Chapter 18: The Dummy File Discovery

Kaelen's POV

It had been raining all the way back to Melbourne.

It beat continuously against the glass of my penthouse office on the forty-second floor, producing a steady and dull throb that mirrored the deep ache spreading in my chest.

Below, the city stretched out like a grid of lights.

I didn't care about the market or the board members sending frantic messages to my phone.

My whole world had been reduced to a single terminal screen placed on my finely polished obsidian desk.

The rChasm attempt at Devil’s Chasm had produced nothing but debris.

Neither Valkyrie nor Lachlan were on the footbridge when it collapsed into the turbulent gorge; instead, it was another skillful and accurate ghost move that had given Hamish Croft three hours' head start.

By the time my security teams swept the southern access road, the tracks had already been washed clean by the storm surge.

She had slipped through my fingers again.

"Sir?" Devlin asked, his voice coming from the closed door sounding cautious, stripped of its usual tech-savvy confidence.

He walked into the dimly lit room, carrying a warm tablet, his face showing signs of exhaustion.

"I've managed to isolate the original 2022 Vance Global leak files, the ones stored in your mother's private vault."

“Put them on the main array,” I said in a low voice, without any warmth.

Devlin tapped his tablet, and the huge wall-mounted monitor flashed with two descending columns of blue hex code and file trees.

To the left was the official forensic report that had been used four years ago to destroy Valkyrie, the indictment that labelled her a corporate mercenary for selling our proprietary core to our fiercest European competitors.

To the right was the raw source payload which Devlin had retrieved from her off-grid server.

"I've carried out a line-by-line hash comparison between the header of the stolen file and the framework that Aegis ran on yesterday," Devlin murmured, stepping up to the edge of the desk, "Mr. Vance... something doesn't make sense."

I leaned forward, my eyes following the flickering lines of code. "Spill it out, Devlin."

"Four years ago, your mother's cybersecurity audit stated Valkyrie had downloaded the live, operational source code for the Vance Energy Grid Version 4.2," Devlin explained, pointing a finger at the left column, "the file that circulated on the black market, the file that caused the board to pass its emergency vote taking away your executive powers and, as a result, forced her out."

"I knew about the file," the memory burned like acid in my throat. “I spent six months writing mathematical architecture."

"Yes, but if you look at the real compiler logs in the raw payload," Devlin whispered, as he focused on a small piece of isolated assembly code embedded deep within the secondary directory.

"The file that was extracted from her laptop four years ago wasn't version 4.2."

I froze. "What?"

"It's a dummy file, sir," Devlin said, lowering his voice to a tone of full realization.

"It's a mirror trap; a high-level sandbox decoy constructed to appear as the core framework to anyone who scans the top-level directories. However, if you actually compile it, the encryption keys will self-terminate after twenty-four hours. The file is completely useless for commercial deployment."

I stood up slowly, placing my hands heavily on the desk as I looked at the screen.

"It's a decoy," I whispered, my mind spinning into a violent and disorienting state. "What reason would a mercenary have for stealing a useless decoy?"

"Stealing it with a view to selling it was not the objective, Mr. Vance," Devlin said, his eyes wide behind his glasses.

"The person who downloaded the file from your private server four years ago did not have administrative access to the live encryption and wasn't aware of the difference between the real framework and the sandbox trap. Valkyrie, on the other hand, was."

Valkyrie stayed with me in this office for eight months as I was developing the engine; she knew about the sandbox trap since then and had helped me name the directory.

If her intention were to betray me, if she had wanted to sell Vance Global to the highest bidder, she would have taken the live Version 4.2 files which were on my primary drive; she would never have chosen a dummy file that would expire after twenty-four hours.

"Unless she didn't take it at all," I whispered, the words coming out of my mouth like pieces of broken glass.

"No," Devlin confirmed in a soft voice.

"Another person used her compromised administrative credentials to d******d the dummy file, dropped it on her personal laptop in St. Kilda motel, and then gave the forensic report to your mother's legal team before the file had expired."

A feeling of intense doubt arose in my chest as it took hold of my soul.

Everything I had based my beliefs on- thethe hatred that had kept me going, each of the cold nights I had spent cursing her name while holding her platinum wedding band in the dark was built on a deliberate lie.

She never sold my life's work, and she had not ruined me in order to get a payday.

She was framed using a dummy file while my mother held her sister's medical care over her head as an executioner's blade.

I drew a choking breath, pulling her wedding ring from my coat pocket.

Staring at the thin platinum band lying in my hand, I could feel the metal being cool against my hot skin.

“Rest, Kaelen... it will still be there in the morning.”

Her soft voice resounded in n my mind, so clear and real it seemed as though she were standing behind me in the dark office.

Before I could speak, the private elevator behind my desk gave a sharp ping, breaking the silence in the room.

Victoria Vance, my mother, stepped onto the marble floor wearing a perfectly tailored cream suit, her hair pulled back in a flawless silver braid, radiating perfection, with family guards standing behind her in the elevator

"Kaelen," Victoria said, speaking in a smooth and coldly authoritative tone as she walked over to my desk, the sound of her heels tapping exactly on the stone.

"You've missed the emergency board prep meeting. The directors are down in the lobby. We need to finalize the seizure of that Port Campbell property before the media gets hold of the story."

I turned my head slowly, my eyes locking onto my mother's face with a lethal, terrifying stillness that made even her guards uneasy.

"Tell me about that dummy file, Victoria," I said, my voice falling to a level so low and filled with murderous intent.

She moved closer a bit, closing the distance between us, her sharp blue eyes shifting towards the huge wall monitor showing the isolated compiler logs. Although her expression did not break down, there was a slight, fine twitch at the edge of her mouth.

She took a slow breath, smoothing the front of her cream jacket.

"I don't know the tech fantasy your boy is showing you, Kaelen,” Victoria replied, smoothly stepping closer.

"Valkyrie was a parasite; she was a piece of trash from the docks who tried to suck the family dry. I did what was necessary to keep our reputation safe."

"Did you force her to sign the confession?” I moved round the desk, closed the gap between us until I was standing over her with my shadow covering her entirely.

“Did you threaten to turn off Chloe's life support four years ago?”

"I gave that girl a choice," Victoria hissed softly, her voice dropping to a whisper only I could hear.

"She could take the blame for the leak and then disappear, or I could disconnect her sister's ventilator myself, making sure she spends the rest of her life in a federal penitentiary. She made the right decision."

A roar of intense and complete agony burst in my brain. My blood felt as if it were liquid fire, my hands tightening into fists, my skin almost torn.

"Where is she at the moment, Victoria?" I snarled, my voice trembling with a dreadful rage. "Where did your people track her to?"

Victoria smiled, a small, cold smile that sent a cold shock directly into my veins.

“My dear boy, it makes no difference where she is," Victoria whispered, reaching into her leather handbag and pulling out a small, sealed legal envelope bearing the crest of the Victorian Supreme Court.

"An hour ago, Dr. Hamish Croft handed her over to federal authorities. She is now in a holding cell at the Central Remand Centre, accused of high treason and corporate espionage.”

She placed the envelope on my desk.

"And if you attempt to pull a single string to set her free," Victoria added, her eyes gleaming with victorious malice, "the medical staff I control at St. Jude’s will switch off the power to Chloe’s room before your car even gets to the courthouse gate."