The CRITICAL THREAT notification from the System was a cold, constant presence in Leo's vision for the rest of the day. Evelyn Reed was a bug in his perfect code, an incorruptible variable in an equation he was trying to rig. His Data Mirage skill, so powerful against executives who wanted to believe a good story, was a clumsy, fragile tool against a woman whose entire professional existence was dedicated to shattering them.
He knew that if Evelyn ever turned her analytical gaze onto his PMO project, she wouldn't just find flaws; she would find the void at its center. A direct confrontation was suicide. A battle of fabricated data was a war he was guaranteed to lose.
He sat in his office late into the night, the city lights a silent, glittering audience. He had to change the game. If Evelyn's weapon was truth, he would have to find a truth more powerful than hers.
A notification from the System shimmered, not a quest, but a piece of strategic advice, a rare occurrence.
[Strategic Hint: The most effective lie is not a fabrication. It is a carefully selected, ruthlessly presented truth.] [Objective Updated: Neutralize the Inquisitor by co-opting her methodology.]
A slow, cold understanding dawned on Leo. He couldn't create a better lie. But he could create a better truth.
The next morning, he called a private meeting with Ben and Anna. His two lieutenants, now conditioned to his methods, listened with rapt attention.
"Our current strategy is insufficient," Leo stated, his voice devoid of preamble. "We are being audited, not by the company, but by a rival. We need to shift from innovation to consolidation."
He turned to Ben. "I want a full resource audit of Eleanor Vance's and Mark Jennings's departments for the entire quarter. I need server logs, man-hour reports, project allocation sheets, everything. I want to know the exact cost, down to the kilowatt-hour, of every single report they've produced."
Ben, the old cynic, gave a slow, predatory grin. He was being asked to do what he did best: find the rot in the system.
"Anna," Leo continued, his eyes locking onto hers. "You will run a parallel analysis. I want you to cross-reference every project from our rivals' departments with the official corporate strategy memos from the executive board. I want to know how many of their projects were direct responses to executive requests, and how many were self-generated, low-impact busywork. I want a full accounting of their wasted effort."
Anna, who had once been a pawn in a similar game, nodded, her expression one of fierce, focused loyalty. She understood perfectly. This was not about data. This was about building a case.
For the next week, Leo's department became a silent, ruthlessly efficient engine of corporate espionage, but they used only publicly available, internal data. They weren't hacking systems; they were simply reading the story the company's own bureaucracy was telling.
The final report was a masterpiece of weaponized truth. It was only five pages long, but each page was a dagger.
It showed, with undeniable, timestamped proof, that Eleanor Vance's department had spent over 1,200 man-hours producing forty-three separate analytical reports. Of those, thirty-five were unsolicited, and only three had ever been cited in an executive-level meeting. The net result was a calculated "Productivity Burn Rate" of over half a million dollars in wasted salary and resources.
The report on Mark Jennings was even more brutal. It showed that his department's travel and entertainment budget had increased by 60% as he scrambled to build political alliances, while his department's actual project output had decreased by 20%. It included a beautifully simple chart that showed a perfect inverse correlation between his networking efforts and his team's actual performance.
Leo compiled it all under a sterile, unassuming title: Inter-Departmental Q3 Efficiency Review.
He did not send it to the executives. He didn't need to. At 4:59 p.m. on Friday, he sent the report directly to three people: Eleanor Vance, Mark Jennings, and Evelyn Reed.
He leaned back in his chair. The game was no longer about defending his lies; it was about prosecuting his rivals with their own, inconvenient truths. He had become the auditor.