"Eight hundred bucks?" I stared at the red envelope tossed onto my desk. Inside, there was only eight hundred dollars. Over the New Year's holiday, I hadn't gone home. I pulled three consecutive all-nighters to fend off a massive hacker attack, single-handedly saving the company's five billion dollars in assets. My boss, Preston Croft, had been overjoyed and promised me an eight-million-dollar year-end bonus. But just as I stepped out of his office, I overheard his true thoughts from the other side of the mahogany door. "Did that stupid girl actually believe me? Just snap a photo, send out a company-wide victory email, and stuff eight hundred bucks in an envelope later. She’ll be so grateful she’ll drop to her knees." "Give eight million to a dirty code monkey? Please. As soon as the holidays are over, I’ll find an excuse to fire her!" I thought he was joking. But when that eight hundred dollars was actually placed on my desk, my mind went completely blank. All my colleagues were staring at me, watching the show with eager eyes. I let out a cold sneer and silently deleted the firewall code I had just spent days deploying. Then, I dialed the personal number of the CEO of our biggest competitor. "Your Chief Security Officer position? I accept." 1 "I’ll also throw in a super backdoor to your biggest rival's server as a bonus." I hung up the phone. I immediately hacked into my boss's personal computer, grabbed a few highly explicit private photos, and forwarded them directly to his wife. At the desk next to mine, Tyler, the biggest kiss-ass in the office, deliberately raised his voice to show off. "Wow! Ten thousand dollars! The boss is so generous this year!" Having said that, he turned to me, pretending to be casual. "Hazel, you're our Technical Director. You did the company a huge service. The boss must have given you a massive envelope, right?" The office fell dead silent. Dozens of pairs of eyes turned to look at me. Preston's right-hand woman, our HR Director Brenda, swayed her hips as she walked past my desk and dropped a comment: "Hazel, honey, young people shouldn't care so much about money. Every opportunity the boss gives you is an investment in your growth." I gripped that red envelope so tightly my nails almost dug into my palms. I hadn't closed my eyes for three days and three nights. My eyes were bloodshot. I had stared dead at the code on the screen, my fingers flying across the keyboard. The company's core data, worth five billion dollars, had hung in the balance of my cyber warfare with that hacker. It could have been lost at any second. At the very last moment, I found the enemy's vulnerability, successfully counterattacked, and deployed a brand-new firewall. In that moment, the entire tech department was cheering. The office doors were pushed open, and Preston walked in, surrounded by a flock of executives. They all looked like they were watching a circus act, and I was the main attraction. Preston wore a fake smile, calling me out in front of everyone. "Hazel, are you satisfied with this year's bonus?" He paused, deliberately raising his voice. "Eight hundred bucks is a lot. It's enough for you to buy two nice outfits for the holidays." Whoosh— The crowd erupted in roaring laughter. That sound made my stomach turn. The company's entire technical framework, built from absolute scratch, was constructed by me, line by line of code. I used to treat those lines of code like my own children. In the early days of the startup, I used to squeeze into a tiny, hundred-square-foot apartment with his wife, Vanessa, splitting a single cup of instant ramen. She would slurp the noodles, her eyes sparkling as she promised me: "Hazel, once our company goes public, I promise to buy you a mansion with an ocean view!" Now, she was wearing an incredibly expensive designer gown, standing elegantly beside Preston. She looked at me with the exact same look you'd give a poor relative begging at your doorstep. I rushed forward, my voice trembling slightly. "Vanessa! That's not what you told me back then!" Vanessa clung to Preston's arm. "Hazel, a person needs to know when to be content." "Preston verbally promised you eight million just to motivate you. How could you actually take it seriously? You're being so immature." Preston glanced at me, making no effort to hide his absolute contempt. "You really think a dirty code monkey is a company partner? Without us in sales running the business on the front lines, your tech department is just a pile of garbage that burns through cash!" "Given Hazel's lack of competence and inability to fulfill the duties of Technical Director, effective immediately, she is reassigned to the server room as an administrator. Her primary duties will be equipment supervision and daily cleaning!" Everyone gasped. This was pure humiliation. He was trying to force me to quit. Server room administrator? Even the janitors looked down on that job. My heart, in that moment, turned completely to ice. I suddenly smiled. A freezing, bitter smile. In front of everyone, I crumpled those wrinkled eight hundred dollars into a ball and threw it with all my might, smashing it right into Preston's greasy, smug face. "Keep the money. Buy yourself a coffin!" "If it's not enough, I'll chip in a little extra!" 2 I walked out of the CEO's office without looking back. On the way to my desk, all my colleagues avoided eye contact, whispering among themselves. An apprentice I had personally mentored quickly lowered his head when he saw me, pretending to organize his desk, not even daring to call me "mentor" anymore. Another male colleague, whom I had saved from being fired by fixing a major live-server crash, actually rolled his eyes at me as I walked past. He muttered just loud enough for me to hear: "Serves her right. Who told her to offend the boss? Really thought she was someone special." I wasn't surprised. I thought of the incredibly gifted fresh grad who, during a tech review meeting, publicly pointed out that Preston's exorbitantly expensive outsourced tech proposal "didn't align with basic logic." The very next day, he was sent to the admin department to fix printers. Less than a week later, that proud young kid resigned. I thought of Vanessa. I don't know when it started, but she began loving to host these "women in the workplace" seminars. The guest speakers she invited would preach on stage: "A woman's true success is finding a successful man and becoming his most solid backing, doing the supporting work." At the time, Vanessa even smiled and pulled me on stage, asking me to share how I could better "support" the sales department in hitting their quotas. I thought of the male executive who got drunk at the annual gala and got handsy with me. Afterward, not only was he not disciplined, but he was actually promoted for landing a big contract. Vanessa even came to me with fake sympathy, advising: "Hazel, flies don't bite seamless eggs. You need to watch your boundaries when interacting with male colleagues, so people don't get the wrong idea." Incident after incident. All the grievances I had deliberately ignored came rushing back to me now. I used to think she was just changed by love and a comfortable life. Only now did I finally understand: she was rotten. Rotten to the core. I walked to the elevator and pressed the down button. Vanessa's voice echoed from behind me. "Hazel, go back and beg Preston right now. Apologize to him, and you might still have a chance." I didn't turn around. I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the basement parking garage. The elevator doors slowly slid shut, cutting off her hypocritical face. The phone in my pocket suddenly vibrated. It was an unknown number. I casually hung up. But they immediately called back. I answered the phone. "Who is this?" From the other end came a deep, male voice, calm and direct. "Hazel? This is Sterling Pierce." The CEO of Apex Tech. Our biggest rival. "The Chief Security Officer position. The base salary is eight million a year, plus five percent equity in the group." "The signing bonus is ten million. It can be wired to your account right now." Before I could even process the information, he continued. Every word was exactly what I needed to hear. "Our group just fully acquired a top-tier hardware lab in Germany." "Now, it's under your control." "All those ideas of yours, the ones Preston called 'cash-burning garbage,' now have a place to become reality." I looked at my pale face in the elevator mirror, my eyes sharp and piercing. Suddenly, I smiled. "Deal." "But I have a little personal business to take care of first." 3 I went back to my workstation, preparing to format my personal PC and take my belongings. The sharp click of heels on the floor approached. Vanessa arrived with two security guards in tow. She put on her "good sister" mask again, saying with fake concern, "Hazel, don't be so impulsive. Let's talk this out properly. If you leave now, what will happen to the company?" I couldn't be bothered to look at her. My fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up the command line terminal, preparing to wipe my personal development environment and all server access keys. On the screen, dense lines of code began scrolling rapidly. Vanessa couldn't read code, but she instinctively knew that whatever it was, it was vital to the company. Her face changed instantly. Ripping off her gentle mask, she shrieked: "Hazel! Don't you dare touch the company computers! Are you trying to destroy evidence?!" I stopped what I was doing and looked at her coldly. "My computer. My rules." My glare seemed to trigger her. She suddenly yelled at the surrounding office: "Security! Grab her! She's trying to steal core company code to sell to our rivals!" She pointed at me, screaming at the two guards rushing over. "She just attacked the company servers! I saw it with my own eyes! Arrest her immediately and call the cops!" The two guards, Dave and Mike, were guys I knew. I had helped them fix their home computers and troubleshoot their phones in the past. They looked deeply conflicted, hesitating in place. Vanessa's tone turned venomous. "What are you two standing there for? Do you want to get fired along with her? This is corporate espionage! She's going to prison!" Under the threat of losing their jobs, they finally gritted their teeth and flanked me on both sides. Vanessa walked up to me. "Hazel, trying to fight me? You're too green." "I'm not just going to make you roll out of this company. I'm going to destroy your reputation. With the label of a corporate spy on your back, you'll never work in this industry again." She stood up straight and ordered the guards. "Lock her in the server room! The signal is completely shielded in there. Let's see how she contacts the outside world now!" "When the police get here and catch her red-handed, we'll deal with her!" My phone was violently snatched away. They shoved and pushed me toward the server room. With a massive bang, I was shoved hard into the freezing, humming server room, which was kept below fifty degrees year-round. The heavy metal door slammed shut and locked behind me. 4 The cold air inside the server room was biting, freezing drafts rushing down my collar from all sides. But I felt incredibly calm. I almost wanted to laugh. Locking a programmer inside a server room? How is that any different from putting a mouse in a grain silo? I curled up in a corner of the room, avoiding the security cameras. Then, I lifted my foot and pried off a fake decorative rivet from the heel of my stiletto. It was a micro-USB drive. It contained a master-level backdoor program I had written for myself. It could bypass all the company's existing security systems and drill straight into the core root of the servers. I expertly unplugged an ethernet cable and connected my portable micro-terminal. However, before I could even begin typing, the server room door suddenly swung open. Preston walked in with a cold sneer, carrying a very expensive-looking black briefcase. "Trying to sabotage us from the inside? Hazel, are you really that naive?" He placed the briefcase on the floor and opened it, revealing a sophisticated piece of black hardware. "Meet the military-grade hard drive data cracker. That so-called encryption algorithm on your computer is a joke to me." He wanted to defeat me technically, in the realm I was most proud of, to crush all my pride. He forcefully booted up my personal laptop and plugged the cracking device's cable into it. "I'm giving you one last chance. Hand over the access keys to all your private code repositories within sixty seconds." "Otherwise, I'm calling the police immediately and charging you with endangering information security. That charge is enough to keep you in a cell until the floor rots!" I feigned absolute terror. "No... please don't call the police... I'll give them to you, I'll give you everything..." Just as he thought he had won and forcefully shoved the data cable into my laptop's USB port... I pressed a pre-programmed shortcut combination on my keyboard. Pop. A soft sound. His supposed million-dollar military-grade cracking device went completely black. A faint wisp of blue smoke drifted out of it. It was completely fried. Preston's face went from white to red, then red to a sickly green. Furious, he raised his hand, ready to slap me. "You bitch! You dare play me?!" Right at that moment, Vanessa rushed in. Seeing the fried equipment, she immediately let out a piercing shriek right on cue: "Oh my god! I knew it! You ungrateful wretch, you're trying to destroy the lifeblood of our company!" They played off each other flawlessly, getting ready to formally convict me. Suddenly! WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO! The highest-level security alarm blared through the entire building. Emergency red lights flashed frantically. An IT guy in a plaid shirt came stumbling and rolling into the server room. "Mr. Croft! Mrs. Croft! It's... it's a disaster!" "All our client data, financial reports, core source code... everything... it's all been locked!" "The hacker... they sent a ransom note! They want... they want a billion dollars in ransom!" 5 "How is that possible?!" Preston snapped back to reality, grabbing the IT guy by the collar. "What about the firewall?! Is the three-million-dollar firewall I bought just for show?!" The IT guy looked like he was about to cry. "It's useless, sir! The attack... it seems... it seems it was launched directly from the very bottom layer of our system! Our firewall didn't detect a single anomaly from start to finish!" Preston's head snapped toward me, his eyes locking onto mine. The murderous intent in his gaze looked like he wanted to swallow me alive. Meanwhile, on the massive screen in the company's main control room, the ransom note was automatically projected. A gigantic, dripping-blood skull took up the entire screen. Beneath the skull was a striking line of text: "One hour. One billion dollars. Or every dirty secret your company holds will be global headline news tomorrow." At the very bottom, a countdown timer was dropping rapidly: ... Vanessa finally broke. It wasn't until this very moment that she finally realized something. This company she was so proud of, where she thought technology was irrelevant—its absolute lifeblood had always been in the palm of my hand. She completely abandoned her elegant facade. She threw herself at me like a madwoman, grabbing my hands desperately. "Hazel... no! Master Hazel! I beg you, please think of something! This company... this company is your life's work too!" Preston finally bowed his head as well. "You... you restore the system." "Eight million... no! Ten million! I will wire it to you right now! Just fix this problem!" The panic on their faces made them look like ants on a hot skillet. "Okay." A look of ecstatic joy instantly washed over their faces. "Hurry! Hurry! Get to the control room!" Under the complex gazes of every employee in the company, I calmly walked toward the front doors. Preston and Vanessa followed behind me like two dogs, still anxiously urging me on. "Hazel! The control room is this way! You're going the wrong way! Come back!" I didn't turn around. I walked straight to the glass front doors and pushed them open. Outside, a black Rolls-Royce Phantom was parked quietly at the bottom of the steps. The door opened, and the tall, imposing figure of Sterling Pierce stepped out personally. He walked around the car and opened the rear passenger door for me. He gave a slight bow and gestured for me to get in. 6 Vanessa chased me to the floor-to-ceiling windows upstairs and caught sight of this exact scene. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the floor, muttering mindlessly: "Apex Tech... It's Sterling Pierce..." Preston was still holding out in his office, frantically calling his technical lifelines in Silicon Valley. On the other end of the line, after hearing his description, the expert replied coldly: "Preston, someone who can lock your system from the root without triggering a single alarm... we can't mess with a god like that. Get your affairs in order." The countdown on the big screen ticked away, second by second. Time was up. The homepage of the company's official website was instantly hijacked, replaced by a massive, dynamic graphic. Highly explicit nude photos of Preston in luxury hotels, offices, and even his own home, alongside graphic chat logs with various influencers and female subordinates, began looping like a slideshow. Immediately after, the cell phones of every CEO and executive of our core clients received a multimedia message at the exact same time. The contents were screenshots of their highly classified trade secrets stored on our servers, attached with a message: "Your company's data security has been fully compromised. Good luck." In an instant, the company's customer service lines blew up. The sales department lines exploded too. Every executive's personal phone was ringing off the hook. On the other end were furious interrogations, contract termination notices, and demands for massive compensation. Every major financial news app started frantically pushing breaking news alerts: [Following Massive Scandal, Tech Firm XXX's Stock Plummets 90% at the Bell, Triggering Circuit Breakers!] The risk management department of our partner bank called. The voice on the other end was icy. "Mr. Croft, our bank has decided to immediately freeze all your corporate bank accounts and initiate asset preservation procedures. We demand immediate repayment of all outstanding loans." One piece of devastating news after another completely buried Preston. Then, his personal phone—the one he hadn't smashed yet—suddenly popped up a notification. It was the headline from the world's largest tech news outlet: [BREAKING! Genius Programmer Hazel Officially Joins Apex Tech as Chief Security Officer & Chief Scientist of Klaus Labs!] The featured image was from a press conference. I was wearing a sharp white suit, shaking hands with Sterling Pierce, with the massive Apex Tech logo behind us. The woman in the photo was confident and powerful—completely different from the miserable girl they had humiliated just hours ago. Preston stared dead at that photo. He couldn't catch his breath. His eyes rolled back, and he fainted, falling stiffly to the floor. Looking at her unconscious husband, Vanessa finally let out a blood-curdling scream. Meanwhile, at the welcome banquet Apex Tech was hosting for me, I elegantly raised my champagne flute and smiled slightly at Sterling Pierce beside me: "A small welcoming gift. I hope you like it, Mr. Pierce."
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