Daniel finally seemed to understand the direction of the conversation.
He sat straighter.
“Wait.”
Alexandra held his badge higher.
“No.”
“Ms. Vale.”
“I don’t pay people to sleep.”
Daniel’s exhaustion disappeared just enough for anger to surface.
“Then fire me after you read what kept your company alive.”
The operations floor became silent.
Not executive-tour silent.
Real silent.
People at nearby workstations had stopped typing.
Alexandra stared at him.
“My company?”
Daniel pulled several printed sheets from beneath his keyboard.
They were covered in time stamps and handwritten notes.
He pushed them toward her.
“Read.”
Alexandra did not touch them.
“You’re in no position to give me orders.”
“Then consider it my exit interview.”
Something about his tone bothered her.
Not insolence.
Certainty.
Alexandra glanced at the first page.
03:12.
03:19.
03:22.
04:06.
Thousands of authentication attempts.
Network segments.
Blocked execution calls.
She frowned.
“What is this?”
Daniel looked toward the wall.
“About three seconds from becoming your worst first day.”
Every major monitor turned red.
A warning alarm sounded once.
Then another.
The room erupted.
Engineers spun toward their consoles.
A security analyst stood.
“What happened?”
Daniel pushed himself upright.
“Nothing.”
Someone shouted:
“Core is throwing restart dependency errors.”
“I know.”
Alexandra looked toward the massive display.
Red blocks were appearing across North America.
Europe.
Asia.
Thirty-seven financial connections.
Another engineer called:
“External traffic spiking.”
Daniel said:
“Leave it.”
The Chief Technology Officer finally pushed through the crowd.
“What the hell is happening?”
Daniel looked at him.
“Same thing that’s been happening since Tuesday.”
Alexandra turned sharply.
“Tuesday?”
The CTO stared at Daniel.
“What?”
Daniel’s face changed.
Not surprise.
Disbelief.
“You don’t know?”
The CTO moved toward the console.
“Know what?”
Daniel caught his wrist before he touched the keyboard.
“Don’t.”
The room froze again.
The CTO stared at Daniel’s hand.
“Take your hand off me.”
“Don’t restart anything.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“Possibly.”
Daniel released him.
“But if you restart Core, the payload activates.”
Alexandra stepped between them.
“What payload?”
Daniel pointed toward the red screen.
“A delayed integrity attack.”
The CTO frowned.
“We’ve been dealing with brute-force traffic.”
“That’s camouflage.”
Daniel dragged one monitor around.
A network graph filled it.
“We started getting external probes thirty-nine hours ago.”
“We blocked them.”
“Then more came.”
“Everybody assumed someone was trying to get in.”
“They weren’t.”
Alexandra looked at the lines.
“What were they doing?”
“Making us look outward.”
He pointed toward one internal node.
“The real attack was already authenticated.”
That silenced everyone.