Chapter 3

The elevator doors slid open.

Sub-basement level three.

The air was thick with the suffocating stench of mildew and rotting paper.

A hundred sealed cardboard boxes were stacked clear up to the ceiling.

I pulled out the cracked plastic stool.

I set the ancient laptop onto the dust-caked wooden table.

It took three presses of the power button before the flickering screen finally sputtered to life.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my burner phone.

I opened a hidden monitoring portal.

A bright red progress bar pulsed across the screen.

It was a server-side surveillance probe I had coded myself years ago.

The memory load was skyrocketing in real-time.

Eighty-five percent.

Eighty-eight percent.

I chuckled under my breath.

Ten years ago, when this company was born in a garage, we didn't even have a dedicated server room.

I stayed awake for thirty straight nights, typing out the foundational architecture line by line.

Three years ago, when an overseas cyber-attack hit us, I led the emergency defense.

I completely isolated the core database behind physical air-gapped security protocols.

To prevent internal data theft, the protocol was absolute:

Every day at precisely two in the afternoon, my personal hardware security token had to be plugged into the mainboard for manual clearance and routine maintenance.

It was now two-ten PM.

Without my physical hardware key hooked into the motherboard, cache data would pile up exponentially.

Within twenty minutes, the entire system would suffer total memory deadlock.

Outside, footsteps echoed in the concrete hallway.

Kyle strutted in, accompanied by his influencer sidekick, Chloe.

Chloe pinched her nose with exaggerated disgust.

"Ugh, Kyle, it smells repulsive down here."

"A rotten dungeon like this is the only place that fits an old fossil with one foot in the grave."

Kyle, decked out in his pristine Armani suit, kicked the nearest cardboard box.

It tipped over, spilling yellowed, dusty paperwork across the floor.

"Marcus, stop daydreaming!"

"Ten of these boxes must be keyed in before you leave today."

"Two hundred dollars deducted for every single typo."

"If you don't finish, you're marked down for unauthorized absence, and your severance is forfeited."

I looked down at the ruined documents on the floor.

"Kyle, these records passed their ten-year statutory retention limit years ago."

"It's literal garbage."

"Making me manually transcribe them is nothing but deliberate harassment."

Kyle burst out laughing.

He whipped out the latest iPhone, flipped the camera on, and pointed it straight in my face.

"Hey guys, welcome to workplace reality check!" he said into the camera.

"This slacker makes six figures sitting around doing nothing all day."

"Watch me teach this veteran moocher what real work looks like!"

Chloe chimed in with her high-pitched, fake voice.

"You tell him, Kyle!"

"Gen Z doesn't tolerate lazy corporate freeloaders."

"Did you really think the company couldn't survive without you old relics?"

I shifted away from the lens, looking calmly at Kyle’s smug grin.

"Kyle, do you really think filming TikTok clips is productive?"

"I'm an original equity holder in this firm."

"You have no legal right to exploit my likeness like this."

Kyle lowered the phone, sneering with raw condescension.

"Shareholder?"

"Those options aren't vested or cashed out yet."

"My whole goal is to run you out of here."

"Your twenty-one million will look much better spent on a limited-edition Ferrari for me."

"My dad is the Chairman. This entire company belongs to my family. My word is law!"

Chloe stepped forward holding an iced Americano.

As she reached my desk, she deliberately tilted her wrist.

The dark coffee splashed squarely across the stack of documents I had just opened.

The brown liquid soaked through the brittle pages, turning the ink into unreadable blurs.

Chloe covered her mouth in mock horror.

"Oops! My hand slipped!"

"So sorry, Director Carter. Those words are a bit smudged now, so you'd better read carefully."

"Any mistakes will count against your performance!"

I stared at the mess on the desk.

I didn't lose my temper.

There was no point in getting angry at two dead men walking.

I pulled out a napkin and methodically wiped the coffee splatters from my knuckles.

"Whatever makes you happy, Kyle."

"But as your former Chief Technology Officer, let me give you one final heads-up."

"It's two-fifteen."

"Memory load on the main cluster has likely breached ninety percent."

"In less than ten minutes, the entire platform is going to crash."

Kyle froze for a split second, then barked out a laugh.

"Marcus, save the ghost stories."

"AI is everywhere now. Any one-click diagnostic script can fix basic server lag."

"I already assigned Kevin to take over your tasks."

"He's an MIT grad, top of his class."

"He costs me four grand a month, and he can outcode you with his eyes closed."

Before he could finish his sentence, frantic footsteps slammed down the concrete stairwell.

Toby burst into the basement, drenched in cold sweat.

He was gasping for air.

"Mr. Sterling! Marcus! Everything's falling apart!"

"The user payment gateway is completely frozen!"

"Customer support lines are melting down with thousands of complaints!"

Kyle's face tightened, but he fought to keep his composure.

"What's the panic?!"

"If it's lagging, just reboot the damn server!"

"You came running all the way down here for something that simple?"

Toby slapped his own thighs in sheer desperation.

"We can't reboot!"

"Kevin hit the backend purge command, and the system threw an error saying the physical security token was missing!"

"It triggered the kernel-level defense lockdown!"

"Every single background thread is trapped in an irreversible deadlock!"