Chapter 4

Kyle glared at me.

"Marcus, give me your physical security key!"

He lunged forward to search my suit pockets.

I stood up abruptly and pushed him back.

"Back off, Mr. Vance."

"My security key is only registered to the Chairman."

"Since you're forcing me out, I have zero obligation to hand it over."

Kyle stumbled back a step.

His face turned red with rage.

He pointed a shaking finger at me.

"Marcus! Did you plant malware in the system?!"

"I will literally call the police and have you thrown in federal prison!"

I sat back down on my plastic stool, not even blinking.

"Watch your mouth, Kyle."

"That is the highest level of cybersecurity protection, designed to prevent hacker attacks."

"Your father signed off on it himself."

"The documentation and code are fully registered with the company."

"If you don't understand tech, don't throw wild accusations around."

Chloe tugged at Kyle's sleeve.

"Kyle, don't let him bluff you."

"He's just trying to blackmail you."

"It's just a stupid USB drive. Why don't we just have Leo pull the power cord and force-reboot the servers?"

Kyle's eyes lit up.

"Exactly!"

"It's just a server. Unplug it and plug it back in!"

"Toby, go back up right now and tell Leo."

"Pull the damn plug!"

Toby's face went completely pale.

He stared at Kyle in disbelief.

"Mr. Vance! You absolutely cannot do that!"

"This is our peak transaction hour!"

"If we force a shutdown, over two million active transactions in the cache will be permanently lost!"

"The liability claims alone could bankrupt us!"

Kyle kicked Toby's leg in frustration.

"Shut up!"

"Are you the Vice President or am I?"

"I'll take the responsibility!"

"Go pull the plug right now!"

Toby stumbled back.

He gave me a panicked, desperate look.

I gave him a subtle shake of my head.

Signaling him to protect himself.

In the corporate world.

You never go head-to-head with a brainless boss when he's on a power trip.

Toby gritted his teeth, turned around, and ran back upstairs.

The basement fell silent once again.

The moldy smell seemed to grow even heavier.

Kyle turned to me, a smug grin plastered on his face.

"See that, Marcus?"

"Your era is over."

"I don't need you to solve this!"

"Once the system reboots, you're going to spend the rest of your life doing grunt work down here!"

Chloe leaned her head on Kyle's shoulder.

"You're so right, Kyle."

"Useless old men like him belong in the trash anyway."

"He really thought he was hot shit."

I looked down at my phone.

The clock struck exactly 2:20 PM.

On the hidden webpage.

The red RAM usage hit 99%.

The moment Leo pulled the plug on the main server upstairs.

The massive, interrupted data surge would completely fry the motherboard.

Not only would the active cache be wiped out.

But the off-site backup servers would also trigger a physical self-destruct mechanism to protect data integrity.

Ten years of core company data.

Wiped out in a single second.

A loss that hundreds of millions of dollars couldn't fix.

I took a slow, calm sip of my lukewarm water.

"Kyle."

"You really are a dutiful son."

"Your father's life's work is about to be utterly destroyed by your own hands."

Kyle lost his mind. He pointed at my face and screamed,

"You old bastard! All you have is a big mouth!"

"I'm going upstairs to watch Leo fix the system."

"Let's see what smartass comment you have then!"

He grabbed Chloe and stormed toward the elevator.

I watched them leave, a cold smile forming on my face.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

I counted down silently.

Three.

Two.

One.

Suddenly, a deafening screech echoed from upstairs.

And then.

Every light in the building went pitch black.

The high-pitched wail of the server room's emergency backup generators pierced through the floors.

Echoing loudly in the dark basement.