Theater: NovelMaster | Language: English | NEW
Synopsis
I was exactly seventy-two hours away from hitting my ten-year milestone and cashing out my twenty-one million dollar equity payout.
Then, our brand-new Gen Z vice president slapped a "Voluntary Resignation Agreement" right across my face.
"Old man, this company doesn't pay dinosaurs who just sit around typing on keyboards."
"Sign it, take this five-hundred-dollar severance, and get the hell out of my building."
Twenty-two-year-old Kyle Sterling sneered at me from inside his tailored Armani suit.
I looked down at the crumpled five-hundred-dollar bill on my desk and actually smiled.
Firing me?
I was the sole foundational architect of this entire company!
I was the only person alive holding the master physical encryption key to the core database powering thirty million users.
If I pulled the network cable from my workstation right now, the entire company’s infrastructure would flatline within two hours.
This wasn't just firing me.
This was literally pulling the company's life support plug.
Without a shred of hesitation, I picked up the pen.
"Sure. You really don't waste time, Kyle."
"I'll sign. Just make sure you don't regret it."
I calmly unplugged the encrypted hardware drive from my desktop tower.
Kyle let out a cold scoff.
He shoved the five hundred bucks closer to me.
"Smart move."
"At your age, you can't even write Python cleanly anymore, yet you still hog the Director of Technology title."
"I can hire an intern for a couple of grand a month who'll outwork you ten to one."
Beside him stood his new influencer assistant, Chloe.
Wearing a skintight pencil skirt, she covered her mouth and giggled.
"Mr. Sterling is so right. We're in the age of AI automation now."
"Old fogies who just sit around sipping herbal tea all day should've been put out to pasture years ago."
I picked up my vintage stainless steel coffee tumbler and took a slow sip of warm water.
I was only forty-five, but in their eyes, I was basically a walking fossil.
"Kyle, that's not how the math works."
I tapped the paper on the desk.
"I'm happy to sign this."
"However, I have a ten-year executive contract signed during the company's founding days."
"It officially matures this Friday, entitling me to a five percent equity cash-out."
"On top of that, after ten years of service, my contractual severance package equals eleven months of full salary."
I pulled out my phone and tapped open the calculator app.
In front of the entire open-plan office, I punched in the numbers.
"Base severance plus equity valuation comes out to exactly twenty-one point three million dollars."
"So, Kyle, should we do a direct wire transfer, or are you cutting a corporate check?"
The sneer on Kyle’s face instantly vanished.
He shot out of his chair.
"Twenty-one million?! Are you out of your mind?!"
"Why the hell would the company give you that kind of money?!"
I looked calmly at his face, which was contorting with pure fury.
"Because I'm Employee Number One."
"Because every single line of code in that foundational database was written by my own hands."
"And employment law is very clear: until you settle that balance, I'm not going anywhere."
Chloe panicked, tugging hard on Kyle's designer sleeve.
"Mr. Sterling, HR's entire restructuring budget for this month is only two hundred grand."
"Paying him that much would bankrupt our department's budget!"
Kyle glared at me, grinding his back teeth in pure malice.
"Marcus Carter, you think you can play games with me?"
"You think you can just ride the clock until Friday and take that money? Not a chance in hell!"
He grabbed the resignation form off the desk and tore it into shreds.
"You're not fired anymore."
"Since you draw the highest salary in this company, you're going to do the absolute dirtiest grunt work."
"Let's see how long you last before you beg to quit on your own!"Half an hour later.
I returned to my workstation from the restroom.
My genuine leather ergonomic chair was gone.
In its place sat a cheap plastic stool with half a broken leg.
The three large 4K monitors on my desk had been stripped away.
All that remained was an ancient, dust-covered second-hand laptop.
The young developers in the R&D department exchanged terrified glances.
Nobody in the entire room dared to breathe too loudly.
Toby, a chubby junior coder who was usually closest to me, crept over.
"Marcus, Kyle ordered IT to cut all your workstation access."
"He even kicked you out of the core WhatsApp dev group."
"A wise man doesn't pick a fight he can't win. Just go apologize and smooth things over."
I patted Toby's shoulder, motioning for him to head back to his desk.
Apologize?
The corporate world is a jungle where only leverage matters.
Whoever controls the core technology runs the show.
Kyle swaggered over with Chloe trailing behind him.
"Marcus, effective immediately, you are reassigned to the Legacy Data Archiving Unit."
"Ten years' worth of paper records—a hundred archive boxes—are sitting down in the basement."
"I expect you to manually type all of it into the system within three days."
Three days? A hundred massive boxes?
He was deliberately trying to work me into a heart attack.
Sweat broke out on Toby's forehead.
He couldn't stop himself from speaking up.
"Mr. Sterling, that's over a hundred thousand pages of raw data!"
"Even with OCR scanning software, it would take two weeks!"
Kyle shot Toby a venomous glare.
"Shut up! Did anyone give you permission to open your mouth?"
"This is a special assignment for senior deadweight. OCR makes mistakes; it must be keyed in manually."
"Fail to finish, and it counts as gross insubordination. You won't see a single penny of severance!"
The entire floor fell dead silent.
Everyone saw it for what it was.
Blatant, unchecked workplace retaliation.
I dragged the wobbly plastic stool over and sat down steadily.
"Kyle, are you absolutely certain you want me typing archives in the basement?"
"Who is going to handle the primary server's daily maintenance routine?"
Kyle waved a dismissive hand.
"You mean clicking a mouse a few times on routine inspections?"
"I can grab any random intern to do that."
"Stop trying to gaslight me with your fake importance."
I nodded, opening the lid of the battered laptop.
"Alright. If that's what management assigns, I will fully comply."
"Just so we're clear upfront."
"If the main server crashes, it has nothing to do with me."
Kyle let out a dry laugh.
"You really think you're God's gift to this company, don't you?"
"The world keeps spinning without you, old man. Get your ass down to the basement!"
I stood up and walked toward the elevators without looking back.The elevator doors slid open.
Sub-basement level three.
The air was thick with the suffocating stench of mildew and rotting paper.
A hundred sealed cardboard boxes were stacked clear up to the ceiling.
I pulled out the cracked plastic stool.
I set the ancient laptop onto the dust-caked wooden table.
It took three presses of the power button before the flickering screen finally sputtered to life.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my burner phone.
I opened a hidden monitoring portal.
A bright red progress bar pulsed across the screen.
It was a server-side surveillance probe I had coded myself years ago.
The memory load was skyrocketing in real-time.
Eighty-five percent.
Eighty-eight percent.
I chuckled under my breath.
Ten years ago, when this company was born in a garage, we didn't even have a dedicated server room.
I stayed awake for thirty straight nights, typing out the foundational architecture line by line.
Three years ago, when an overseas cyber-attack hit us, I led the emergency defense.
I completely isolated the core database behind physical air-gapped security protocols.
To prevent internal data theft, the protocol was absolute:
Every day at precisely two in the afternoon, my personal hardware security token had to be plugged into the mainboard for manual clearance and routine maintenance.
It was now two-ten PM.
Without my physical hardware key hooked into the motherboard, cache data would pile up exponentially.
Within twenty minutes, the entire system would suffer total memory deadlock.
Outside, footsteps echoed in the concrete hallway.
Kyle strutted in, accompanied by his influencer sidekick, Chloe.
Chloe pinched her nose with exaggerated disgust.
"Ugh, Kyle, it smells repulsive down here."
"A rotten dungeon like this is the only place that fits an old fossil with one foot in the grave."
Kyle, decked out in his pristine Armani suit, kicked the nearest cardboard box.
It tipped over, spilling yellowed, dusty paperwork across the floor.
"Marcus, stop daydreaming!"
"Ten of these boxes must be keyed in before you leave today."
"Two hundred dollars deducted for every single typo."
"If you don't finish, you're marked down for unauthorized absence, and your severance is forfeited."
I looked down at the ruined documents on the floor.
"Kyle, these records passed their ten-year statutory retention limit years ago."
"It's literal garbage."
"Making me manually transcribe them is nothing but deliberate harassment."
Kyle burst out laughing.
He whipped out the latest iPhone, flipped the camera on, and pointed it straight in my face.
"Hey guys, welcome to workplace reality check!" he said into the camera.
"This slacker makes six figures sitting around doing nothing all day."
"Watch me teach this veteran moocher what real work looks like!"
Chloe chimed in with her high-pitched, fake voice.
"You tell him, Kyle!"
"Gen Z doesn't tolerate lazy corporate freeloaders."
"Did you really think the company couldn't survive without you old relics?"
I shifted away from the lens, looking calmly at Kyle’s smug grin.
"Kyle, do you really think filming TikTok clips is productive?"
"I'm an original equity holder in this firm."
"You have no legal right to exploit my likeness like this."
Kyle lowered the phone, sneering with raw condescension.
"Shareholder?"
"Those options aren't vested or cashed out yet."
"My whole goal is to run you out of here."
"Your twenty-one million will look much better spent on a limited-edition Ferrari for me."
"My dad is the Chairman. This entire company belongs to my family. My word is law!"
Chloe stepped forward holding an iced Americano.
As she reached my desk, she deliberately tilted her wrist.
The dark coffee splashed squarely across the stack of documents I had just opened.
The brown liquid soaked through the brittle pages, turning the ink into unreadable blurs.
Chloe covered her mouth in mock horror.
"Oops! My hand slipped!"
"So sorry, Director Carter. Those words are a bit smudged now, so you'd better read carefully."
"Any mistakes will count against your performance!"
I stared at the mess on the desk.
I didn't lose my temper.
There was no point in getting angry at two dead men walking.
I pulled out a napkin and methodically wiped the coffee splatters from my knuckles.
"Whatever makes you happy, Kyle."
"But as your former Chief Technology Officer, let me give you one final heads-up."
"It's two-fifteen."
"Memory load on the main cluster has likely breached ninety percent."
"In less than ten minutes, the entire platform is going to crash."
Kyle froze for a split second, then barked out a laugh.
"Marcus, save the ghost stories."
"AI is everywhere now. Any one-click diagnostic script can fix basic server lag."
"I already assigned Kevin to take over your tasks."
"He's an MIT grad, top of his class."
"He costs me four grand a month, and he can outcode you with his eyes closed."
Before he could finish his sentence, frantic footsteps slammed down the concrete stairwell.
Toby burst into the basement, drenched in cold sweat.
He was gasping for air.
"Mr. Sterling! Marcus! Everything's falling apart!"
"The user payment gateway is completely frozen!"
"Customer support lines are melting down with thousands of complaints!"
Kyle's face tightened, but he fought to keep his composure.
"What's the panic?!"
"If it's lagging, just reboot the damn server!"
"You came running all the way down here for something that simple?"
Toby slapped his own thighs in sheer desperation.
"We can't reboot!"
"Kevin hit the backend purge command, and the system threw an error saying the physical security token was missing!"
"It triggered the kernel-level defense lockdown!"
"Every single background thread is trapped in an irreversible deadlock!"Kyle's eyes locked onto me like daggers.
"Marcus, give me the physical key!"
He lunged forward, reaching directly into my jacket pocket.
I shoved him back with a firm push.
"Kyle, keep your hands to yourself."
"My hardware key reports solely to the Chairman."
"You stripped me of my duties. I have zero legal obligation to hand over anything."
Kyle stumbled back a step, his face turning an ugly shade of purple.
He pointed a shaking finger at me.
"Marcus! You dared to leave a backdoor in the system?!"
"I can have the cops down here in five minutes to lock you in a cell!"
I sat on my broken plastic stool, unbothered.
"Watch your mouth, Kyle. Defamation carries legal weight."
"That protocol was engineered to withstand nation-state cyber warfare."
"Your father personally signed off on it years ago."
"Every line of security architecture is formally filed with corporate compliance."
"If you don't understand infrastructure, stop making a fool of yourself."
Chloe grabbed Kyle's arm, whining in his ear.
"Kyle, don't let him intimidate you."
"He's just using a cheap flash drive to extort us."
"Why don't we just tell Kevin to yank the main power cord and force a hard reset?"
Kyle's eyes lit up.
"Of course!"
"It's just a damn computer! Cut the power and hard-reboot!"
"Toby, run upstairs right now and tell Kevin to pull the master breaker on the server rack!"
Toby turned paper-white.
He stared at Kyle as if the man had lost his mind.
"Mr. Sterling! You can't do that!"
"This is peak trading volume!"
"A hard shutdown will instantly purge over two million active in-memory transactions!"
"The contractual liabilities alone would bankrupt this company!"
Kyle snapped, violently kicking Toby in the shin.
"Shut up!"
"Are you the Vice President, or am I?"
"I take full responsibility!"
"Now get upstairs and pull that damn plug!"
Toby stumbled back from the kick, wincing in pain.
He cast a desperate, pleading look in my direction.
I gave him a subtle, almost imperceptible shake of my head.
I was telling him to protect himself.
In corporate warfare, you never step in front of an idiot determined to drive off a cliff.
Toby gritted his teeth, turned, and bolted back up the stairs.
Silence descended upon the basement once again.
The damp smell of mildew seemed to thicken in the air.
Kyle spun around, an arrogant smirk returning to his lips.
"See that, Marcus?"
"Your little era is officially over."
"I don't need you to fix a single damn thing."
"Once that system reboots, you're going to spend the rest of your miserable life rotting in this basement!"
Chloe leaned against his shoulder, purring.
"Kyle is brilliant. An entitled dinosaur like him belongs in a sanitation crew, not an executive suite."
"He actually thought he was irreplaceable."
I looked down at my phone screen.
The digital clock flipped to 2:20 PM.
On the hidden diagnostic site, the memory gauge flashed a violent, blinking red: ninety-nine percent.
The moment Kevin yanked the master power supply upstairs, the massive residual data surge would overwhelm the circuits.
Not only would the active memory cache be completely obliterated, but the emergency cold-storage backups in the server room would also trigger their physical thermal self-defense tripwires.
Ten years of foundational enterprise data would be incinerated into electronic scrap within one second.
A catastrophic loss worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
I took another calm sip of water.
"Kyle."
"You really are a devoted son."
"You're about to burn your father's life's work to the ground with your own two hands."
Kyle's rage flared again. He screamed into my face.
"Shut your mouth, you washed-up loser!"
"I'm heading up right now to watch Kevin get the platform back online."
"Let's see what smug garbage comes out of your mouth then!"
He grabbed Chloe's hand and stormed furiously toward the elevator.
I watched their retreating figures, a faint, cold smile playing on my lips.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
I counted down silently in my head.
Three.
Two.
One.
From the floors above, a muffled, collective shriek tore through the building.
A second later, every light in the basement snapped off.
The piercing, deafening wail of the server room's emergency auxiliary power alarm sliced through the floors, echoing violently through the darkness.
Chapters (4)
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Watch & Promotions
- Search this code in the NovelMaster app:
503896Open NovelMaster → Search code → Find the title