Lisa sat at her sleek, minimalist workstation on the 42nd floor. Around her, other engineers worked in a hushed, terrified silence, but Lisa felt a strange surge of adrenaline. Michael Sheng Xi was exactly the kind of "unsolvable problem" she loved.
She pulled up the main server logs, her fingers dancing across the interface. She had a family to feed, yes, but she wasn't going to be a ghost in the machine.
"Hey, new girl," a colleague whispered from the next pod, looking over his shoulder. "You're still breathing? Usually, after a first meeting with the Boss, people are looking for the nearest exit."
Lisa didn't look up from her screen. "He's just a man with a very expensive desk and a lack of social grace. The hardware is much more interesting."
The Shadow in the Code
While digging through the robotics sub-routines, Lisa noticed something odd a hidden partition in the MKU mainframe that wasn't listed in the official blueprints. It was encrypted with a high-level military-grade sequence. Her pride piqued. Most people would have ignored it to stay safe, but Lisa saw a challenge.
If I can't see it, I can't optimize it, she reasoned.
She began a silent, non-invasive ping of the partition. She wasn't trying to break in not yet but she wanted to see how the "beast" reacted. Suddenly, her screen flickered. A single line of crimson text scrolled across her monitor:
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED. EYE TRACKING ACTIVATED.
Her heart skipped, but she didn't pull her hands away. She leaned in.
Back in the Obsidian Office
Michael Sheng Xi hadn't returned to his coding. He was leaning back in his chair, staring at a private security feed. On his secondary monitor, a notification was flashing: someone was poking at his private "Mafia" server the one that handled the logistics MKU was never supposed to know about.
He expected it to be a corporate spy or a rival syndicate. Instead, the camera feed showed the calm, focused face of the girl who had just insulted his elevator dampeners.
"Lisa," he murmured, the name feeling sharp on his tongue.
He didn't hit the alarm. He didn't call security. Instead, he opened a direct comms channel to her workstation, his voice dropping into that dangerously low, rude tone.
"You have exactly ten seconds to justify why you are probing a restricted sector, Lisa. If the answer isn't perfect, you won't just be unemployed. You'll be erased."