Chapter 6 - The COO’s Shadow
As the weeks progressed, Gideon Vale’s demeanor shifted from condescending curiosity to outright paranoia. He began dropping by my office unannounced, lingering by my desk, asking pointed questions about which accounts I had prioritized during the daily audits. He knew I was getting too close to the truth. One afternoon, while I was examining physical paper invoices stored in the corporate archives on the basement level, the heavy steel fire door slammed shut behind me with a loud, echoing click.
The lock turned from the outside.
Darkness enveloped the windowless archive room as the automated overhead lights flickered and died. Panic threatened to seize my chest, echoing the terror of the night Marigold burned, but I forced myself to breathe evenly, pulling the flashlight from my toolkit. I shone the beam across the towering shelves until I noticed a fresh security override box wired into the main digital breaker. Gideon hadn't just locked me in; he was trying to wipe my local terminal via a remote server surge designed to fry my hard drive. Working with frantic speed, I disconnected the terminal's power supply just as a high-pitched whine emitted from the CPU, saving my encrypted backup files. Ten minutes later, Adrian’s chief of security unlocked the door, having intercepted an unauthorized remote access ping originating from Gideon’s private office.
