Chapter 2

The next morning, Briar was parked at the core engineering console, cackling at a block of code throwing errors on the main monitor.

"Oh my God, this loop bug has been sitting here for three years? No wonder the whole stack runs like turtle."

Her finger hovered over the Enter key, smug as hell.

"I'm patching this out. Deleting it clean."

My scalp went electric.

I bolted across the floor and grabbed her wrist.

"Don't touch that! That isn't a bug. That's a load-balancing patch I wrote to handle legacy hardware!"

My throat was sandpaper. I locked eyes with her.

"It throws errors on purpose. Delete it and every other processing unit goes into overload. The whole system will eat itself."

Briar ripped her arm away and brushed off her sleeve.

"Sloane, just admit you wrote trash code and can't fix it. You're making up words now."

The commotion pulled Vance out of his office, hands behind his back, forehead creased.

"What's the yelling? It's 10 a.m."

I grabbed onto him like a lifeline.

"Vance, Briar is about to delete the throttle patch. It will crash the entire production environment. You have to stop her."

Vance glanced at Briar, then at me. A flicker of hesitation crossed his face.

Briar's lower lip started trembling on cue. Her eyes welled up.

"Vance, she's just jealous. Patching this will boost performance by 20 percent, minimum. She doesn't want me to make the company better."

The hesitation died. Vance turned on me, cold.

"Sloane, give the new generation a chance to innovate. Stop holding us back."

He patted Briar's shoulder. "Go for it, kiddo. Anything breaks, I'll take the heat."

I stood there, paralyzed, as Briar slammed the Enter key.

Every light in the server room died.

The central rack let out a low, grinding hum, and every screen went black.

The whole floor fell silent. Only the emergency LEDs flickered, washing everyone in that sickly white hospital light.

Briar's face went the color of printer paper.

She jumped out of her chair.

"I… I only deleted one line…"

The red phone on Vance's desk started screaming.

That was the direct line to Titan Financial, our biggest client. Fifty million a year in contracts.

Vance fumbled the receiver. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

"Marcus? You're up early."

Marcus's roar leaked through the earpiece so loud I heard every word from ten feet away.

"Vance! We're getting red-flag security alerts from your end! What the hell are you people doing?"

Vance was shaking so hard his knees buckled. Before he could stutter out an excuse, the server rack chimed.

Power returned. The screens flickered back on. The red warnings vanished.

Briar stabbed a finger at the monitor and let out an earsplitting squeal. "It's back! Vance, it rebooted! It worked!"

A green banner scrolled across the display: SYSTEM LOGIC OPTIMIZED.

She ran a performance test. The progress bar flew. The final number froze on the dashboard.

Overall System Efficiency: +30%.

Vance exhaled like he'd just dodged a bullet. His face snapped into customer-service mode.

"Marcus, huge misunderstanding. We were pushing a core upgrade. All systems green now."

He hung up and gestured at the monitor, practically vibrating.

"You see that? You have to break things to build them! Thirty percent, people!"

Briar lifted her chin at me. "Sloane, who was it saying the sky was falling? Your face okay?"

Garrett led the cheer. "Briar is a goddamn rockstar! Not like some people who squat on their chairs and scream about doomsday!"

He shot me a sideways glare. "That's what we call talent. It makes deadweight obvious."

The office erupted. They were popping Veuve Clicquot and doing shots at 10:30 in the morning.

Only I knew the truth. That dashboard wasn't a win.

It was the final dying pulse of a system burning out its own to stay alive.

I walked back to my closet and my phone buzzed. Unknown number. I picked up.

"Ms. Reeves? This is the Chief of Staff at Stellaris Tech. Kellan Cross would like to know if you've reconsidered our offer."

Outside the closet door, they were still howling.

Briar was balanced on a desk, pouring champagne straight down her throat.

"I accept," I said, keeping my voice flat. "But I'm still owed a $200,000 year-end bonus here."

A pause. Then, "Understood. Mr. Cross will handle it personally."

I ended the call and let out a quiet laugh.

Vance. You picked your "prodigy."

Now watch me collect what's mine, and watch your skyscraper burn down from the inside.