Chapter 3

At the exact moment I accepted Apex Global’s offer, Sebastian’s company was filled with laughter and celebratory cheer.

Julian was sitting at my old desk, sipping a hand-drip artisan coffee while bragging to several interns about his “glorious days” abroad.

Sebastian pushed the door open, his face flushed with excitement.

“Everyone, stop what you’re doing for a second!

“I’ve got great news for you all.

“Apex Global’s inspection team will be coming to our office in three days!

“As long as our Nebula Algorithm demonstration passes their review, the multi-million-dollar buyout funds from Apex will be wired straight to our account!”

The office immediately erupted into a round of thunderous cheers.

Sebastian walked over to Julian, clapping him affectionately on the shoulder.

“Director Monroe, everything riding on you this time.

“Prepare the demonstration thoroughly. Make sure not a single thing goes wrong.”

Julian pushed up his glasses, bursting with confidence.

“Rest assured, Mr. Carter. It’s just underlying source code—I’ve already mastered every bit of it.

“I guarantee we’ll blow the people from Apex away.”

Sebastian left, thoroughly satisfied.

The moment Julian turned back around, however, the smile vanished from his face completely.

He clicked onto his computer screen.

Staring at the dense, wall-to-wall lines of core code that looked like an unreadable ancient language, a layer of cold sweat slowly broke out across his forehead.

Julian stared blankly at the chaotic, gibberish-like underlying logic on the monitor, his throat swallowing with great difficulty.

He downed two large gulps of iced water to force down the panic rising in his chest.

“So what if there aren’t any code comments?

“Self-taught hacks like him always have atrocious coding habits.”

Comforting himself, he turned and called over two newly hired interns.

“You two, re-encapsulate the API interfaces for these modules and make them look more high-end.

“The internal dry run is tomorrow. Don’t embarrass me.”

Looking at the mess of code where even the variable names were written in abbreviated shorthand, the two interns exchanged nervous glances, but they had no choice but to bite the bullet and take the task.

Julian let out a long sigh of relief and adjusted the tie of his tailored designer suit.

As long as the presentation slides looked slick enough, who would care about how the back-end actually ran anyway?

With only twenty-four hours left before Apex Global’s arrival, Sebastian sat at the head of the conference table, a cup of coffee in hand, anticipation written all over his face.

“Director Monroe, let’s begin the internal rehearsal.

“Show us the results of your world-class expertise.”

Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, Julian forced a smile and walked up to the podium.

He opened the exquisite presentation slides he had spent countless hours polishing.

“Mr. Carter, esteemed colleagues.

“After my complete re-architecture over the past few days, the Nebula Algorithm has officially reached top-tier Silicon Valley standards.

“Now, I will demonstrate the real-time processing of our core data.”

Taking a deep breath, he pressed the enter key.

The progress bar on the screen began to climb agonizingly slowly.

Ten percent.

Twenty percent.

Suddenly, the giant display screen flickered violently.

Immediately after, a piercing, high-pitched buzz rang out.

The progress bar froze dead at thirty percent before the entire screen turned into a grim blue screen of death.

A dead, suffocating silence fell over the conference room.

Sebastian slammed the cup in his hand onto the conference table with a heavy thud, splashing hot coffee across the surface.

“What the hell is going on?!”

Frightened out of his wits, Julian trembled all over as he frantically tried to reboot the system.

No matter what he tried, the system was like a corpse—completely unresponsive.

The server racks in the back room even started letting out a strained, overburdened screech, and a thin wisp of black smoke began drifting from the server tower.

Sebastian lost his temper completely. He pointed his finger straight at Julian’s nose, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Julian! What the hell did you do?!”