Pounding his fist against the polished oak desk, Kaelen felt a tremor run through his entire body. Not from the impact, but from the icy dread coiling in his gut. “Explain this!” His voice, usually a controlled rumble, was a raw shout. Derek, his head of IT, stood rigidly opposite, face pale. Sweat beaded on his forehead, tracking paths through his neat side-parting. “Sir, the core project files for Project Chimera… they’re gone. Corrupted beyond recovery. It appears to be a targeted attack.” Gone. Millions of dollars. Thousands of man-hours. The entire future of Thorne Industries’ most ambitious new venture, wiped out in a digital blink. This wasn't a glitch. This wasn’t an accident. Kaelen’s mind instantly replayed Sterling’s smirk at the board meeting, the thinly veiled threats. Someone was playing a very dangerous game. “A targeted attack?” Kaelen leaned forward, knuckles white as they gripped the desk's edge. “What kind of attack? Malware? A virus? Who could have access?” Derek swallowed hard. “Not standard malware. It’s highly sophisticated. Almost surgical. It wiped the primary data, the backups, and even the off-site mirrors in a synchronized cascade. It left no trace, no signature.” Impossible. Every system had a trace. Every action left a ghost in the machine. Kaelen’s eyes narrowed. “Get every IT specialist, every cybersecurity expert on this. I want answers, Derek. Yesterday. Lock down every external connection. No one leaves until we have a lead.” Nodding frantically, Derek practically bolted from the office. Frustration burned through Kaelen’s veins. He ran a hand through his hair, pacing the expansive office. This wasn't just a setback; it was a declaration of war. Sterling Thorne had made it clear he would stop at nothing to undermine Kaelen. Could he be this brazen? To attack the company’s very foundation? Moments later, Elara appeared at his door, her expression tight with concern. She must have heard the commotion. “Kaelen? What happened? The entire IT department looks like a war zone.” He stopped, turning to face her. Seeing her steady gaze, a flicker of an idea sparked. Her technical acumen was legendary, even if she rarely showcased it anymore. “Project Chimera data is gone. Completely wiped. They’re calling it a targeted attack.” Her eyes widened. “Wiped? How is that even possible with Thorne’s security protocols?” “That’s what I intend to find out,” he stated, his voice a low growl. “Do you think you could… take a look? Your perspective might be different.” Without hesitation, Elara nodded. “Lead the way.” They descended to the buzzing, high-stress environment of the IT floor. Monitors glowed with lines of code, faces were etched with panic, and hushed conversations filled the air. Elara moved with purpose, heading straight for Derek. “Can you give me access to the logs? Network traffic, server access, anything related to the Chimera project servers in the last 48 hours,” she requested, her tone calm but authoritative. Derek, still frazzled, quickly granted her administrative privileges. He watched, along with several other technicians, as Elara settled into an empty workstation. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, a blur of motion. She delved into the digital forensics, not looking for the immediate cause of the wipe, but for the ghost of what came before. She ignored the obvious indicators of the destruction, instead focusing on the subtle anomalies. Hours bled into one another. Lunch came and went, untouched. Elara’s brow furrowed in concentration, her gaze fixed on the screen, lines of code scrolling endlessly. Kaelen watched from a respectful distance, a knot of anxiety tightening in his chest. He knew this was a long shot, but if anyone could find something, it was her. “The attack wasn’t external,” Elara murmured, her voice barely a whisper, pulling Kaelen closer. “It bypassed the firewalls, the intrusion detection. It started inside.” Kaelen’s jaw tightened. He knew it. This was an inside job. Sterling, or someone Sterling had planted. “Look here,” she pointed to a cluster of timestamps in a rarely accessed system log. “The wipe sequence initiated almost simultaneously across all data points. But the trigger… it didn’t come from a main server. Or an administrator account.” She kept digging, following a faint, almost invisible digital breadcrumb trail. Most people would have dismissed it as background noise, but Elara’s keen eye caught the pattern. “There was a remote connection established just before the wipe,” she explained, tracing a line of data with her finger. “A very brief, almost untraceable connection. It pinged from an internal IP address.” An internal IP. That narrowed it down significantly. Every device in Thorne Industries had one. Every employee with access to the network left a digital signature. Elara’s fingers danced again, cross-referencing, filtering, eliminating. She moved through layers of network topology, past standard user accounts, past the IT team’s dedicated machines. Her breath hitched. She froze, her eyes widening slightly as she stared at the screen. “Kaelen…” she whispered, the name catching in her throat. He was by her side instantly, leaning over her shoulder. “What is it?” “The IP address,” she pointed, her voice barely audible. “It belongs to… a workstation on the 15th floor. In the archives section.” The 15th floor. Archives. That area was mostly decommissioned, used only for long-term storage of physical documents. Digital access there was minimal, if not entirely obsolete. No one had worked on the 15th floor for months, perhaps years. “But that workstation…” Elara continued, her voice filled with a mixture of disbelief and dread. “The last recorded login on that specific machine was less than an hour before the attack.” Her gaze met Kaelen’s, a chilling realization dawning on both of them. Someone had used an old, forgotten terminal, deep within the heart of Thorne Industries, to launch the devastating attack. And they had been there, physically, just hours before.

Chapter 22: Sabotage in the Ranks