Returning to my apartment felt like a spy coming in from the cold, except my clandestine operation had taken place in a series of chain coffee shops and my only backup was a ghost. The encrypted USB drive in my pocket was a dense, heavy secret. It was both my greatest weapon and my most damning piece of evidence. If I were caught with it, no one would believe I was anything other than a corporate blackmailer. I walked through my own front door and bolted it behind me, a ritual that now felt laughably inadequate. The real monsters weren't trying to break in; one was already inside me, and the other was a powerful executive who I had just declared a silent war against.
The first thing I did was check the phone. The countdown timer was a permanent fixture in my vision now, a brand on my consciousness. 28 Days, 11 Hours, 2 Minutes, 45 Seconds. The number was smaller, but my panic was different. Before, it had been the helpless terror of a man waiting for a diagnosis. Now, it was the focused anxiety of a soldier before a battle. The fear was still there, but it was being shouldered aside by a grim, unfamiliar sense of resolve. Jessica's resolve. Her emotions, thanks to my new, five-point skill, were a constant low-hum under the surface of my own. Her rage was a furnace, and it was warming my own cold feet.
I couldn't afford to make a mistake. My campaign against Harold Finch had to be flawless, a series of surgical strikes designed to dismantle his reputation and his sanity before he even knew who was attacking him. This wasn't about revenge anymore; it was about survival.
The next morning, my psychological warfare campaign began in earnest. I left my apartment at dawn, taking a different 'L' train line to a part of the city I rarely visited. I ended up at a public library on the South Side, a grand old building with high ceilings and the comforting smell of old paper. It was the perfect place to be anonymous. No one looks twice at a guy hunched over a laptop in a library.
I fired up the burner Chromebook, connected to the library's public Wi-Fi through my VPN, and began to assemble my list of targets. A simple data dump was too crude. I needed to send personalized poison darts. With Jessica's emotional guidance—a sharp spike of cold, vindictive pleasure when I landed on a promising name—I identified the four key people who could turn Harold Finch's life into a living hell.
Target #1: Marcus Thorne, Executive Vice President of Product Development. Finch's direct superior. According to a fawning profile I found in a business journal, Thorne was a ruthless corporate climber who valued results and had no tolerance for scandals that could tarnish his own reputation. He was the king, and Finch was merely one of his barons.
Target #2: Cynthia Wu, Head of Human Resources. HR is the nervous system of any corporation. They are privy to every complaint, every rumor, every dirty secret. If I could plant a seed of doubt with her, official channels of inquiry could be opened that would be difficult for Finch to evade.
Target #3: Eleanor Vance, Independent Board Member. I found her through the company's investor relations page. A former federal judge, her entire public persona was built on a reputation for unimpeachable ethics and corporate governance. She was the company's conscience, at least on paper. An anonymous tip about a potential murder cover-up would be something she couldn't ignore without risking her own legacy.
Target #4: David Chen, Director of Software Engineering. This name came directly from Jessica. When I focused my thoughts on Finch's rivals, her emotional response flared with a complex mix of respect and regret. Chen was brilliant, ambitious, and had been Finch's primary competitor for the promotion that Finch had stolen. Jessica had liked him. He was the one person in that corporate snake pit who had treated her like a peer. He would have the motivation and the technical knowledge to recognize the truth if he saw it.
With my targets selected, I began to craft the emails. Each one was a masterpiece of insinuation, designed to sound like a disgruntled but knowledgeable insider. I used my anonymous email address, [email protected]—the truth, now. It felt appropriately dramatic.
To Marcus Thorne, the EVP: Subject: A Question About Project Nightingale Mr. Thorne, Are you aware of the true origins of Project Nightingale? The official story is incomplete. Harold Finch's success has a foundation you might want to investigate before it becomes a liability to your division. A concerned employee.
To Cynthia Wu in HR: Subject: Confidential Concern re: J. Miller Ms. Wu, For your records. It would be prudent to review the circumstances surrounding the departure of Jessica Miller six months ago, and the subsequent accolades given to Harold Finch. The timeline of events and project handovers does not align. Some secrets are a greater liability than others.
To Eleanor Vance, the board member: Subject: An Ethical Blind Spot Judge Vance, Your reputation for integrity is why I'm writing this. Innovate Solutions may have a serious ethical and legal problem brewing on your 34th floor. Look closely into Project Nightingale and the real contributions of the late Jessica Miller. Some successes come at too high a cost.
And finally, to David Chen, the rival: Subject: You were robbed. Mr. Chen, Project Nightingale should have been yours. Finch is a fraud. Jessica Miller did the foundational work and he stole it, just like he stole the promotion from you. Don't let him get away with it.
With each email I typed, I felt Jessica's presence surge. The cold in my chest sharpened with a grim, triumphant satisfaction. It was as if my fingers on the keyboard were extensions of her will, crafting the very daggers that would avenge her. I hit "send" on the last email and felt a wave of dizziness. The emotional feedback was draining. I leaned back in the hard library chair, my work done for the day. The whispers were out in the world. The seeds of paranoia had been planted.
The next two days were agonizing. The waiting was a unique form of torture. I had lit the fuses and now all I could do was wait for the explosions, big or small. I obsessively checked the news for any mention of Innovate Solutions. I scrolled through LinkedIn, looking for any change in the corporate chatter. Nothing. The silence was deafening, and my own anxiety began to spiral. What if it hadn't worked? What if the emails were dismissed as spam, filtered out before they were even read? What if Finch's power and influence were too great to be challenged by a few anonymous emails?
I could feel Jessica's emotional state mirroring my own. Her hopeful energy was curdling into an anxious, impatient frustration. The cold in my chest felt agitated, a swirling vortex of doubt.
On the third day, I got a sign. It wasn't a news headline. It was something much smaller, much more satisfying. Harold Finch, who hadn't posted on his professional LinkedIn profile in months, suddenly published a short, aggressive article.
The title was: "On Leadership and Resiliency in the Face of Baseless Corporate Rumors."
The post was a thinly veiled tirade against "anonymous cowards" and "the corrosive effect of backstabbing." He talked about "disgruntled elements" trying to "undermine team success." He didn't mention any names or specifics, but he didn't have to. The post reeked of defensiveness. It was the desperate public statement of a man who knew the walls were starting to whisper his name. My emails had landed. They had hit him hard enough to make him bleed in public.
A grin spread across my face. It was a cold, unfamiliar expression, more of a baring of teeth than a smile. We had him. He was rattled.
He's scared, I felt Jessica's triumphant thought echo in my mind. The cold in my chest pulsed with a steady, predatory beat. Good.
I was about to close the laptop when the black phone in my pocket vibrated with an unfamiliar, urgent pattern. It wasn't the soft ping of an objective update. It was a demanding, continuous buzz. I pulled it out. A new notification dominated the screen, flashing with a red, high-priority banner.
[New Priority Assignment Issued. Ectoplasmic Disturbance Detected - Level 4] [Location: Lincoln Park. The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool.] [Brief: A non-human, predatory entity is disrupting the local spiritual ecosystem and poses a threat to civilian life. Neutralize the threat immediately.] [Acceptance is mandatory. Failure to respond within one hour will result in a 100 Merit Point penalty.]
I stared at the screen, my blood running cold for an entirely new reason. A non-human entity? A hundred-point penalty? I had five points. A penalty like that would put me in a Merit Point debt so deep I'd never crawl out of it.
My carefully constructed plan to dismantle Harold Finch's life had just been violently interrupted. The bureaucracy of the afterlife, it seemed, didn't care if I was in the middle of something. My job had just called, and I was being assigned a new, far more dangerous case.