Chapter 4: System Reboot

Elara sat frozen in her ergonomic chair, staring at the glowing date on her smartband.

MARCH 14, 2023.

Three years. She had been thrown back three whole years into the past.

She took a slow, deep breath, her eyes darting around her old apartment. It was clutter-free, bright, and completely devoid of Julian’s pretentious minimalist art. On her desk sat a half-empty mug of hazelnut coffee—still warm.

A sudden electronic chime shattered the quiet. Her phone vibrated on the desk, displaying an incoming call:

CALLING: JULIAN (SVP Operations Candidate)

In her past life, seeing his name would have brought a blush to her cheeks. Now, looking at the caller ID made her lips curve into a cold, dangerous smile.

She tapped the screen, answering with a voice so sweet it could give a person cavities. "Morning, Julian."

"Hey, beautiful!" Julian’s voice bubbled with that effortless charm that had once blinded her. "I was just checking in. You mentioned yesterday you were drafting a new framework concept for distributed cloud networks? I was thinking I could drop by, grab us some brunch, and take a look at what you’ve got so far. Maybe help you format the pitch deck?"

Ah. Right on schedule, Elara thought, a quiet giggle escaping her lips. The vulture is already hunting for scraps.

In her previous life, this was the exact day she had shown him the initial math behind Project Aether. He had praised her genius, offered to handle the "business strategy," and slowly wormed his way into controlling her intellectual property.

"Oh, Julian, that's so sweet of you!" Elara said, her tone dripping with exaggerated helplessness. "But actually, I completely abandoned that project."

Silence stretched over the line for a second. "You... abandoned it? Why?"

"Honestly? The math was way too complicated for my little brain," Elara chirped, leaning back and propping her feet up on the desk. "I realized I'm just not cut out for heavy backend development. I decided to pivot! I'm making a mobile app that translates cat meows into emotional English sentences. I'm calling it Purr-fect Translator. What do you think?"

"A... cat translator?" Julian sounded like he had just swallowed a whole lemon. "Elara, you're a senior system architect. You were working on state-level infrastructure algorithms!"

"I know, right? But cats are where the real money is!" Elara laughed, thoroughly enjoying the sheer confusion radiating through the speaker. "Anyway, I have to go! My stepsister Chloe is coming over to help me pick out pastel color palettes for the cat UI. Bye-bye!"

She hung up before he could respond, tossing her phone onto the desk with a satisfying thud.

"Rule number one of system security," Elara whispered to the empty room, her eyes gleaming. "Never let the hacker see your source code."

She immediately turned to her main workstation. Her fingers danced across the mechanical keyboard with terrifying speed. She wasn't just writing code; she was compiling three years of future technology, security vulnerabilities, and market foresight stored directly in her brain.

First order of business: Securing the perimeter.

She created a dummy repository titled Project_Aether_v1 on her primary drive. Inside, she uploaded a beautifully written, highly complex, completely fake algorithmic structure. It looked brilliant on the surface, but deep in its foundation, she built in a dormant logical loop—a mathematical poison pill. Anyone who stole this code and tried to run it in a high-voltage live environment would trigger a complete system meltdown.

A little gift for Chloe and Julian when they inevitably come sniffing around, she thought darkly.

Next, she established a hidden, multi-encrypted decentralised vault using advanced quantum-resistant protocols—tech that wouldn't even be publicly invented for another two years. There, she began drafting the real Project Aether, upgrading it with future neural optimization techniques.

By 2:00 PM, a sharp knock rang at her front door.

Elara adjusted her sweater, putting on her best impression of a naive, stress-free developer, and opened the door.

Chloe stood in the hallway, clutching a designer handbag and wearing a look of rehearsed family affection. "Elara, sweetie! Julian called me in a complete panic. He said you dropped your cloud infrastructure project to make... a cat app?"

"Chloe! Come in, come in!" Elara pulled her inside, beaming. "Yes! Look at this!"

Elara dragged her stepsister over to the monitor, displaying a ridiculous wireframe of a cartoon cat with speech bubbles saying "Feed me, peasant!"

Chloe blinked, staring at the screen in utter disbelief. "Elara... you spent six months researching high-concurrency neural nodes... for this?"

"Inspiration strikes in strange ways!" Elara said cheerfully, patting Chloe's shoulder. "Besides, I left my old project architecture files completely unencrypted on the shared office server. If anyone wants to finish that boring infrastructure stuff, they can just take it. I'm all about pet tech now!"

Chloe’s eyes lit up with a subtle, predatory flicker. She barely managed to hide the greedy smile stretching across her face. "Unencrypted on the shared server? Really?"

"Yep! Right in the public staging folder," Elara said carelessly, picking up her coffee. "Feel free to look through it if you're bored!"

"Oh, you know me, I'm always looking to learn!" Chloe said sweetly, already pulling out her phone to text Julian under her purse.

Elara turned her back to Chloe to sip her coffee, hiding the vicious, triumphant grin that spread across her face.

The trap was laid. The bait was taken.

Now, all Elara needed was a real partner—someone with enough power, money, and ruthlessness to help her crush these two bugs into the dirt. And she knew exactly who to call.