Chapter 1

Sonia Blake laughed as I had just told the funniest joke she'd heard all year.

"Beg you? Ethan, are you still half asleep?"

She pulled the termination agreement back across the table, checked my signature, and smiled with obvious satisfaction.

"This company will keep running no matter who leaves. You think far too highly of yourself."

Grant Palmer, my direct supervisor, leaned back on the couch and put his feet on the coffee table.

"Ethan, for old times' sake, let me give you some advice.

"Once you walk out that door, don't tell people you were fired. It's embarrassing. Say it was for health reasons and you're taking some time off."

He tapped the folder beside him.

"And Polaris is company property. I'll have the technical team take over maintenance. You can leave without worrying about it."

I looked at the two clowns in front of me.

One was an HR director whose greatest skill was office politics.

The other was a department head who could barely tell Java from C++.

Velocity Technologies was valued at roughly three billion dollars.

Did they really think that valuation came from people like them drinking coffee and forwarding emails?

No.

It came from the high-frequency trading algorithms I'd spent years building into Polaris, and from the market share my team had fought to win.

Nearly eighty percent of the company's profit came from automated trading powered by the platform.

And I was the only person in the entire company who fully understood it.

Ironically, that also made me the company's biggest revenue generator.

In our business, technology was sales.

I stood and removed my badge.

"Take good care of Polaris, Grant. She's temperamental."

I dropped the badge into the trash.

"Try not to come crying to me when you can't keep her running."

Grant burst out laughing and pointed at me.

"Who do you think you are, Steve Jobs? Bill Gates?

"There's a line of PhDs outside who would kill for your desk. You think I can't manage a bunch of code?

"Get out. Looking at you is ruining my day."

I said nothing else.

I turned around, opened the door, and walked out without looking back.

The moment I stepped out of the building, I pulled out my phone and opened a black app.

The remote status panel for Polaris appeared.

SYSTEM ONLINE.

CURRENT LOAD: 120%.

I'd pushed the platform hard to prepare for the coming year-end trading surge.

But there was one maintenance requirement nobody else understood.

Every twenty-four hours, the system needed a manual administrator verification tied to me.

Without it, Polaris would enter a protective shutdown.

Grant would have called that "self-destruct."

I called it the result of firing the only administrator before listening to the handoff.

My finger hovered over the screen for a second.

Then I tapped LOG OUT PERMANENTLY.

WARNING: IF THIS ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT IS REMOVED, POLARIS WILL LOSE SUPERUSER AUTHORIZATION. CONTINUE?

YES.

The screen went black.

A countdown appeared.

23:59:59.

That was how much time Velocity Technologies had left to figure out what they'd just done.

I hailed a cab.

"Nearest Porsche dealership, please."

The driver glanced at me in the mirror.

"Buying a car?"

"No."

I looked out the window.

"I'm picking up the one I've wanted for a year."

The moment I signed my termination papers, I'd accepted an offer from Velocity's biggest competitor, Nebula Technologies.

Double the salary.

Double the equity.

And a $1.5 million signing bonus.

I'd turned them down for months because I still felt loyal to the people who had built Velocity with me.

Loyalty?

I almost laughed.

What good was that supposed to be now?