the landscape was simply too flat. Instead, she stuck with skydiving and took up kitesurfing: the Belgian coast was perfect, with a tram running along its entire length. She could let herself drift with the wind, then hop on the tram to return to her starting point. With her dripping wetsuit, folded sail, and board in hand, she didn’t exactly make friends on the tram, but since she was never banned from riding, she just kept going.

She’d never seen a psychologist, but she suspected she was on the emotionally colder end of the spectrum. Other people’s feelings often struck her as overblown—whether in novels, films, or among friends.Only during extreme sports did she really feel something.

Maybe she was different. Maybe not. But she was comfortable with it—most of the time.

Since her semester abroad in Bern, with five to six jumps each weekend, she’d been convinced: nothing clears your mind like a well-calculated leap. Timea stayed calm where others panicked.

Or, as Olivia once said:“You really should’ve been a bomb disposal technician.”

As soon as she started in Maasburg, she planned to take up BASE jumping again—but she wouldn’t tell anyone. She wasn’t risking another ban. Luckily, nobody had asked about hobbies during the job interview. She wouldn’t lie—but she wouldn’t start legal battles with her employer either.

Maybe she’d just go back to riding motorcycles instead. The Eifel region wasn’t far—and its curves were legendary. Her old bike was still at her parents’ place.Maybe it was time for an upgrade—something with real power.

Back in Copenhagen, she stepped into her apartment.The coming months would be intense, she thought—and went down to the basement to check how many moving boxes she had left.

She had only moved in two years ago. The little spin-off in Ghent had been bought by a British chemical multinational. At first, it all sounded exciting: ruthenium, gallium chemistry, catalysts, specialty metals.England would’ve suited her just fine.

But instead, she and three colleagues were transferred to Copenhagen—into a business unit where safety experts were only allowed to do one thing.No cross-functional projects. No diversity of tasks.

Timea was assigned to “metal oxide powders for ship catalysts”—tiny particles used in marine exhaust systems to reduce harmful emissions. It sounded harmless, technically speaking. But from a safety perspective, it was anything but.

The powders were ultra-fine—finer than flour—and could penetrate deep into the lungs when inhaled. Her task was to review the so-called toxicity documentation: how toxic were these materials on skin contact? What happens if someone inhales them? Were there long-term effects?She researched exposure limits, studied animal trial data, and checked whether special ventilation systems or personal protective equipment were required.

In one case, she discovered that an additive could react with moisture under certain conditions—releasing irritating vapors. A potential hazard no one had anticipated.

She stuck it out for two years. Two of her colleagues quit in the first year, the third shortly after.And Timea?She knew: she wasn’t growing old here.

The resignation letter was written quickly—sent off with a grin.

*

The next few months turned out to be calmer than expected.While Timea trained her successor, she took the opportunity to dig through patents and publications from the former PolyNeo—after all, she wanted to be well-prepared for her new field. What stood out was that EX had conspicuously avoided changing the PolyNeo name at all. Instead, the old operation was now run as a separate business unit, subordinated to EX’s Dutch headquarters. A legal arrangement only multinationals with enough tax advisors, loopholes, and imagination could ever dream up.

Publicly, it looked like an ordinary corporate acquisition.Internally, however, the structure resembled a Russian matryoshka doll—layered ownership, murky transparency, and a tax logic so athletic it could have qualified for the Olympics.

While legal smoke screens were being carefully maintained, Timea, in the real world, used her accumulated vacation days. She gave away her kiteboard, sent her BASE-jumping parachute in for inspection, and shuttled back and forth between Copenhagen and Saarbrücken, tying up the loose ends of her old life. Selling her motorcycle at her parents’ house felt almost symbolic—a clean cut.

Wednesday morning: moving day.In exactly 17 minutes, the entire contents of the moving truck were stacked inside her new apartment—a record even Timea’s record-obsessed family might have acknowledged with approval. The apartment itself was a bit smaller than she’d hoped, but the location made up for everything: fifteen minutes by bike to the new job, three tram stops to the city center, a supermarket, a hybrid bakery-butcher, and no fewer than two cafés offering “Urban Flat White” on the chalkboard menu.

Naturally, she had chosen the apartment by drawing pragmatic circles on a city map: one radius around the workplace, another around the train station—where they overlapped became home.

“I’ll take care of the washing machine,” announced her father, wrench bag in hand, and disappeared into the utility room.Since retiring, he had become a passionate DIY handyman—though not entirely by choice. After a brief stint as a retiree-hacker (which ended with a police visit and a small fine), his wife had firmly suggested that he find a hobby with less legal grey area.

Now, he milled CNC-replacement parts for vacuum cleaners, restored vintage radios, and installed smart home upgrades for friends—with a certain uncompromising flair.

Timea’s mother, after five decades of competitive memory sport, had also moved on to new hobbies. The attic had long since been transformed into a fully equipped 3D-printing studio—a small-scale print farm, really—where she manufactured custom parts for her equally hobby-obsessed social circle.The competition within the family, however, remained alive and well.Anyone who wasn’t at least a runner-up in some kind of European championship was considered a bit of a slacker.

At least Timea could still point to her national title in Extreme Ironing.Not to mention the junior chess boxing championship.

Ironically, her BASE-jumping hobby was viewed within the family as rather embarrassingly pedestrian.“How banal… skydiving. Anyone can do that,” her mother had remarked.Her father had tried to be encouraging: “Oh come on—I’ve seen some pretty insane records on YouTube. Like that wingsuit flight through a rock formation. Bet there’s still something to aim for, right?”

But Timea had long since decided to stop chasing records. She simply wanted to enjoy the sport—no trophies, no entries in the Guinness Book. That alone had firmly established her as the black sheep of the family.

By now, the washing machine was installed and, of course, connected to the internet—her father was already halfway through converting the entire apartment into a smart home.Timea knew resistance was futile and simply planned to deactivate most of the apps later. Family peace took precedence.

For now, she had things to do: pick up her bank cards, register at the municipal office—the bureaucratic side of starting over.

Two days later, everything was in place. Her father, pleased with his handiwork, said his goodbyes with the cheerful announcement that he was now “thinking about setting up a voice-controlled bathroom menu” as his next project.

Timea spent the weekend doing what she truly enjoyed: checking out local gyms, admiring new motorcycle models, and peppering salespeople with technical questions.

*

Timea hated the beginning of any new job—that sluggish phase where everything moved slowly because a thousand small things needed to be set in motion.

Her new position at EX was no different.On her first day, the new CEO, Dave, breezed through the office and shook her hand with vigorous, over-rehearsed energy. What had become of the former CEO, Garry, was not addressed. Instead, Dave unloaded a whirlwind of slides, org charts, and visionary language.

“We’re building something here. Fast. Flat. Innovative. Everything’s in motion. This is our three-pillar model—plus agile matrix structure...”He radiated pride in his management philosophy. To Dave, flat hierarchy meant no fixed bosses, constant dialogue, and everyone being a little bit responsible for everything. Agile was his antidote to bureaucracy: daily stand-ups, tight feedback loops, self-organizing teams.

Timea, who secretly preferred structure and clearly defined responsibilities, kept her thoughts to herself. She nodded politely while Dave enthusiastically presented the next sprint schedule.Before she could ask a single question, he grabbed his bag.“I have to go to the Airport. Great to have you onboard.”And just like that, he was gone.

The rest of the day was admin purgatory.Gerhardt, the IT lead, spent the morning with her in an overheated server room, swearing quietly at an EX-internal authentication tool that seemed to confuse even those who built it.

Meanwhile, Timea’s inbox filled up with onboarding files, compliance modules, eLearning invites, and endless checklists.At least the team was kind—and cheerful. Valea, the analytical chemist from Lithuania, patiently handed her a form.“This is for the EX credit card. In case you travel for work and don’t want to enter every expense manually.”

Kaspar and Satria—one a scientist, the other a project manager—helped her unbox and assemble her still shrink-wrapped office chair.“Welcome to startup flair under corporate conditions,” Satria joked.

There were more welcome meetings: the DEI officer wanted a quick hello, as did a representative from the Women in Leadership Club.And, of course, there was the mandatory safety video—complete with a melodramatic soundtrack that made even the most basic quiz question sound like a life-or-death scenario.What do you do if a colleague gets a chemical splash in their eye?

Timea smiled. The answer, obviously, was to lead them to the eyewash station and call the medical service.But the music made it feel like she ought to rescue the colleague while piloting a helicopter under enemy fire.

At some point, every conversation seemed to go the same way:

“So, wait—what exactly are you? An external researcher? From that spin-off… what was it called… PolyNeo?”

Timea kept her patience. For the third time that day, she explained:

“No. I’m directly employed by EX. Based here in Maasburg. Not a contractor. Not a spin-off.”

“Ah, okay… interesting. Well, EX buys and sells departments weekly—it’s hard to keep track. Do you know your SAP code, by any chance?”

“It doesn’t exist yet. But supposedly it’s coming.”

“Right. Well… welcome to the system—kind of.”

The team had only just moved into the building. Boxes were everywhere, restroom doors hadn’t arrived yet, and the makeshift shower curtains—made from leftover packaging material—were the proud work of Arjan, Lin, and Hamo, the three technicians who fixed anything not bolted to the ground.

At least the coffee machine was industrial strength and fully capable of caffeinating fifty people, including a separate setting for hot chocolate.

Dave had even arranged for pastries to welcome her, though by the time they arrived, he was long gone.

In the afternoon, she had to visit the university. Some of PolyNeo’s lab equipment was still housed in a university hall, which meant she had to be registered there as well.Two more safety briefings and a fresh ID chip card later, she was officially “on file”—though no one seemed quite sure under what title.

Tuesday brought more paperwork.HR from the Netherlands contacted her via chat:

"Okay… you’re employed at EX, but Maasburg doesn’t have a legal entity? Do we still need to set up a local contract? And are you really internal or an external consultant?"

Timea exhaled slowly.

"I’m a full employee of EX, based in Maasburg. Not external, not a spin-off. Really EX."

"Oh right, just like Kaspar and Satria… now I remember. Understood. We have your IBAN and your tax ID; I’ll copy the template I used for Satria and get back to you later. That’s all for now."

Small victories.

Only in the evening, when she finally exhaled and the last checklist had been checked, did a sense of calm return.Her chair had stopped squeaking, the coffee machine was humming contentedly, and the clutter of tasks had been cleared.

“At least I exist in the system now,” she murmured, and closed her laptop.Tomorrow could come.

The next day brought the long-promised tour of the new facility—if “finished” could be applied to anything here.

The production hall was still bare concrete, its walls raw and unpainted, wires hanging like half-forgotten thoughts.Reactors, pumps, mixing systems—everything neatly arranged on pallets, some still factory-sealed.The machines had clearly been ordered with ambition, then shelved the moment EX’s acquisition became official. No one really knew what was supposed to be produced here. The transition had dragged on, caught in that familiar fog of inertia and rumor.

At least the research lab was partly up and running.

Satria—“Sat,” as everyone called her—led Timea first into the synthesis lab, the beating heart of product development.Glass reactors were already in place. Modern fume hoods lined the walls, each fitted with touchscreen controls that, inexplicably, played cheerful jingles when touched.

Then they continued to the analytics lab, where a row of sleek rheometers waited—machines that probed how materials flowed and changed under stress.Whether a gel stayed thick, thinned out when stirred, or melted into liquid at a certain temperature—this was where those questions were answered.

At the far end of the lab, two blinking instruments stood side by side: a differential scanning calorimeter and a thermogravimetric analyzer—known to insiders as DSC and TGA.Timea smiled. She knew them well.

Together, they told the thermal story of a substance: how it melted or crystallized, how it absorbed or released heat, at what point it started to evaporate or decompose.From that, one could understand not only how stable or pure something was—but also how dangerous.

She stopped in her tracks.The instruments had been connected, somewhat haphazardly, to an oxygen line that was far too long. A gas cylinder leaned against a workbench, fastened only with a chain.

“No cabinet?” she asked.

Sat gave her a crooked grin. “It never arrived. Probably never even got ordered. Garry supposedly signed off on the budget for gas installation—but after that... nothing. We figure he pocketed it himself.”She shrugged.“Classic Garry.”

Then they reached what was known as the Night Lab.

A sealed, windowless room equipped with a Halon fire suppression system—a relic Timea hadn’t seen in years.Halon was a gaseous extinguishing agent once used in sensitive environments, like server rooms or chemical labs handling flammable substances. It put out fires without leaving behind water or powder—ideal when delicate equipment or samples couldn’t be damaged. The problem? Halon was highly toxic to the atmosphere. Since the 1990s, its use had been almost entirely phased out. Only legacy systems were still allowed to operate—and only under strict regulation.

The fact that this place still used Halon spoke volumes—either the budget had been asleep at the wheel, or someone had no idea what they were buying.

“A Halon lab? Seriously?” Timea asked, incredulous.

Sat nodded. “Pretty unusual in Europe, right? But Garry pushed it through. Said it was a ‘great deal.’ More likely, he found it in some warehouse, bought it cheap, invoiced it high, and pocketed the difference. That was his specialty—creative negotiation.”

Timea let out a dry sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.“Why has no one told me what really happened to this Garry?”

“Well then, take a seat. I’ll tell you everything.”Sat dropped onto a lab stool, and Arjan joined them.

“Garry,” Sat began, “wasn’t one of the founders, actually. He was brought in later—hired by the original team to run day-to-day operations. At first, it made sense. He was charismatic, well-connected, and good at selling a vision. But once EX started showing real interest in acquiring the company, something shifted. He began treating PolyNeo like a personal goldmine.

He ordered expensive equipment, brokered deals through personal contacts whose invoices never quite added up, and shuffled funds between accounts, subsidiaries, and “consulting fees.”

Once the sale was finalized, it took only weeks for EX’s accounting department to uncover discrepancies. And then Garry disappeared—literally.Officially, he was “no longer with the company.” Unofficially, no one even knew where he’d gone.

“He left us this half-finished shell,” said Arjan flatly, “and the Halon lab. At least he didn’t take the coffee machine.”

Despite it all, there was a palpable sense of momentum in the team. That much became clear when they relocated to the so-called “coffee room,” which doubled as their meeting space. There, things got scientific.

“Okay,” said Sat, “let’s talk about our actual project. The PMS.”

Timea raised an eyebrow. “PMS? I thought you were working on block copolymers for coatings?”

“Not anymore. That was old PolyNeo. Now we’re dealing with Polymer Microspheres—PMS. More specifically: TTD-PMS. Tuneable Time Delay Polymer Microspheres.”

Arjan opened his laptop and pulled up a series of slides.The idea was simple on the surface, but brilliant in scope: tiny polymer spheres that encapsulate drugs and release them only after a programmed delay—not just hours, but weeks or even months. The microspheres would lodge themselves in the body—say, in intestinal folds—and then gradually dissolve. Their release profiles were controlled by the polymer structure itself, breaking down via hydrolysis, enzyme action, or surface erosion.

“A programmable medicine, basically?” Timea asked.

“Exactly,” said Arjan. “Picture elderly patients receiving a single depot dose every three weeks instead of taking pills every day. No more forgetting, no more pill organizers—it’s a huge advantage.”

“I worked on polymeric microsystems for delayed release in my dissertation,” added Sat. “This is essentially the real-world version.”

Timea nodded slowly. “So, a marriage of clever chemistry and medical precision. And you want to scale this up?”

“We’re testing the first batches now. Once they pass, we’ll send them to central R&D in Mangrovia,” Sat said.

Timea leaned back in her chair, letting the final slide linger on the screen. The chemical structures were intricate but manageable. She’d need a few afternoons to chase down the literature on the monomer building blocks and retrace the synthetic routes properly.

“Before we scale anything, I need all the safety documentation. Complete HAZOPs, SOPs, P&IDs, certifications—anything, even legacy files from the old PolyNeo days,” she said firmly.

Valea, who was standing by the coffee machine, furrowed her brow.“HAZOP… isn’t that the thing where you lock everyone in a room and spend three days imagining catastrophes?”

“Exactly,” Timea said dryly.“HAZOP stands for Hazard and Operability Study. You walk through a process, step by step—mentally—and ask, at each valve: What could go wrong? What if it’s closed, open, or flowing the wrong way? What happens then? Toxic gas? Overpressure? Overheating? Or maybe just a production failure.”

Satria slid over to make room for Valea and added, “And then you argue about whether it’s a real risk or just a theoretical one. And whether you can control it with a safeguard.”

“Exactly. And I need all of it before we move forward. No validated HAZOPs, no production—at least not with me in the building.”

“Hmm… Garry used to talk about FMEA all the time. Claimed he was handling it,” said Arjan.

“FMEA means Failure Modes and Effects Analysis,” Timea explained.“It’s basically a structured checklist. You go through every component and think: how could it fail? And what would happen if it did? Say the pump fails—or a sensor gives the wrong reading. You score each failure mode: How likely is it? How severe? And how easy is it to detect?”

“So kind of like those bonus point systems—only the worse the error, the more points you get?” asked Satria.

“Sort of. Only instead of bonuses, we use those scores to decide where we need safeguards,” said Timea.“FMEA is great if you’re designing machinery or ensuring production quality. But for chemical reactions and integrated systems with explosion risks? Too coarse.”

“So it’s more for automotive or high-volume manufacturing?”

“Exactly. In process safety, we need something that works with causes, consequences, and barriers. Not just bingo cards for failure modes.”

Arjan sighed. “I’m sure I filed the P&IDs somewhere, but that was back in the university container office. I hope the police didn’t seize them when they raided Garry’s office.”

Valea looked up again. “While we’re at it—what exactly is a P&ID?”

This time, Arjan—clearly the most technically grounded of the group—answered:“Piping and Instrumentation Diagram. Basically the blueprint of a chemical plant. Shows all the pipes, pumps, valves, sensors, control loops. It’s sacred ground for engineers. And for people like Timea, it’s the first thing they check to see whether someone accidentally routed in ambient air instead of nitrogen.”

“Or whether your cooling water evaporates after ten minutes because the sensor was wired wrong,” Timea added.

Satria smirked. “Or whether Garry charged the company for twenty-one high-end temperature sensors when one would’ve done.”

They all laughed—though a bit uneasily. Because it had actually happened.

Garry had ordered two dozen sensors for a setup that needed only one, citing “redundancy and comparability.” In truth, it had probably been a budget game or a trick of procurement.

“The best part?” Arjan said. “The sensors actually arrived—but vanished immediately. Lin found them on eBay three weeks ago. Half price. Not long after, the police froze Garry’s business accounts.”

Valea rolled her eyes.“And the sensors were never seen again. Just like the accounting records. He apparently deleted everything he ever ordered—certificates included. And those are probably exactly what you’ll need, Timea.”

“Dave promised to rebuild everything,” she added. “But honestly? Since he started, I’ve seen him maybe twice. He’s probably busy touring EX headquarters just to explain that we even exist.”

A collective sigh filled the room.

Timea realized just how much wreckage Garry had left behind.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Arjan with a resigned shrug.“Since Garry’s computer was confiscated, half the files are missing—or worse, he just claimed we had them and never did anything. Maybe they’re still on the university servers…”

Timea closed her notebook.“I’ll handle the EX side. There’s probably a central platform everything’s supposed to be uploaded to—but every team uses it differently. If at all.”

Arjan frowned. Timea clarified:“Corporate EHS—environment, health, and safety—tries to collect everything centrally. But each business unit does their own thing. Some use Excel. Others have weird software no one understands. And then everything ends up on a SharePoint that changes structure every week.”

“Sounds familiar,” Arjan said dryly.

“Welcome to the audit jungle,” said Timea.“So: dig up whatever you can. HAZOPs, P&IDs, old reports. And if there are two versions? Keep both. You never know which one the auditors will want.”

Arjan nodded.“Audit by hindsight.”

“Exactly.”

*

The next few days passed more or less smoothly.Timea had finished every bit of paperwork: city registration, bank account, internet access, health insurance, tax ID—the full immigration package.Thanks to the relocation managers, it had been almost suspiciously easy; in most cases, all she had to do was sign.

What proved much harder to track down, however, were the safety documents.

No one quite knew where PolyNeo’s files had ended up, and the central EHS team at EX wasn’t responding to her queries.Even access to EX’s internal network was limited.Gerhardt, the IT guy, could only shrug.“Apparently there’s some firewall rule because we’re in Maasburg, and the IT protocols in the Netherlands are different—at least that’s what Madison says, our EX contact over there.”

The technicians had a working theory: since the small pilot plant was located on university property, it was possible the documentation had been archived under academic jurisdiction.It made sense—especially given that Garry had never exactly followed a clear governance line when setting up the site.

So, under a blue sky and warm sun, Timea, Lin, and Hamo rode out to the plant by bike, dodging hurried students on overcrowded cycle paths.Arriving at the building, Timea reached for her safety goggles. The steel-toe shoes they were already wearing—this was a well-trained crew.

At first glance, the small pilot hall looked bare and functional—exposed concrete, grey walls—but the equipment inside was impressive.A 50-liter reactor, multiple vacuum dryers, and a rotavap on steroids—affectionately dubbed “The Roti.”Normally, you’d see the device in a one-liter version, used for gently evaporating solvents in university labs.Here, though, stood the industrial beast: a 10-liter glass flask, motorized lift system, and a cooling trap the size of a beer keg.Built for large-scale solvent removal—efficient, quiet, and intimidatingly professional.

There was more: heating baths, dosing pumps, ultrasonic cleaners, a lab dishwasher with its own drying cabinet.Chemical cabinets stood neatly in a row, everything labeled, floor markings crisp and clear.The three technicians—Lin, Hamo, and Arjan—were visibly proud of the setup.

“We’ve spent months getting everything in shape,” said Lin.“Checked every fitting, every pipe, every sensor.”Hamo grinned. “If Garry left us a mess, we cleaned it up.”

Timea crossed her arms and studied the reactor, pointing casually at the relatively narrow exhaust duct.“How many cubic meters of airflow does that handle?” she asked.

Lin scratched his head.